Reading to Young Children by Family Members

The humanities are fundamentally about language, and substantial evidence suggests that early experience with reading prepares young children for later success as students. Family members often provide the first reading experience for children, and their involvement is an important indicator of future achievement.1 The analysis that follows focuses on the relationship between maternal education and reading to young children but also presents data for additional characteristics, including income, mother’s employment status, and child’s race/ethnicity.

Findings and Trends

From 1993 to 1995 (the first two years for which data are available), the share of children ages 3–5 (not yet in kindergarten) who were read to three or more times per week by a family member increased by a statistically significant amount (from 78% to 84%; Indicator V-02a). Over the next 26 years, however, the share held steady. (The year-to-year changes depicted in the graph are not statistically significant. For the standard errors needed to determine whether year-to-year changes are statistically significant, please see )
When the data are disaggregated by the education level of the mother, variation over time appears to be greater, but few of the inter-year differences are statistically significant. However, the 11 percentage point increase in the shares of mothers without a high school diploma reading to small children from 1993 to 2019 is both practically and statistically significant.
The likelihood of a young child being read to on a regular basis by a family member increases with the educational level of their mother. Throughout the 1993–2019 time period, at least 90% of young children whose mothers possessed at least a bachelor’s degree were read to a minimum of three times per week, while the proportion peaked at 71% for the children of mothers who had not completed high school (in 2012).

For information on other family characteristics and their correlation with family reading, select from the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the data visualization window below.

V-02a: Percentage of Children Ages 3–5* Who Were Read to at Least Three Times in the Previous Week by a Family Member, by Selected Characteristics, 1993–2019

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Data Source and Other Information

* Limited to children who had yet to enter kindergarten. Not all year-to-year changes are statistically significant at the 5% level. See for the standard errors associated with the estimates depicted in the graphs.
** Including vocational/technical/associate’s degrees.

Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, (Government Printing Office, 2023).

About the Data

This indicator draws on data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ .

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The Humanities Indicators and Departmental Survey have been made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Endnotes

1
Ö. Ece Demir-Lira, Lauren R. Applebaum, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and Susan C. Levine, “Parents’ Early Book Reading to Children: Relation to Children’s Later Language and Literacy Outcomes Controlling for Other Parent Language Input,” Developmental Science 22, no. 3 (May 2019), .

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