Family and Child Characteristics, Child-Rearing Factors, and Cognitive Competence of Young Children

Abstract

In this paper, the contribution of a number of family, child, and parental child-rearing characteristics to the explanation of differences in the cognitive competencies of young children are considered. A model is formulated with not only clear attention to the ethnic and linguistic characteristics of the family, but also such factors as the child-rearing behavior of the parents, parent-child interactions, and the child-rearing competence of the parents. The model is then evaluated with the aid of data from a recent large-scale Dutch study of six-year-old children ( n = 10,774). The results of the LISREL analyses show the parental level of education to play a central role in the explanation of differences in the cognitive competencies of the children. The ethnic origin of the family, the use of Dutch in the home, and the parental level of mastery of the Dutch language are also found to be of influence. Parental child-rearing factors, however, do not affect the children's cognitive competence.