Unpacking the Effects of Parents on Their Children’s Emergent Literacy Skills and Word Reading: Evidence from Urban and Rural Settings in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Purpose We examined the role of distal (parents’ education, family’s income, parents’ expectations, and parents’ attitudes to the home teaching of literacy) and proximal (formal and informal home literacy environment, access to literacy resources, and extracurricular activities) parental factors in children’s early literacy skills and whether the relations vary across affluent and disadvantaged societies in China. Method Five hundred fifty-three third-year kindergarten Chinese children (M age = 74.59 months) were recruited from Jining, Luqiao, and Mapo and were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, vocabulary, pinyin knowledge, and word reading. Their parents filled out a questionnaire on their education and income as well as on the frequency of engaging in different home literacy activities, their expectations and attitudes to the home teaching of literacy, and their children’s extracurricular activities. Results Results of multigroup analyses and mediation analyses revealed both direct and indirect effects of both distal and proximal parental factors on emergent literacy skills and word reading. In addition, the models were strikingly similar across the two settings. Conclusion The findings suggest that the pathways of differential influences from parental factors to children’s early literacy skills may be similar across socioeconomic contexts.