Title: Parental bookreading in low income families
Description: This thesis presents three studies of parental bookreading in low-income families. The first study examined differences between fathers and mothers in reported frequency of bookreading at child ages 24 and 36 months and in the summer before children entered Kindergarten. This study also looked at differences (e.g., education, race/ethnicity, language) between families where both parents report reading frequently to their toddlers compared to families where only mother reports reading frequently. The second study investigated whether paternal bookreading makes an additional contribution to children's language and literacy, over and above maternal bookreading. The third study examined differences and similarities in style between fathers and mothers when reading to their toddlers. Results indicated that mothers reported reading more frequently to their toddlers than fathers. Furthermore, fathers in families where both parents reported reading regularly to their children were likely to have higher levels of education than fathers in families where only the mother did so. Children in families where two parents read to them had higher scores on measures of cognition and language. Paternal bookreading, in addition to maternal bookreading, predicted children's emergent literacy skills and oral language skills assessed prior to kindergarten entry. Both fathers and mothers actively engaged their children in the bookreading interaction. Fathers used more non-immediate talk (talk related to objects and events outside the book) than mothers did. Fathers were also more likely to help their child decode the text at preK. Mothers on the other hand were more likely to engage their children by eliciting text segments. Both parents engaged in talk about the book itself.

The findings in this thesis emphasize the importance of including fathers in research studies when examining child development in a family context. Most of the research on bookreading has focused on mothers since they are often still the primary caregiver of the child. The results from these studies demonstrate that fathers do make a difference in children's language and literacy development. More research is needed to investigate fathers' unique contributions to child development.
Subjects: Reading (Early childhood), Children with social disabilities, Books and reading, Case studies, Education