Does Maternal Employment Following Childbirth Support or Inhibit Low‐Income Children’s Long‐Term Development?

This study assessed whether previous findings linking early maternal employment to lower cognitive and behavioral skills among middle‐class and White children generalized to other groups. Using a representative sample of urban, low‐income, predominantly African American and Hispanic families (n = 444), ordinary least squares regression and propensity score matching models assessed links between maternal employment in the 2 years after childbearing and children’s functioning at age 7. Children whose mothers were employed early, particularly in their first 8 months, showed enhanced socioemotional functioning compared to peers whose mothers remained nonemployed. Protective associations emerged for both part‐time and full‐time employment, and were driven by African American children, with neutral effects for Hispanics. Informal home‐based child care also heightened positive links.     

Early Maternal Employment and Children's Academic and Behavioral Skills in Australia and the United Kingdom

This study assessed the links between early maternal employment and children's later academic and behavioral skills in Australia and the United Kingdom. Using representative samples of children born in each country from 2000 to 2004 (Australia N = 5,093, U.K. N = 18,497), OLS regression models weighted with propensity scores assessed links between maternal employment in the 2 years after childbearing and children's skills in first grade. There were neutral associations between maternal employment and children's first‐grade skills in both countries. However, there was a slight indication that more time away from parenting was negatively linked to children's behavioral functioning in Australia and employment begun between 9 and 24 months was positively linked to cognitive skills for U.K. children of low‐wage mothers.     

Effects of Early and Recent Maternal Employment on Children from Low-Income Families

The effects of early maternal employment (employment during the child's first 3 years) and recent maternal employment (employment during the previous 3 years) on 189 second-grade children from low-income families were examined. Maternal employment was related to a number of selection factors. In comparison to mothers who were not employed, employed mothers scored higher on a mental aptitude test and were more highly educated. Both early and recent maternal employment were also associated with measures of the current family functioning: there was less poverty and higher HOME environment scores when mothers were employed. Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that children's math achievement was positively predicted by early maternal employment and children's reading achievement was positively predicted by recent maternal employment, even after controlling for selection effects and current family environment. These results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms by which maternal employment may affect children's development.     

Unique Contributions of Maternal Reading Proficiency to Predicting Children’s Preschool Receptive Vocabulary and Reading Proficiency

This study investigated whether mothers’ measured reading proficiency and their educational level predict, over and above each other, their children’s receptive vocabulary and reading proficiency when confounding factors of speaking a minority language, ethnicity, number of children in the family, and marital and employment status are controlled. The sample included 155 children (aged 3–5 years) and their mothers (aged 20–44 years) of low income and low educational background from Western Canada. Findings support the conclusion that maternal reading level predicts both their children’s receptive vocabulary and reading proficiency prior to schooling after maternal education is taken into account. The findings also show, after the effects of maternal reading ability are removed, maternal education predicts their children’s reading ability prior to school but not their receptive vocabulary proficiency. Thus, maternal reading proficiency and maternal education appear not to serve as proxies for each other, and the use of both variables should be used in studies where children’s reading and receptive vocabulary proficiency are dependent measures. Early childhood educators dedicated to the improvement of the language and literacy levels of children in their care may consider the implementation of programs that focus on improving mothers’ reading proficiency whereby their children’s levels also improve. Early childhood education is the prime time to provide a richer and more fruitful approach to reduce the persistent knowledge gap of children from low-income and low-educational background families.     

Domain‐General Learning and Memory Substrates of Reading Acquisition

Prior research has demonstrated that linguistic skills and knowledge contribute to successful reading acquisition. In contrast, little is known about the influence of domain‐general learning abilities on reading. To investigate associations between general memory functions and reading during the early stages of learning to read, performance measures of word‐level reading and of declarative and procedural learning were obtained in a cohort of 140 children, annually during their first 4 years of school. We hypothesized that differences in learning task performance would relate to reading ability in the early years, when children are first learning to read. We employed a series of linear mixed effects models to test the relationships between learning abilities and reading across time. Declarative learning performance predicted reading ability in first grade, while procedural learning performance predicted reading ability in second grade. Our findings suggest that reading acquisition may depend in part on general capacities for learning.     

Early child care experiences and their association with family and child characteristics during middle childhood

Long-term correlates of early child care and maternal employment were examined in a representative sample of 333 6- to 12-year-old middle-class children. Intellectual, social, and behavioral development and parent-child relationships were related to nonparental infant care, center or preschool experiences, and maternal employment. Contextual analyses included child, parent, and family covariates related to choice of child care and children's development. Preschool and center day care was associated with slightly higher Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) Vocabulary scores and externalizing t scores on the Child Behavior Checklist. In addition, for African American children, center preschool experience was associated with 10-point-higher verbal intelligence scores and better ratings of positive behavioral attributes by parent and observers. Nonparental care during infancy and maternal employment patterns during the preschool years were not consistently related to the outcomes. The results of this study further support the growing consensus that the effects of early child care experiences must be considered in the context of parent, family, and child characteristics.     

Early literacy and parental writing mediation in young children with and without ADHD

The study compared early literacy of Israeli children aged five to six years with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), contrasted parental writing mediation in the two groups and tested the relations between parents’ mediation characteristics and children’s early literacy skills. Each of 62 parent‐child dyads (32 with ADHD) was videotaped at home while writing words. Videotapes were transcribed and analysed for mediation (specific writing task measures, emotional measures typical of problem‐solving tasks, and general measures of interactions). Children’s early literacy (word writing, letter knowledge and phonological awareness) was assessed at home. Results showed that children with ADHD already exhibited lower literacy achievements at ages five to six compared to their peers without ADHD. Parents of children with ADHD scored lower than parents of children without ADHD on the writing‐specific, emotional and general mediation measures. In both groups, the specific writing mediation measures correlated significantly with children’s early literacy. More emotional mediation measures correlated significantly with children’s early literacy in the ADHD than in the non‐ADHD group. Discussion focused on parent‐child writing interactions as a context of early literacy development among young children with ADHD.     

From care to education and work? Education and employment trajectories in early adulthood by children in out-of-home care

BackgroundTemporal dynamics during the early adulthood transition among children in out-of-home care is a neglected research area, leaving the possibility of coping with childhood adversity over time a poorly understood topic.ObjectiveTo explore early adulthood education and employment trajectories among young adults who experienced out-of-home care during childhood and to examine how various care history factors predict these trajectories.ParticipantsWe use longitudinal birth cohort data comprising individual-level information from national registers of all children born in Finland in 1987 (N = 59,476, of whom 1893 were in care).Setting and methodsWe use trajectory clustering from a previous study on the 1987 birth cohort to compare trajectories between children in care and a propensity score–matched group of peers never in care. We investigated the association between care history factors and trajectories with multinomial logistic regression modeling.ResultsCompared with the matched peer group, children in care were less likely to enter trajectories characterized by education and employment (38%) and more likely to enter trajectories involving early parenthood (14%) or long periods of fragmented social assistance benefit receipt and unemployment (21%). Those on early parenthood trajectories were almost exclusively women, whereas those receiving social assistance benefits and experiencing unemployment for lengthy periods were mostly men. Entering disadvantaged trajectories was associated with, inter alia, placement as an adolescent, residential care, and aging out of care.ConclusionThe study demonstrates the relevance of examining longitudinal trajectories in children in care’s early adulthood. Many young adults with care experience need support in education and employment beyond young adult age.     

Serial naming speed and the component elements of speech time and pause time: relationships with the development of word‐level reading in children aged four to five years

Serial naming speed and its association with reading ability was examined in a longitudinal investigation. Participants were 68 children aged between 4.0 and 4.5 years when the study began and between 5.0 and 5.5 years when the study ended. Serial naming speed was measured at three equidistant time points over the 12‐month period as children progressed from a pre‐literate to early‐literate stage. Children's responses were digitally recorded to computer to enable analysis of the sound files. During analysis, the articulation time for each word and the length of each pause between the spoken words were measured independently. At the end of the study, children's word‐level reading ability was measured. Results suggest that children aged 4.0 to 5.5 years show wide variability in serial naming speed that is predominately attributable to the length of the pauses between the articulated words. There appears to be a developmental association between the duration of the pauses and word‐level reading ability.     

The Relationship of Maternal Employment to Early Adolescent Daily Experience With and Without Parents

This study examines how maternal work may shape pre- and young adolescents' daily life experience. According to the procedures of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 295 10– 13-year-old children carried electronic pagers for 1 week and completed self-report forms in response to random signals sent every other hour. Their daily experience did not differ by maternal employment status, with the following exceptions: full-time maternal employment was associated with more time doing homework with mothers and less time in general leisure, while part-time employment was associated with more time doing sports with parents. Relative to those with nonemployed mothers, youth with part-time employed mothers reported more positive daily moods and higher self-esteem, while youth reported time with full-time employed mothers to be the friendliest. While children with employed mothers spent no less time with family, parents, friends, in class or alone, they spent more time alone with fathers.     

Maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes in the first three years of life: the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

With increased numbers of women employed in their children's first year of life and with increased attention being paid by parents and policy makers to the importance of early experiences for children, establishing the links that might exist between early maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes is more important than ever. Negative associations between maternal employment during the first year of life and children's cognitive outcomes at age 3 (and later ages) have been reported using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement. However, it was not known whether these findings would be replicated in another study, nor whether these results were due to features of child care (e.g., quality, type), home environment (e.g., provision of learning), and/or parenting (e.g., sensitivity). This study explored these issues using data on 900 European American children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care, which provides information on child cognitive scores at 15, 24, and 36 months, as well as data about the home environment (as assessed by the Home Observation of the Measurement of the Environment Scale), parental sensitivity, and child-care quality and type over the first 3 years of life. Maternal employment by the ninth month was found to be linked to lower Bracken School Readiness scores at 36 months, with the effects more pronounced when mothers were working 30 hr or more per week and with effects more pronounced for certain subgroups (i.e., children whose mothers were not sensitive, boys, and children with married parents). Although quality of child care, home environment, and maternal sensitivity also mattered, the negative effects of working 30 hr or more per week in the first 9 months were still found, even when controlling for child-care quality, the quality of the home environment, and maternal sensitivity. Implications for policy are also discussed.     

Pretend play and maternal scaffolding: Comparisons of toddlers with advanced development,typical development,and hearing impairment

This study used measures of pretend play and maternal scaffolding to explore and compare the early development of deaf children, typically developing children, and children showing advanced intellectual development. Marked differences were found among the groups in both play development and characteristics of mother‐child interactions. In particular, children who scored above 130 IQ at four years of age were found, as toddlers, to have demonstrated significantly advanced pretend play. In addition, the mothers of the high IQ children engaged in scaffolding behaviors involving higher stages of pretend transformations, verbal analogies and world links. The findings are discussed in relation to children's learning in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, as well as possible implications for future research on early gifted development.     

Maternal abuse history and self-regulation difficulties in preadolescence

Although poor parenting is known to be closely linked to self-regulation difficulties in early childhood, comparatively little is understood about the role of other risk factors in the early caregiving environment (such as a parent's own experiences of childhood abuse) in developmental pathways of self-regulation into adolescence. Using a longitudinal design, this study aimed to examine how a mother's history of abuse in childhood relates to her offspring's self-regulation difficulties in preadolescence. Maternal controlling parenting and exposure to intimate partner aggression in the child's first 24–36 months were examined as important early social and environmental influences that may explain the proposed connection between maternal abuse history and preadolescent self-regulation. An ethnically diverse sample of mothers (N = 488) who were identified as at-risk for child maltreatment was recruited at the time of their children's birth. Mothers and their children were assessed annually from the child's birth through 36 months, and at age 9–11 years. Structural equation modeling and bootstrap tests of indirect effects were conducted to address the study aims. Findings indicated that maternal abuse history indirectly predicted their children's self-regulation difficulties in preadolescence mainly through maternal controlling parenting in early childhood, but not through maternal exposure to aggression by an intimate partner. Maternal history of childhood abuse and maternal controlling parenting in her child's early life may have long-term developmental implications for child self-regulation.     

Perinatal complications and child abuse in a poverty sample

OBJECTIVE: Perinatal medical illness has been associated with child maltreatment. Using a Child Protective Service (CPS) report as the defining event, this study explores to what extent perinatal morbidity is a risk factor for maltreatment. METHOD: Medical charts of 206 children ages 0-3 years were reviewed. Data regarding birth history were collected and analyzed in three groups of children: children whose medical record indicated a report to CPS based on prenatal findings (Early Maternal Inadequacy group [EMI]), children whose medical record indicated a report to CPS based only on postnatal findings (Child Maltreatment group [CM]), and a control group without CPS report (NM). RESULTS: Compared to the CM and the NM groups, children in the EMI group showed significantly lower birth weight and higher neonatal morbidity as measured by Apgar scores, frequency of oxygen requirement and intubation at birth, frequency of admission to Neonatal Intensive Care unit, and frequency of neonatal medical problems. There was no significant difference between the CM and the NM groups in birth weight, gestational age, and other measures of morbidity. CONCLUSION: The results of the study suggest that perinatal complications are associated with prenatal maltreatment. Previously reported strong associations between neonatal morbidity and child abuse are more likely a result of antecedent prenatal maternal behaviors (early maternal inadequacy). Early maternal inadequacy, a clinically and demographically distinct phenomenon, is important due to serious health, development and financial implications and deserves further exploration.     

Metrical stress sensitivity in young children and its relationship to phonological awareness and reading

This paper reports two studies of young English‐speaking children's ability to cope with changes to the metrical stress pattern of spoken words and the relationship between this ability, phonological awareness and early reading development. Initially, 39 children aged 4 and 5 years were assessed on their ability to identify mispronounced words, including words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed. The children were significantly worse at identifying words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed than words that were mispronounced in other ways. The second study was a cross‐sectional comparison of 31 5, 6 and 7‐year‐old children's performance on the metrical stress reversal condition of the mispronunciation task. Measures of the children's written language skills and phonological awareness were also taken. The 7‐year‐old children outperformed the 5‐year‐olds on the metrical stress task. Performance on this measure was associated with most of the measures of phonological awareness and literacy, and was associated with rhyme awareness and spelling ability after age had been taken into account. Moreover, metrical stress sensitivity could account for variance in spelling ability after phonological awareness had been taken into account, and after vocabulary had been taken into account. This suggests that stress sensitivity may influence spelling development in a way that is independent of its contribution to phonological representations.     

The Interaction of Early Maternal Responsiveness and Children's Cognitive Abilities on Later Decoding and Reading Comprehension Skills

This longitudinal study evaluated the extent to which maternal responsiveness across early childhood and children's cognitive skills predicted children's 8-year decoding and reading comprehension skills for children who varied in biological risk (term, n = 83; preterm, n = 155). Patterns of maternal responsiveness during infancy (6, 12, and 24 months) and preschool (3 and 4 years) revealed 4 maternal clusters that varied in consistency and level of maternal responsiveness. Although not predictive of decoding skills, the interaction between children's 4-year cognitive ability and maternal responsiveness cluster predicted children's reading comprehension skills at 8 years of age, regardless of risk. Although consistently high levels of maternal responsive parenting across early childhood related to literacy outcomes for all children in the study, responsive parenting had a stronger relation to later reading comprehension skills for children with lower cognitive abilities, particularly when mothers demonstrated high responsiveness in children's infancy.     

Convergent and concurrent validity of two measures of phonological processing

The purposes of this study were to determine the degree to which two measures of phonological awareness/ability (Test of Phonological Awareness; Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing) correlate with each other and with a measure of reading (Letter‐Word Identification), and to determine which of the individual measures of phonological ability best predict early reading skill in kindergarten children. With one exception, all correlations among measures of phonological awareness/ability were significant. In addition, all correlations among the phonological awareness measures and the reading measure were significant. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the combination of all predictor variables accounted for approximately 51% of the variability in scores on the Woodcock Letter‐Word Identification subtest. The Phonological Awareness and the Rapid Naming composites of the CTOPP were the best predictors of performance on the measures of word identification. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Clienteles for distance education in Australia

We present data from an array of sources on the characteristics of external (distance education) students in Australian higher education in comparison with internal full‐time and part‐time students. Profiles of the three populations are drawn up in terms of age, gender, marital status, home location, social background, education and employment history, field of study, and level of course. Also examined are students’ reasons for studying externally, the relationship between employment and study and various effects of education on employment, attitudes and life‐style.     

Stability of Core Language Skill from Early Childhood to Adolescence: A Latent Variable Approach

This four‐wave prospective longitudinal study evaluated stability of language in 324 children from early childhood to adolescence. Structural equation modeling supported loadings of multiple age‐appropriate multisource measures of child language on single‐factor core language skills at 20 months and 4, 10, and 14 years. Large stability coefficients (standardized indirect effect = .46) were obtained between language latent variables from early childhood to adolescence even when accounting for child nonverbal intelligence and social competence and maternal verbal intelligence, education, speech, and social desirability. Stability coefficients were similar for girls and boys. Stability of core language skill was stronger from 4 to 10 to 14 years than from 20 months to 4 years, so early intervention to improve lagging language is recommended.     

Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: findings from a community sample of Victorian children

The paper reports on a study designed to develop a risk model that can best predict single-word spelling in seven-year-old children when they were aged 4 and 5. Test measures, personal characteristics and environmental influences were all considered as variables from a community sample of 971 children. Strong concurrent correlations were found between single-word spelling and single-word reading while expressive language and, to a lesser extent, receptive language were less strongly correlated. Predictors of single-word spelling at ages 4 and 5 were dominated by child-related factors such as letter knowledge, a history of speech impairment and expressive language along with maternal word reading ability. Based on the strength of the predictive factors identified at both age 4 and 5, our results provide initial support for using a targeted model for screening pre-schoolers at risk of not mastering spelling in a timely manner.