Linking formal child care characteristics to children's socioemotional well-being: A comparative perspective

Most research on formal child care and children’s outcomes has focused on single countries. We, however, contend that policy context may moderate the association between formal child care characteristics and children’s socioemotional well-being. We examined this by comparing the Netherlands, Finland and the UK; three countries that differ regarding family policies. Of these three countries, Finland was recently ranked highest (ranked 1st) with regards to quality of child care in a recent analysis by the Economist ,followed by the UK (ranked 3rd) and then the Netherlands (ranked 7th) .We hypothesized that children who attend child - care settings in countries with higher- uality formal child- are provision would generally show better socioemotional outcomes. Data from the comparative ‘F amilies 24/7’ survey were used, including 990 parents with children aged 0–12. We distinguished between two age groups in our analysis. Results indicated that, compared to the UK, longer hours in formal care were less beneficial in the Netherlands. Furthermore, spen ding time in formal care during nonstandard hours was more harmful for children in Finland compared to the UK. Lastly, receiving care from multiple caregivers was more disruptive for British children than for Dutch children. No differences were found between Finland and the Netherlands

Boosting family income to promote child development

Families who live in poverty face disadvantages that can hinder their children's development in many ways, write Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. As they struggle to get by economically, and as they cope with substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and inadequate schools, poor families experience more stress in their daily lives than more affluent families do, with a host of psychological and developmental consequences. Poor families also lack the resources to invest in things like high-quality child care and enriched learning experiences that give more affluent children a leg up. Often, poor parents also lack the time that wealthier parents have to invest in their children, because poor parents are more likely to be raising children alone or to work nonstandard hours and have inflexible work schedules. Can increasing poor parents' incomes, independent of any other sort of assistance, help their children succeed in school and in life? The theoretical case is strong, and Duncan, Magnuson, and Votruba-Drzal find solid evidence that the answer is yes-children from poor families that see a boost in income do better in school and complete more years of schooling, for example. But if boosting poor parents' incomes can help their children, a crucial question remains: Does it matter when in a child's life the additional income appears? Developmental neurobiology strongly suggests that increased income should have the greatest effect during children's early years, when their brains and other systems are developing rapidly, though we need more evidence to prove this conclusively. The authors offer examples of how policy makers could incorporate the findings they present to create more effective programs for families living in poverty. And they conclude with a warning: if a boost in income can help poor children, then a drop in income-for example, through cuts to social safety net programs like food stamps-can surely harm them

Dynamic structures of parent-child number talk: An application of categorical cross-recurrence quantification analysis and companion to Duong et al. (2024)

Social interactions, particularly parent-child conversations, play a critical role in children’s early learning and pre-academic skill development. While these interactions are bidirectional, complex, and dynamic, much of the research in this area tends to separate speakers’ talk and capture the frequency of words or utterances. Beyond the aggregation of talk exists rich information about conversational structures and processes, such as the extent to which speakers are aligned or reciprocate each other’s talk. These measures can be derived using categorical cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA), a method that quantifies the temporal structure and co-visitation of individual and sequential events, e.g., utterances between speakers. In this paper, we present an application of CRQA, following the protocol described in our tutorial paper (Duong et al., 2024, this issue), to describe alignment in parent-child conversations about numbers and math (i.e., number talk). We used the ‘crqa’ package in R and the code used in this application is available in the Supplemental Materials. Further, the CRQA measures derived from this application were compared to traditional frequency measures of talk, i.e., counts of utterances, in the prediction of children’s math skills. Overall, we showed that (1) CRQA can be applied to existing transcription data to uncover theoretically-driven patterns of parent-child talk that are not captured by common frequency measures and (2) these CRQA measures offer additional, rich information about interactions beyond frequencies of talk and can be used to predict individual differences in children’s math skills

Exploring dynamic structures of dyadic conversations using categorical cross recurrence quantification analysis: A tutorial

Social interactions are defined by the dynamic and reciprocal exchange of information in a process referred to as mutual alignment. Statistical methods for characterizing alignment between two interacting partners are emerging. In general, they exploit the temporal organization of dyadic interactions to uncover the effect of one partner on the other and the extent to which partners are aligned. This paper describes and provides a tutorial on one such method, categorical cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA), which quantifies the temporal structure and co-visitation of individual and sequential states of interest. CRQA is a useful descriptive technique that can be used to explore the extent, structures, and patterns of partner alignment within dyadic interactions. We provide a brief technical introduction to CRQA and a tutorial on its application to understanding parent-child linguistic interactions using the ‘crqa’ package in R (Coco, Monster, Leonardi, Dale, & Wallot, 2021)

Money Talks! The Role of Parents’ Discussion of Money for Preschoolers’ Math Knowledge

Children’s participation in cultural, everyday practices and social interactions involving math and money can contribute to the development of their knowledge and skills in these domains. Further work is needed to uncover what features of these activities, such as aspects of the conversations that may occur (e.g., number and money talk), facilitate and/or are shaped by children’s understanding of money concepts and skills. The present study examined the extent to which parents engaged in conversations about numbers and money with their four-year-old children during pretend grocery play and the relations to children’s math skills. We found that talk about price labeling and exchanging currency or goods occurred most frequently and that money and number talk were not significantly related to children’s broader math skills. However, parents’ money talk was positively associated with children’s money-related math skills, and this association was driven by the co-occurrence of talk about money and numbers. Our results suggest that parent-child conversations in familiar contexts such as grocery shopping provide rich opportunities to discuss culturally relevant practices surrounding money and practice math skills in the context of monetary exchanges. Thus, it is critical to consider how existing family practices and everyday contexts support children’s early math learning