How fathers’ attachment security and education contribute to early child language skills above and beyond mothers: parent-child conversation under scrutiny

ABSTRACT

Attachment (AQS) of 100 children aged 12 to 24 months was observed, with more than half of the fathers (and mothers) representing higher social status. Children’s language comprehension and production were measured using the Bayley Scales for receptive (RLS) and expressive language skills (ELS). Spontaneous book reading conversations in father-child and mother-child dyads were coded from videotapes, capturing five modes of conversation derived from research on dialogic reading. Path modelling examined the association of these modes on children’s RLS and ELS in concurrence with parental attachment and education. First time, significant effects of father-child attachment security on children’s RLS were revealed (and confirmed for mother-child dyads). Fathers’ impact on child language skills could be further explained through modes which inquire and imitate child responses which were related to RLS and ELS, respectively. Although mothers’ modes of conversation were associated with the mother-child attachment relationship, the father-child conversations were not so but instead were associated with the father’s educational background.

KEYWORDS:

• Language pragmatics
• dialogic reading
• parent gender
• fatherhood
• picture book

Acknowledgments

This work has been carried out as part of CENOF (the Central European Network on Fatherhood with headquarters at the University of Vienna) and was supported by the Jacobs Foundation (AZ: 2013-1049). We are grateful to the participating families, to the student teams of the faculty for collecting and coding the data, as well as to Bernhard Piskernik for his helpful statistical advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.