Shifting parental beliefs about child development to foster parental investments and improve school readiness outcomes

Economic growth is linked to human capital investment, particularly in early childhood. However, parental investments vary significantly across socioeconomic statuses (SES), exacerbating inequalities. This paper investigates the role of parental beliefs about the impact of early investments on child development as a key driver of these disparities. The authors posit that parents' beliefs about how parenting practices influence a child's development (0-5 years) directly influence their investment in their child. Understanding and potentially modifying these beliefs offers a potential pathway to improve outcomes for children from low-SES backgrounds. This is crucial because early childhood is a critical period for skill formation, and parental investments are a crucial factor influencing a child's development during these formative years. The research addresses the gap in our knowledge of effective policies to promote higher parental investments, focusing on the malleability of parental beliefs and their impact on both parental behavior and child outcomes.

The study builds on existing research demonstrating SES disparities in child outcomes and parental investments. Previous work highlights the significance of parental beliefs in predicting parenting practices, home environment, and child outcomes, including explaining socioeconomic disparities in language input. The economics literature emphasizes parental beliefs about skill formation as a key determinant of investment. This study replicates prior findings of SES-based belief differences, but uniquely uses field experiments to demonstrate that these beliefs are malleable, directly connecting belief changes to investment changes. It also adds to the literature on early language interventions, demonstrating that parent coaching can enhance parent-child interactions and broaden the scope of positive child outcomes assessed.

The study employed two field experiments: a "Newborn program" and a "Home Visiting (HV) program." The Newborn program (NCT02812017) involved 475 parent-child dyads from low-SES families in Chicagoland pediatric clinics. Parents in the treatment group watched four short educational videos during well-child visits. The videos emphasized the importance of early parental investment and provided practical tips using a "3T's" framework (Tuning in, Talking more, Taking turns). A control group received either safety videos or no videos. The HV program (NCT03076268) was a more intensive intervention targeting 91 families with 24–30-month-old children, recruited from various community locations. The treatment group received 12 home visits over 6 months, including videos, activities demonstrating the 3T's, and feedback based on daily parent-child interaction recordings using LENA technology. The control group received a nutrition intervention with short home visits. Both programs measured parental beliefs about child development, parent-child interaction quality, and children's skills at multiple time points before and after the interventions. Data analysis included comparisons of treatment and control groups using methods described in the supplementary material, accounting for multiple hypothesis testing and potential imbalances.

The study's key findings reveal a significant SES gradient in parental beliefs about the impact of parental investments on child development, with low-SES parents exhibiting less knowledge and higher variance in beliefs compared to middle- and high-SES parents. This gap is evident even at birth. Parental beliefs demonstrate predictive power; they alone explained up to 18% of the variation in child language skills. Both interventions successfully altered parental beliefs, with the HV program demonstrating a roughly doubled effect compared to the Newborn program. This belief change, particularly with the HV program, translated into improved parent-child interaction quality and significantly enhanced children's vocabulary, math, and social-emotional skills. The effects persisted months after the intervention ended. The Newborn program, although shifting beliefs, failed to produce lasting improvements in parental investments and child outcomes. This suggests that smaller shifts in beliefs may not be sufficient for behavioral change.

The results underscore the importance of parental beliefs as a driver of disparities in early childhood development. Targeting these beliefs through interventions may offer a path to improve school readiness outcomes for low-SES families. However, the findings also indicate that simply providing information may not be enough; more intensive interventions, such as the home-visiting program, appear necessary to produce significant and lasting changes in parental behavior and child outcomes. While acknowledging other structural factors that influence inequality, the study highlights the potential of interventions to positively modify parental beliefs and improve child development.

This study demonstrates the malleability of parental beliefs about child development and their link to parental investments and child outcomes. The more intensive home-visiting program yielded significant improvements in all outcomes, suggesting that intensive, targeted interventions are more likely to successfully bridge socioeconomic gaps in early childhood development. Future research should investigate optimal intervention designs, focusing on the intensity and content needed for long-term impact.

The study focused on low-SES families, potentially limiting the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Attrition rates varied between the studies and time points, potentially introducing bias. The study acknowledged the possibility of experimenter demand effects, however various mitigations such as the persistence of effects over time and the different assessment protocols were undertaken. The study did not investigate mechanisms through which belief changes impacted parental behaviors.