Monica Ellwood-Lowe, Ruthe Foushee & Mahesh Srinivasan:
Parents with fewer educational and economic resources (low socioeconomic-status, SES) tend to speak less to their children, with consequences for children’s later life outcomes. Despite this well-established and highly popularized link, less research addresses why the SES “word gap” exists. Moreover, while research has assessed individual-level contributors to the word gap — like differences in parenting knowledge — we know little about how structural constraints that vary according to SES might affect caregivers’ speech. In two pre-registered studies, we test whether experiencing financial scarcity can suppress caregivers’ speech to their children. Study 1 suggests that higher-SES caregivers who are prompted to reflect on scarcity — particularly those who reflect on financial scarcity — speak less to their 3-year-olds in a subsequent play session, relative to a control group. Study 2 suggests that mid- to higher-SES caregivers engage in fewer back-and-forth exchanges with their children at the end of the month — when they are more likely to be experiencing financial hardship — than the rest of the month. These studies provide preliminary evidence that — above and beyond caregivers’ individual characteristics — structural constraints may affect how much parents speak to their children.