Parenting Practices in Children’s Language Development: a Survey Study in China

Abstract

Reading aloud stories for children is one of most commonly-seen parenting practices to promote children’s language development. Using data from 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), the present study examined the degree to which buying books, taking children outdoors, helping children read characters, and TV restriction predicted whether caregivers read aloud stories for children. The regression analysis results showed that the combination of the four independent variables significantly predicted parenting practices of reading aloud stories for children. It was found that caregivers read out for children aged 3 and 4 more frequently than for children aged 5. It was also reflected that children living at home had more opportunities to read out stories with caregivers. The findings provided reference for parenting practices for their children’s language development.