I've done some research on low income (Head Start) parents and shared book
reading, and find that they do many of the things that middle class
mothers do with their kids when reading. Only important difference that
I saw was one also observed by David Dickinson -- my low income mothers
didn't extend conversations over a book to material beyond the book very
much (didn't ask kids to predict what came next, or to explain why the
character did what he did, or how the character felt -- at least not much
given that the mothers did ask a lot of questions). I couldn't tell if
this was because the mothers didn't know to ask such questions, didn't
know how to ask such questions, or didnt' expect their kids to be able
to answer such questions -- all possible reasons for not doing what
middle class mothers do with some frequency. On the other hand these
mothers all had the basic "initiate (ask a question) - reply- evaluate"
pattern down well. They asked questions, and responded appropriately to
the child's answer -- acknowledging "right" answers, and repharasing
their question, or using an elaboration of what the child said to elicit
better answers. I saw almost no instances of outright corrections -- telling
the kid s/he was wrong. And, the ones I saw were when the child was way
off track (ex. child and mom agree that the character in the book, a boy
is going to try to catch a frog. Child says "he's gonna eat the frog."
Mom says, --laughing-- "no, he's not gonna eat him")
Erika Hoff-Ginsberg says that when you compare working class and middle
class parents on more than one kind of task that working class parents
take on what are considered "middle class" interaction patterns when
reading to the child, and middle class parents take one what are thought
of as "working class" patterns when trying to get a lot of compliance, as
in cleaning up. From this I would conclude that supposed class diffeerences
may not be all that great, and that we should use some more specific
inidcators -- it may be that education level, or occupation may have a
greater connection to some of those things than broad class categories
do.
Margaret S. Benson
Dept. of Psychology | Internet: enz who-is-at psuvm.psu.edu
119 Eiche Building |
Penn State Univ., Altoona | FAX: (814) 949-5547
Altoona, PA 16601 | Phone: (814) 949-5269 (work)
| (814) 238-5277 (home)