The name is absent

Proximal family processes

Early work by Hess & Shipman (1965) found associations of mother’s education and
educational behaviours. They showed that in a group of African American mothers,
those with more formal education provided more structure, verbal guidance and
elaboration when teaching their pre-school children a problem solving task (see also
Harris et al., 1999). Similarly, Diaz et al. (1991; see also Laosa, 1983; Uribe et al.,
1993) found maternal education to be significantly related to maternal teaching
strategies during problem solving interactions. Hoff-Ginsberg (1991, 1992) found
differences associated with parents’ level of education and mothers’ conversational
behaviour. Notably, high school educated mothers addressed less speech to their
children than college educated mothers did. They also asked fewer conversation-
eliciting questions and fewer on the children’s topics.

In a recent study by Bradley and Corwyn (2003) the authors focused on the extent to
which learning stimulation in the home mediated the relation between indicators of
SES and various measures of child development (verbal ability, achievement in
reading and maths and behaviour problems) for children ages four through fourteen.
This study not only highlights the influence of parents’ prior education on cognitive
stimulation and the home learning environment but also the additional link from
cognitive stimulation to children’s development.

Relations were examined for three developmental periods, early, middle-childhood
and adolescence and for three ethnic groups, African Americans, European Americans
and Latin Americans. Learning stimulation was defined at each developmental period
by items from the HOME-SF, the short form of Caldwell and Bradley’s original
HOME inventory made up from a combination of observer ratings and mothers’
reports on aspects of the home environment (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984). Items
included frequency with which the child is read to, encouragement to start and keep
up hobbies and visits to museums and other cultural activities.

Using data from the NLSY, maternal education generally had as strong or stronger
relations with children’s scores in verbal ability and achievement in maths and
reading than did a composite measure of SES. These differences were most
pronounced during early childhood and were negligible during early adolescence. It is
interesting to note that learning stimulation mediated the role between maternal
education and these three child measures to about the same degree as it mediated the
relation between SES and the three child measures. However, during adolescence,
maternal responsiveness mediated the relation between maternal education and verbal
ability to a much greater extent than the relation between SES and verbal ability (see
also Davis-Kean & Schnabel, 2001; Smith et al., 1997).

More educated parents have a greater knowledge about the environmental factors that
influence children’s development (Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Stevens, 1982) and are more
accurate in assessing their children’s developmental skills (Gottfried et al., 1998).
Thus more educated mothers may simply be more aware of what is necessary for
intellectual development and school success and act on this knowledge to provide the
experiences and the setting that facilitate such achievement.

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