Arnault-Quentin Vermillet: The path-dependence of caregiving

Abtract
Although child rearing in humans is fundamentally cooperative, the bulk of carework of families in WEIRD countries majoritarily falls on women. Biases in caregiving are reflected in and influenced by social policies, like the unequal distribution of parental leave, and ideas about traditional family structures, gender and sex norms. Moreover, the landscape of theories and practices in child development research focuses primarily on mother-infant dyads, relying on an evolutionary framework to explain the development of differentiated behaviours between men and women. In this IMC Tuesday Talk, I will present some of the work I did during my PhD. I will propose a social, behavioural and cognitive framework for studying caregiving organisation in parents, emphasising the importance of studying the dynamic behaviour of the family as a whole. Focusing on crying, an infant signalling behaviour that affords care, I will discuss 3 studies. In the first study, I evaluated the prevalence and development of cry duration in early infancy. In the second one, I investigated the extent of fathers’ and mothers’ engagement in nighttime caregiving when mothers are on leave, and when fathers are on leave. Finally, in the last study, I assessed the existence of gender differences in sensitivity to infant signals in two different experimental contexts: while asleep at night, and while engaged in a dyadic non-cooperative setting. Does sensitivity to infant cries drive the gendered division of care work? Come to find out!
About the speaker
Arnault-Quentin Vermillet, postdoc, Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Aarhus University
IMC Tuesday Seminar held November 14th, 2023.
Note: Talk is trimmed to ensure anonymity of informants.