A new study has shown that when parents are facing financial insecurity, they do not speak to their children as much. Financial insecurity is something that a lot of families have to live with, and it is never easy. This has been made especially clear throughout the last year, but even without a global pandemic, there are families out there who wonder how they are going to feed their family as well as guarantee a roof over their heads. This can cause a lot of physical and mental health problems for parents, but studies are constantly being done to see how this can impact children.
According to Medical Xpress, a new study is pointing out that when parents are facing money problems, they don’t engage with their children as much in conversation and this could be harmful to the child’s speech and language development.
This research was completed by UC Berkeley and it can be read in full here. They are referring to this as a “word gap,” and that is to explain the direct link found between children from low-income families having a much smaller vocabulary than their peers who have better socio-economic standing.
This study is the first to provide proof of the theories that lay behind this claim, and it shows that parents will talk less to their children when they are experiencing financial struggles. Mahesh Srinivasan is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and was a senior study author and they stated that families who are facing struggles financially are likely to have children with “suppressed speech.” They are not at the same level as their peers, or other children their age, who do not have families struggling with finances.
Mahesh also stated that when they look at the academic achievement gap, this study shows that experts need to be looking at the much larger issue than “parent training.” That income inequality needs to be looked at as well. It shows that there needs to be an increase in there needs to be more government support to end the income gap within families. That when it comes to parenting support for children who are delayed on certain milestones, a lot of the work goes towards helping a parent with their skills and teaching methods, but that the bigger picture needs to be taken into consideration. The reason seems simple, if parents thoughts are occupied with how they are going to buy food, or pay for rent, they are not going to be able to focus on teaching their child the colors or numbers.
Sources: Medical Xpress, Wiley Online Library