Who’s reading to children in low‐income families? The influence of paternal, maternal and child characteristics

Abstract

Most research on parental bookreading has focused on mothers reading to their children. This study examined bookreading practices among approximately 800 fathers and mothers in low‐income families. We looked at differences and similarities between families where both parents read frequently compared to families where only mothers read frequently. In more than a third of the low‐income families in this study, both parents reported reading to their young children on a regular basis (daily or weekly). Parents who were higher educated, who had girls and who had children with better language and cognitive skills were more likely to read frequently to their children. Intervention efforts to increase reading in the home to toddlers and preschoolers in low‐income families should be targeted at fathers, a relatively under‐tapped resource, and should focus on families in which parents have lower levels of education and those whose children have less advanced cognitive and language skills.

Keywords:

• bookreading
• fathers
• mothers
• low‐income

Acknowledgements

The findings reported here are based on research conducted as part of the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project funded by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), US Department of Health and Human Services through Grant 90YF0009 to Harvard University Graduate School of Education. The authors were members of the Early Head Start Research Consortium. The consortium consists of representatives from 17 programmes participating in the evaluation, 15 local research teams, the evaluation contractors and ACYF. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Notes

These sites were located in Arkansas, California, Colorado (two sites), Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Washington (two sites). The remaining three sites chose not to participate for various reasons (see Bradley et al., 2006 for further details).

Father’s weekly level of bookreading was counted as frequent reading because earlier descriptive results showed a bimodal distribution (daily/weekly vs. monthly/rarely) for fathers’ reported bookreading.