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The Interactive Effect of Parental Education on Language Production

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Abstract

This study examines the interactive effect of mother’s and father’s education on childhood language development. Parents of sixteen- and twenty-month-old children (N = 48) completed measures on their children’s language production (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences) as well as basic demographic information. There were variations in language production according to maternal education for only the older children. There was also an interaction between maternal and paternal education; children of parents with heterogeneous levels of education (that is, only one parent with a 4-year degree) had higher levels of language production than parents with homogeneous levels of education (that is, either both parents with a degree or both parents without a degree). Surprisingly, children with homogeneous levels of parental education were the ones who scored the lowest on measures of language production. This may be due to less effective parenting at both the low and high parental education levels or because disparity in parental education positively affects the home learning environment.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Robert Haaf for his contributions to the original project and Melissa Jungers for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. This data was collected as part of a larger study conducted by the first author (Hupp, Infant Behavior & Development, 2008, Vol 31, 511-517). A portion of the data was presented at the 2009 Conference of the Society for Research in Child Development in Denver.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University at Newark, Newark, OH, 43055, USA

    Julie M. Hupp, Leso Munala, Joshua A. Kaffenberger & Martha B. Hensley Wessell

  2. Department of Public Health, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Leso Munala

  3. Career Development Center, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA

    Joshua A. Kaffenberger

  4. College of Social Work, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Martha B. Hensley Wessell

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  1. Julie M. Hupp
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  2. Leso Munala
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  3. Joshua A. Kaffenberger
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  4. Martha B. Hensley Wessell
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Correspondence to Julie M. Hupp.

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Hupp, J.M., Munala, L., Kaffenberger, J.A. et al. The Interactive Effect of Parental Education on Language Production. Curr Psychol 30, 312–323 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-011-9118-x

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