Thursday, Sep 21, 2023
English News
  • Hyderabad
  • Telangana
  • AP News
  • India
  • World
  • Entertainment
  • Science and Tech
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Rewind
  • ...
    • NRI
    • View Point
    • cartoon
    • Columns
    • Education Today
    • Reviews
    • Property
    • Videos
    • Lifestyle
E-Paper
  • NRI
  • View Point
  • cartoon
  • Columns
  • Reviews
  • Education Today
  • Property
  • Videos
  • Lifestyle
Home | Lifestyle | Study Finds Parents Talk Less To Kids When Experiencing Financial Issues

Study finds parents talk less to kids when experiencing financial issues

California: A team of researchers has provided the first evidence that parents may talk less to their kids when experiencing financial scarcity. The study has been published in the ‘Developmental Science Journal’. “We were interested in what happens when parents think about or experience financial scarcity and found evidence that such strain could suppress their […]

By ANI
Published Date - 06:43 PM, Mon - 24 January 22
Study finds parents talk less to kids when experiencing financial issues
Source: pexels.com/@mikhail-nilov
whatsapp facebook twitter telegram

California: A team of researchers has provided the first evidence that parents may talk less to their kids when experiencing financial scarcity.

The study has been published in the ‘Developmental Science Journal’.

“We were interested in what happens when parents think about or experience financial scarcity and found evidence that such strain could suppress their speech to their children,” said study senior author Mahesh Srinivasan, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.

“Our results suggest that parenting training may not be sufficient to close the academic achievement gap without addressing the broader issue of income inequality,” Srinivasan added.

The study’s preliminary results lend credence to the developmental and educational benefits of such poverty-cutting government programs as the federal American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit and other supplemental cash payouts for needy families.

“Existing interventions toward eliminating the word gap have often focused on improving parenting skills,” Srinivasan said. “But our findings suggest that relieving parents of their financial burdens, such as through direct cash transfers, could also substantially change the ways they engage with their kids,” he added.

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities.

Of the 84 parents in the study, those in the experimental group who described their experiences of financial scarcity spoke less to their 3-year-olds during laboratory observations than parents who reflected on other forms of scarcity (like not having enough fruit), or parents who had not been asked to recollect experiences of resource insecurity.

The second experiment used existing data collected via LENA technology, tiny “talk pedometer” devices worn by children that record their conversations and count the words they hear and say.

As the researchers predicted, analyses revealed that parents engaged in fewer conversational turns with their children at the month’s end, a time that typically coincides with money being tight as parents await paychecks or other sources of income.

“Because we had recordings from the same parents at different times of the month, we could essentially use parents as their own controls,” said study lead author Monica Ellwood-Lowe, a Ph.D. student in psychology at UC Berkeley.

“This allowed us to really pinpoint differences in their speech patterns when they were more or less likely to be experiencing financial strain, independent of any of their own personal characteristics,” she added.

The term “word gap” was coined in the early 1990s when University of Kansas researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley tracked verbal interactions in the homes of 42 families to study early language development in the children’s first three years.

Each day, the researchers recorded an hour of conversation in each household, and then counted all the words the children heard during those recording times.

The results were detailed in their 1995 book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, and in a 2003 follow-up article, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3.”

While some have questioned Hart and Risley’s methodology, their basic finding has been replicated many times, prompting calls for approaches to narrow the disparity.

Enter Srinivasan and his research team: “It struck us that what was missing from the conversation about the word gap was the possibility that poverty, and the many difficult experiences associated with it, could itself affect parents’ speech,” Srinivasan said.

Preliminary findings support the researchers’ hypothesis but also call for a deeper dive into the relationship between money worries and parents’ verbal engagement with their children, he said. “This research doesn’t mean that children whose parents are struggling financially are doomed to have smaller vocabularies,” Ellwood-Lowe said.

“The takeaway here is really just the importance of making sure parents have the resources they need to parent,” she added.

“If you are worried about putting food on the table tonight, or scraping together money for that medical bill, or figuring out where to enroll your child in school now that you have been evicted from your neighborhood, you may be less likely to narrate the color of the sky to your child as you ride together on the bus,” the study concluded.


Now you can get handpicked stories from Telangana Today on Telegram everyday. Click the link to subscribe.

Click to follow Telangana Today Facebook page and Twitter .


Telangana Today Whatsapp
  • Follow Us :
  • Tags
  • Developmental Science Journal
  • LENA technology
  • Parents
  • UC Berkeley

Related News

  • Karnataka man detained for poisoning parents to death

    Karnataka man detained for poisoning parents to death

  • Man in Custody for Killing Parents in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta

    Man in Custody for Killing Parents in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta

  • Study reveals Parents’ psychiatric diagnosis rises risk of premature birth

    Study reveals Parents’ psychiatric diagnosis rises risk of premature birth

  • Bengaluru horrific incident: Son murders parents, police launch manhunt

    Bengaluru horrific incident: Son murders parents, police launch manhunt

  • Parents appeal for help as Indian-American teen goes missing

    Parents appeal for help as Indian-American teen goes missing

  • Parents who talk to infants more boost their brain development: Research

    Parents who talk to infants more boost their brain development: Research

Latest News

  • Do not give platform to persons charged with serious crimes, terrorism: Govt to TV channels

    5 mins ago
  • Powerful Panghal wins World bronze and quota for Paris Olympics

    10 mins ago
  • Viswajit bowls HCA Academy to victory at HCA C Division one-day league

    15 mins ago
  • Maharashtra govt has taken ‘positive lead’ on Dhangar quota issue, says Dy CM Fadnavis

    17 mins ago
  • Majority of Indian parents say their kids addicted to social media, OTT: Survey

    20 mins ago
  • India is moving towards becoming major space power: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla

    22 mins ago
  • Ex-HCA secretary seeks Electoral Officer’s intervention to end proxy voting from institutions

    23 mins ago
  • Asian Games: Chinese Taipei down India 2-1 in women’s football

    29 mins ago

company

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

business

  • Subscribe

telangana today

  • Telangana
  • Hyderabad
  • Latest News
  • Entertainment
  • World
  • Andhra Pradesh
  • Science & Tech
  • Sport

follow us

© Copyrights 2022 TELANGANA PUBLICATIONS PVT. LTD. All rights reserved. Powered by Veegam