Children's Reading and Math Skills: The Family's Two Constraints

The paper investigates the influence of two distinct family "constraints" on children’s test scores in reading and mathematics. One is the family’s resources – its income level, the education of the parents, and one of the parents own ability in reading and math. The influence of this constraint on children’s cognitive skills has been well-documented in the literatures of several disciplines and is again confirmed in the two British data sets analyzed here. The other is the constraint of the parent’s "caring" for the child, the family’s habits regarding nurturing the children, the inclination to sacrifice in behalf of the children or to expend time and effort with the children. Measured by several behaviors during the pregnancy and the child’s early years, the study shows that these family habits of caring for the child are strongly correlated with the child’s test scores in both reading and math, controlling for the family’s resources. The magnitude of the test score relationship with caring is approximately as great as is the magnitude of the test score relationship with parent’s education.