Quality of fathers’ spatial concept support during block building predicts their daughters’ early math skills – but not their sons’

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine fathers’ support of their children’s spatial learning during a joint block-building task at the beginning of first grade as a predictor of their children’s math achievement at the end of first grade. Observational measures of videotaped father–child interactions from the Boston site of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 105) were used to examine the effectiveness of spatial support during a block building task. Trained observers rated fathers’ spatial support by applying two approaches: (a) a qualitative rating scale assessing level of paternal spatial concept support involving encouragement of child spatial learning and enriched spatial explanations, and (b) a measure assessing quantitative paternal spatial location language support. A significant sex by quality of spatial concept support interaction showed that for girls (but not for boys), fathers’ qualitatively higher spatial concept support predicted superior math achievement scores by the end of first grade, even after controlling for a host of variables, including children’s math achievement at age 4.5 years, family income, child intelligence and ratings of fathers’ and mothers’ general cognitive support (e.g., support for a range of perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic development) across all parent–child activities during the first grade home visit. The quantitative measure of frequency of paternal spatial location language support was not predictive of math, but children’s independent accuracy on the block building task did predict math achievement. Though only correlational, findings suggest that fathers may have an important role to play in providing high-quality spatial concept support for their young daughters.