Jay Belsky (born July 7, 1952) is an American child psychologist and the Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn Professor of

Human Development Human development may refer to: * Development of the human body * Developmental psychology * Human development (economics) * Human Development Index, an index used to rank countries by level of human development * Human evolution Human evoluti ...

at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

. He is noted for his research in the fields of

child development Child development involves the Human development (biology), biological, developmental psychology, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. Childhood is divided into 3 stages o ...

and family studies. He was a founding investigator of the

NICHD The ''Eunice Kennedy Shriver'' National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It supports and conducts research aime ...

Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, and of the National Evaluation of

Sure Start Sure Start is a UK Government area-based initiative, announced in 1998 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, applying primarily in England with slightly different versions in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The initiative o ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. He has been an ISI Highly Cited Researcher since 2002.

Career

After receiving his Ph.D. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1978, Belsky joined the faculty of Penn State University, where he became a distinguished professor of human development before leaving the faculty there in 1999. From 1999 to 2010, he was a professor of psychology at Birkbeck University of London, where he was also the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues. He became the Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn Professor of Human Development at the University of California, Davis in 2011. Since 2010, he has been a member of the Academy of Europe.

Research

Belsky has published multiple studies reporting that

child care Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...

is associated with an increased risk of psychological and behavioral problems for children. These studies have been covered extensively by the media, though they have been criticized by other researchers. One such critic, Kathleen McCartney, former director of the Child Study and Development Center at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...

and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said in 1987 that "None of the studies Jay elskytalks about look at the quality of child-care arrangements or the family backgrounds".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Belsky, Jay 1952 births Living people American developmental psychologists University of California, Davis faculty Scientists from New York City Cornell University alumni Child psychologists Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Pennsylvania State University faculty Members of Academia Europaea American child psychologists