American parenting of language-learning children: Persisting differences in family-child interactions observed in natural home environments

08/01/2025 | PAXIS Institute |

40 families were selected to represent the range of typical American families in size, race, and SES. In data from 2½ yrs of once-monthly, hour-long observations of unstructured parent–child interactions in the home, parenting was examined over 27 mo, including the time before, during, and after all the children learned to talk. 10 parent measures suggested by the literature all showed stability in expression within families across time but large differences among the 40 families. The 10 parenting variables clustered into 3 factors relating to (1) the absolute amount of parenting per hour, (2) parents’ social interaction with their children, and (3) the contentative quality of the utterances parents addressed to their children. The amount of parenting per hour and the quality of the verbal content associated with that parenting were strongly related to the social and economic status of the family and the subsequent IQ of the child

Citation: Hart B, Risley TR. American parenting of language-learning children: Persisting differences in family-child interactions observed in natural home environments. Developmental Psychology 1992;28:1096-105.

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