Poster #59 - Pandemic-Related Disruption in Nonparental Care and Vocabulary in the First Five Years

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

School readiness depends on foundational skills in language, cognitive, and social-emotional development and early, stable, caregiver-child reciprocal interactions contribute to building the brain architecture (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000) crucial to these skills. In 2019, 63.8% of mothers of children under the age of three participated in the workforce and most depended on some form of nonparental care. However, in March 2020, unemployment in the U.S. increased from 1.4 to 7.1 million persons with unemployment rising across age, ethnicity, and gender (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). Only one recent study has evaluated relations between parenting stress, nonparental care, and early language (Dore et al, 2022). In that study, an interaction of parenting stress and time spent in nonparental care predicted language growth from 12 to 24 months of age. In contrast, of interest here are the impact of pandemic-related disruptions in access to care and parent anxiety on vocabulary development in the preschool period.

Participants were a convenience sample: 34 children (16 F) from 31 to 60 months of age (X=43.9) and their caregivers. Caregivers completed a modified Covid-19 Household Pulse Questionnaire (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Children completed the PPVT (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and the CCT (Friend et al., 2012). We were interested in relations between anxiety, disruption in nonparental care, and children’s vocabulary given its importance to achievement (e.g., Slot, Bleses, & Jensen, Quinn, et al., 2015). Data were collected online.

The questionnaire yielded three continuous measures of parent anxiety (nervousness, worry, and overwhelm) and a categorical measure of disruption in care. We extracted factors for parent anxiety and vocabulary. We expected vocabulary scores to vary with anxiety and disruption to care. Regressing anxiety and care disruption on vocabulary yielded no support for the effect of parent anxiety (p=.995) and a marginal effect of disruption (p=.084). We conducted three chi-square tests of independence: parent anxiety X care disruption, anxiety X vocabulary, and care disruption X vocabulary. Parent anxiety did not vary as a function of type of nonparental care disruption (p=.869), and child vocabulary did not vary as a function of parent anxiety (p=.194). Rather, child vocabulary varied as a function of the type of disruption in care (2(1) =7.529, p<.006). When care was cancelled or conducted remotely, children had lower vocabulary factor scores (M=-.295, SD=1.03) than when there was either no change or a transition to another, similar, type of care (M=.469, SD=.556, see Figure 1). This pattern was mirrored in PPVT percentile scores (M= 59.69 and 77.8, respectively), allowing us to account for variability in age at test.

These findings suggest that pandemic-related disruption in nonparental care is associated with variation in child vocabulary into the preschool period. Importantly, it was the type of disruption in care rather than parent anxiety that was important. Children for whom care was cancelled or delivered remotely had somewhat lower receptive vocabulary scores than children for whom there was little to no change in care. We are in the process of launching new data collection to explore these preliminary findings.

Authors

• Matthew McArthur, San Diego State University
  Presenting Author

• Nathan Soria, San Diego State University

• Tanya Maria Paes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - Memphis

• Sara Anne Schmitt, University of Oregon

• Margaret J. Friend, San Diego State University