Maternal education, early language skills, and mother–child interactions across three welfare states

Objective

This study aims to examine the extent to which maternal education-related disparities in child language development in preschool years are mediated by differences in mother–child interaction quality, and whether this mediation varies across different sociopolitical contexts: the U.S., Germany, and Norway.

Background

Socioeconomic disparities in language development have prompted research to investigate mechanisms underlying early language disparities. Moreover, welfare states structure the opportunities available and accessible to all parents and children. Thus, it becomes crucial to understand how family mechanisms differ across different sociopolitical contexts.

Method

The study uses data from the U.S., Germany, and Norway with comparable measures based on ex-post harmonization across early childhood to examine cross-country differences in whether the association between maternal education and language development was explained by the observed quality of mother–child interactions.

Results

Mother–child interactions partly mediate the association between maternal education and language skills, with similar indirect effects in all three countries. Because maternal education is more strongly associated with language skills in the U.S. compared to Germany and Norway, mother–child interactions explain a considerably lower proportion of the total effect in the U.S.

Conclusion

Mother–child interactions play a consistent role in language disparities regardless of sociopolitical context, suggesting that the broader sociopolitical context does not influence these micro-processes. Other factors related to the sociopolitical context seem to cause larger education-related gaps in language skills in the U.S. compared to Germany and Norway.