Impact of Parents Education on Developmental Outcomes of Rural Female Children: A Longitudinal Study

The study was conducted longitudinally for six months on sixty 25 months old rural female children belonging to low socio-economic families. The sample which was drawn from six purposively selected villages of Ludhiana-I block of Ludhiana district was equally divided into two groups namely ‘intervention’ and ‘control group’. The ‘age-paced’ intervention programme was conducted fornightly for a period of six months exclusively for the intervention group. The ‘control’ group children were not exposed to such a programme. Socioeconomic status of the families was ascertained by using Kulshrestha's Scale (SES 1981). The children were assessed for their motor and mental development by using Bayley Scale of Infant Development (BSID, 1961). The motor and mental performance of intervention group was significantly better as compared to control group. Increase in motor development scores with increase in age was relatively less in control group children when compared with intervention group. On the other hand, increase in mental development scores was much higher as compared to the increase in motor development scores in the intervention group than in the control group. The target children were grouped by their parent's education across different categories of developmental change (gain/no change/loss). The children whose mother-father were educated upto Matric level and belonged to service class showed maximum gains both in mental and motor development. The proportion of children who “gained” or registered “no change” decreased with other levels of education lower than matriculation. Highest proportion of children who incurred “loss” in developmental scores belonged to illiterate parents.