Do Fathers' Home Reading Practices at Age 2 Predict Child Language and Literacy at Age 4?
Section snippets
Study Design and Participants
Data were drawn from the Let's Read cluster randomized controlled trial (ISRCTN 04602902), the detailed design of which has been described previously.18, 19 Five local government areas participated, drawn from the most disadvantaged tertile of the 31 local government areas in Melbourne, Australia. Children were recruited through their maternal child health nurse during their 8-week-old well-child visit (attended by 96% of all babies born in the state of Victoria) between March 1 and August 31,
Sample Characteristics
Figure 1 presents the flow of study participants; Table 1 lists the sample characteristics. In total, 630 families were recruited from 65 participating nurse clusters. Compared to the summary demographics of the 5 selected government areas, our sample had slightly higher proportions of primary caregivers who had completed high school, were born in Australia, and mainly spoke English at home.
Of the original sample, both the mother and the father of 405 children (64.3%) reported their shared
Discussion
In these 2-parent families, fathers' home reading practices at 2 years predicted children's expressive and receptive language but not emergent literacy at 4 years, even after accounting for mothers' home reading practices and the child's vocabulary and communication skills at 2 years. Children living in families with socioeconomic disadvantage generally had less high parental reading in their homes, as well as poorer language and emergent literacy scores. However, fathers' home reading appeared
Conclusions
Children in 2-parent families have better language, but not emergent literacy skills, at age 4 if their fathers read more with them at age 2 years. Understanding how to capitalize on this finding would require further exploration and testing. Such studies should focus on how current service systems that predominantly engage with mothers can use father-inclusive practices to promote activities such as father–child reading interactions. If this proves possible, it will be important to determine
Acknowledgments
Funded in part by the Australian Research Council Linkage (grant LP0561522). Research at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute is supported by the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Program. The Australian Research Council supports Dr Quach (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE140100751), and the Australian National Health Medical Research Council supports Dr Wake (Senior Research Fellowship 1046518) and Dr Goldfeld (Career Development Fellowship 1037449). Professor
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.