PARENTAL CONTRIBUTION TO CHILDS EARLY LANGUAGE AND INTEREST IN BOOKS

The relationships between parents' age, education, literacy activities and shared reading with the child and children's language skills and early interest in books were examined in a longitudinal study of 108 c hildren. Parents reported on their children's lexical and grammatical development by using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventori es (in the CDIs) at the ages of 14 and 24 months. The Bayley Scales of infant Development were administered en to the children in a laborato ry setting at 24 months. Information on parental background variables was obtained through a questionnaire before th children's birth. Book reading habits were inquired when the children were 2 years of age. Mo thers' education, literacy activities and shared reading with the chil d were shown to be more strongly associated with the 2-year-olds' lexi cal and grammatical skills than were those of fathers. A corresponding association to parental background variables emerged regardless of wh ether parental report data or scores on the structured test were emplo yed as the child language measure. Shared reading with the father was found to be linked to children's early interest in books. The children who exhibited greater interest in books were likely to be read to by mothers and fathers more frequently than other children. These childre n also had larger vocabularies than did children with low interest in books. The role of endogenous and exogenous variables in explaining ch ildren's language skills and early book reading interest are discussed .