What can parents do? The causal mediating role of parenting in SES differences in children’s language development
This study estimates how much of the effect of parental socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s language development is mediated through parenting styles, practices, and parental investments and whether the effects of early literacy-related parenting practices are heterogeneous. Previous studies suggest SES gaps in language skills among preschoolers result from differences in parenting. However, the extent to which parenting mediates the effects of growing up in low-SES contexts, and whether parenting may have heterogeneous effects are still unknown. This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study starting cohort 1, a random sample of N=1892 children born between 2012 and 2013 in Germany. The paper uses latent class analysis to measure SES and joint mediation analysis to estimate the mediated share of the SES effect on children’s language going through parenting. Quantile regression is used to explore heterogeneity in the effects of parenting practices to further explain the mediated share.Parenting explains or mediates around half of the total effect of SES, and the positive effect of parenting practices are heterogeneous, affecting mostly children around the first quartile of the distribution of language skills. Although a large chunk of the SES effect operates through parenting, and parenting practices positively impact children,their effects on reducing gaps in language skills are limited. Interventions on parenting should not neglect the alternative pathways through which inequality in language skills may be still transmitted.