Association between nonmaternal care in the first year of life and children's receptive language skills prior to school entry: the moderating role of socioeconomic status

BACKGROUND: Studies have suggested that nonmaternal care (NMC) may either carry risks or be beneficial for children’s language development. However, few tested the possibility that NMC may be more or less protective for children with different family backgrounds. This study investigates the role of the family environment, as reflected in the socioeconomic status (SES), in the association between NMC in the first year of life and children’s receptive language skills prior to school entry. METHOD: A representative sample of 2,297 Canadian children aged between 0 and 11 months at their first assessment was followed over 4 years. Receptive language skills were assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised (PPVT-R) when the child was 4 to 5 years old. RESULTS: After controlling for selection factors, SES was found to moderate the association between NMC and receptive language skills: Full-time NMC in the first year of life was associated with higher PPVT-R scores among children from low SES families (d = .58), but not among children from adequate SES families. CONCLUSION: Full-time NMC in infancy may contribute to reducing the cognitive inequalities between children of low and adequate SES

Mothers' and fathers' support for child autonomy and early school achievement

Data were analyzed from 641 children and their families in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to test the hypotheses that in the early school years, mothers’ and fathers’ sensitive support for autonomy in observed parent– child interactions would each make unique predictions to children’s reading and math achievement at Grade 3 (controlling for demographic variables), children’s reading and math abilities at 54 months, and children’s level of effortful control at 54 months and that these associations would be mediated by the level of and changes over time in children’s observed self-reliance in the classroom from Grades 1 through 3. The authors found that mothers’ and fathers’ support for autonomy were significantly and uniquely associated with children’s Grade 3 reading and math achievement with the above controls, but only for boys. For boys, the effect of mothers’ support for child autonomy was mediated by higher self-reliance at Grade 1 and of fathers’ support for child autonomy by greater increases in self-reliance from Grades 1 through 3