The Impact of Environment on Child Development

In short, the parents” expectations regarding their children’s academic achievement had been influenced with subsequent achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005). Parenting had important long-term outcome for the development of characteristic adaptations including the lifelong relationship between parent and child. Many other aspects of the environment were also significantly influenced on characteristic adaptations including peers, the media, educational systems and more (Miller & Votruba-Drzal, 2013).

In addition, urban-rural environment result in significant differences in early academic skills. Furthermore, cognitive stimulation in the home, parenting quality, and parental childrearing beliefs and academic expectations appeared to be important predictors of early achievement. Cognitive stimulation in the home, which includes the provision of educational interactions, activities and materials enhances language, proficiency, and numeracy skills (Son & Morrison, 2010). Similarly, high quality parenting in early childhood, which was characterized by high levels of responsiveness, warmth and consistency promotes early cognitive and academic development (Lugo-Gil & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008).

In fact, children living in more urban areas were closer to a variety of enriching activities, the frequency in which urban and suburban children were exposed with stimulating experiences may be greater, thereby raising the quality of their early learning environments. Lastly, parents” beliefs and expectations regarding childrearing and education were contributed to early academic skills. (Glick et al., 2009). Moreover, it might be harder for rural parents to furnish children with enriching experience and connections as scattering of people, shortage of services, and recent reduction of human capital may leave rural families without access to imperative assets and social capital. However, there were also positive aspects of rural residence which were increased home-ownership and accessibility of nature (Wells & Evans, 2003).

On the other hand, large cities often known with a lack of green spaces, crime, overcrowding, pollution, which could be disadvantages for parenting and early development even though resource accessibility were not problematic (Evans, 2006). These developmental contexts over those urban–rural continuum brought about variety in the improvement on skills. Despite the importance of understanding the influence of factors on child or human development in general, few studies had considered how urbanity shapes the development of early academic skills. For instance, rural areas were populated outside main human resources and often had limited access to development of essential resources like health care, libraries, and child care (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2008). Furthermore, over the last few decades, most of young generation had migrated to urban and suburban areas as high-quality jobs in rural communities had been reduced (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2008).

Area of upbringing provided unique settings for skills development. Early success may be because of variations in access to sources and childrearing norms and practices in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Urban, suburban, and rural regions provided precise settings for child development. Urban–rural continuum differs in financial status, resources accessibility, and collective human, social, and cultural capital, all of which had huge and imperative impact for human (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2008). A few studies explained that urbanity linked to the development of early educational capabilities, with rural children lagging behind their urban peers in kindergarten success (Lee & Burkham, 2002).

Hereditary factors and inborn play significant role in the process of skills development, however, acquired and environmental seem to be equally important. The environment also had a direct impact to personality traits, because characteristic adaptations were always involved in their expression (McCrae et al., 2000). The significant role among environmental factors played the conscious impacts. At this point, the development of skills can be partly or totally controlled in the unfavourable conditions was seems extremely important to be emphasized. If the child does not receive a proper support, encouragement and guidance some of the skills can in such a situation not be disclosed or not be developed. The more such exposure and stimulation involves the individual, the more intensively skills develop (Petrykowski et al.,2014).