Maternal Warmth Moderates the Longitudinal Associations of Family Economic Pressure with Early Reading and Writing Skills Among Chinese Children

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Publication year

2023

study description

Longitudinal

core topic(s)

Early Literacy , Early Relational Health

Population Characteristics

International , Kindergarten , Lingually Diverse , Poverty/Low-Income , Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

Exposures, Outcomes, Other

Language and Literacy Development , Parent-Child Relationships/Interactions

objectives

Little is known about the joint role of family poverty and parent-child relationships in the development of early literacy skills—a strong predictor of later cognitive and academic outcomes—among Chinese children. This study examined the longitudinal associations of family economic pressure with early Chinese reading and writing skills and tested maternal warmth as a moderator.

exposure

Family economic pressure and maternal warmth

outcomes evaluated

Early reading and writing skills

setting

Children and their mothers recruited from 10 kindergartens in Hong Kong, China

methods

This study examined the longitudinal associations of family economic pressure with early Chinese reading and writing skills and tested maternal warmth as a moderator. Participants were 330 kindergarten children (mean age at Time 1 = 4.81 years; 56 % were girls) and their mothers from Hong Kong, China. Children completed tests on Chinese word reading and writing at Times 1 and 2; mothers completed questionnaires on family economic pressure and parental warmth at Time 1.

sample size

n=330 (kindergarteners)

measures

Measure of Family Economic Pressure: 8-item questionnaire assessing if families had enough money for clothing, food, household items, housing, transportation, child education, extracurricular activities, medical care, and recreation. Measure of Maternal Warmth: 7-item measure asking mothers to rate how affectionate and supportive they are with their children on questions like, “I give praises when this child is good,” “I show sympathy when this child is hurt or frustrated” Measure of Child Chinese Word Reading: 60-item measure asking children to read aloud single and double character words, assessing their correct pronunciation. Measure of Child Chinese Word Writing: 7-item measure asking children to write down single character words, assessing their stroke-form and overall shape correctedness. Measure of Child Oral Fluency: measure asking children to read aloud twice five rows of digits as quickly and accurately as possible.

results

Multilevel models indicated that family economic pressure was linked to declines in child Chinese word reading and writing skills for children with low but not high maternal warmth, highlighting the possibility of targeting maternal warmth to promote child development in financially disadvantaged Chinese families.

conclusions

Despite these limitations, our study was the first to use a longitudinal design to test the joint impact of family economic pressure and maternal warmth on child Chinese word reading and writing skills. Theoretically, our findings highlighted the importance of identifying resilience factors that may help children adapt in the face of challenging or threatening circumstances. Practically, our findings pointed to the potential utility of targeting maternal warmth to promote positive child development in financially disadvantaged Chinese families.

limitations

First, despite our use of a longitudinal design and our elimination of several alternative explanations, conclusive claims about causation cannot be made based on correlational data (Cole & Maxwell, 2003). Intervention studies that use experimental designs to improve family relationships in financially disadvantaged families are needed to truly understand whether maternal warmth may protect children from the potential negative impact of family economic pressure. Second, although we used a stratified sampling method to try to recruit families with different SES backgrounds, families that eventually participated in our study were of higher SES (as reflected by the average level of maternal education) and experienced relatively low family economic pressure (as reflected by the self-reports of mothers). Moreover, Hong Kong is only one of the many cities in China—it remains unknown whether our findings are generalizable to Chinese families from other parts of China and the Chinese diaspora, which may have different political and educational systems (Song, 2019). Replications of our findings are needed with additional Chinese samples, especially samples that are more diverse in terms of family SES, financial hardship, and political economy. Third, our measure of family economic pressure focused on parents' subjective perceptions of poverty, which might not fully represent the real situation of the family (Conger et al., 2010). As an objective indicator of poverty, such as the federal poverty threshold or the income-to-needs ratio, is often used to determine if a family is eligible for public assistance benefits, families deemed to be poor based on such a criterion often face more “absolute” disadvantages and are thus more at-risk (Diemer et al., 2013). Whether maternal warmth may moderate the association of an objective indicator of poverty with child reading and writing skills awaits investigations.