ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on child development and the parent-child relationship throughout children’s life course. It examines four key factors that impact the parent-child relationship as well as child development. These are personality, young maternal age, poverty, and the quality of the parents’ marital relationship. A newborn baby is a tiny physical constitution and a budding personality that, apart from intrauterine factors–such as maternal malnutrition, smoking, alcoholism, or drug abuse–is the result of the genes it has inherited. The effect of personality on the parent-child relationship and on child development is examined both in terms of the parents’ and the infant’s personalities. Parents’ socio-demographic characteristics are key elements in the parent-child relationship and human development. They include the parents’ gender, age, marital status, social class, ethnicity or race, and geographic location. The quality of the couple’s relationship before the baby’s arrival is a good predictor of the later quality of this relationship and of the quality of the parent-small child relationship.
