The Interplay among Parents’ Stress, Nonparental Childcare, and Child Language Development among Low-Income Toddlers

Figures & data

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for all study variables.

Factors	Percentage
Child’s race/ethnicity
White	46%
African-American	37%
Hispanic	3%
Asian	2%
Multiple races/ethnicities	12%
Mother’s education
Less than high school diploma	13%
High school diploma	42%
At least some college	44%
Mother’s marital status
Married	22%
Single	47%
Living with a partner	22%
Divorced/ separated/ widowed	9%
Mothers’ working status
Working	45%
Not working	55%
Continuous variables	Mean	SD	Range
Language – TP1	21.59	5.53	7–34
Language – TP3	47.01	10.31	25–73
Parenting stress	62.18	18.70	35–131
Economic hardship	3.21	0.99	0–4
Childcare hours	12.16	17.33	0–60

Table 2. Moderation of parenting stress and economic hardship on the relation between childcare hours and language development.

	Model 1: Main effects of parenting stress and economic hardship				Model 2: Moderation effect of childcare hours on parenting stress				Model 3: Moderation effect of childcare hours on economic hardship
	Est.	SE	z	p	Est.	SE	z	p	Est.	SE	z	p
Language pretest score	0.04	0.17	0.24	.808	0.08	0.17	0.47	.641	0.05	0.17	0.30	.762
Mother Education (1 = with a College degree or above)	4.04	2.04	1.98	.048	4.05	1.97	2.05	.040	4.14	2.04	2.03	.042
Parenting stress total	−0.02	0.05	−0.57	.571	−0.13	0.06	−2.09	.037	−0.03	0.05	−0.51	.612
Economic hardship	0.43	1.08	0.40	.690	0.19	1.04	0.18	.854	1.11	1.29	0.86	.389
Childcare hours	0.02	0.05	0.28	.777	−0.41	0.17	−2.46	.014	0.19	0.20	0.99	.322
Parenting stress × Childcare hours					0.01	0.00	2.67	.008
Economic hardship × Childcare hours									−0.05	0.06	−0.95	.342

Figure 1. Moderation effect of parenting stress.

The three catgories of parenting stress were identified based on the quantiles: the low group had scores as or below the first quantile, the median group had scores above the first quantile but at or below the third quantile, and the high group had scores above the third quantile.