A Comparison of Fathers' and Mothers' Talk to Toddlers in Low-income Families

By Meredith Rowe, D. L. Coker, B. Pan. 2004

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The purpose of this study was to provide descriptive information about low-income fathers’ and mothers’ talk to toddlers and to re-examine the bridge hypothesis (Gleason, 1975) in light of current changes in family structure and childcare responsibilities. Thirty-three father–child and mother–child dyads were videotaped during semi-structured free play at home. Fathers’ and mothers’ talk to children did not differ in amount, diversity of vocabulary, or linguistic complexity as measured by mean length of utterance. However, fathers produced more wh-questions and explicit clarification requests, thus presenting more conversational challenges to children. Resident fathers employed more direct forms of prohibitives. Results suggest the need for closer examination of factors related to child-directed speech in varying family configurations.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/085991b5db58a588eec936998e705bb569c13a77

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Citations in the corpus

Parent–child conversations during play (2012, background): “MLU, a standard measure of language complexity, assessed the average number of morphemes per utterance (e.g. Pancsofar & Vernon-Feagans, 2006; Rowe et al., 2004).”
Mother and father language input to young children: Contributions to later language development. (2006, background): “However, there were six studies that did not find utterance complexity differences between mothers and fathers (Golinkoff & Ames, 1979; Hladik & Edwards, 1984; Hummel, 1982; Kavanaugh & Jirkovsky, 1982, O'Brien & Nagle, 1987; Rowe et al., 2004).”
A Matter of Time: Father Involvement and Child Cognitive Outcomes (2018, background): “Fathers’ language skills are more predictive of children’s vocabulary than mothers’ and have been argued to afford children extra capabilities in talking to strangers and in public settings (Rowe et al., 2004).”
Mother-child conversations at 36 months and at pre-kindergarten: Relations to children's school readiness (2012, background): “Children living in poverty are at risk of language delay and academic difficulties , although these risks are buffered in the context of supportive home language and literacy environments (e.g. Burns et al., 1999; Hart and Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; Rowe et al., 2004; Snow et al., 2007).”