Emmott, Emily H; Gibbon, Sahra; (2024) Understanding Child Development: A Biosocial Anthropological Approach to Early Life. In: Pentecost, Michelle and Keaney, Jaya and Moll, Tessa and Penkler, Michael, (eds.) The Handbook of DOHaD and Society: Past, Present, and Future Directions of Biosocial Collaboration. (pp. 231-240). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

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Abstract

In this chapter, we reflect on how different disciplines have conceptualised ‘early life’ with particular insights from evolutionary, social, and medical anthropology to challenge and further expand the narrow framing of a Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) focus and to show the scope of a biosocial perspective. First, we introduce how childhood and early life have been studied in anthropology, followed by a discussion on how early life has been conceptualised in public health, lifecourse, and development research. We then discuss how concepts of early life may impact caregiving practice and childhood environments, which in turn impacts research on early life itself, with longitudinal birth cohort studies as an example. We highlight the need for critical and reflective thinking about the ways in which we do biosocial research, and the impact it has on our understanding of the DOHaD. We suggest that a reflexively engaged biosocial anthropological dialogue around research on early life broadens the scope of cross-disciplinary work, engages with the complex and dynamic process of childhood development, and contributes to a more nuanced framework of early life for DOHaD-informed research and health practice.

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