Mothers’ and fathers’ engagement in math activities with their toddler sons and daughters: The moderating role of parental math beliefs

Abstract

Parents’ beliefs about the importance of math predicts their math engagement with their children. However, most work focuses on mothers’ math engagement with preschool- and school-aged children, leaving gaps in knowledge about fathers and the experiences of toddlers. We examined differences in mothers’ and fathers’ (N = 94) engagement in math- and non-math activities with their two-year-old girls and boys. Parents reported their beliefs about the importance of math and literacy for young children and their frequency of home learning activities. Parents of sons did not differ in their engagement in math activities from parents of daughters. Mothers reported engaging more frequently in math activities with their toddlers than fathers did, but the difference reduced when parents endorsed stronger beliefs about the importance of math for children. Even at very early ages, children experience vastly different opportunities to learn math in the home, with math-related experiences being shaped by both parent gender and parents’ beliefs.

Family math engagement with young Latine children in the United States

“…In their responses, most mentioned language and literacy (93%), social skills (84%), and math (54%); within math, more parents referenced numeracy (49%) than spatial skills (7%; Simons et al., 2022). These findings mirror those of a foundational study that interviewed urban mothers, both non‐Latine White mothers with middle incomes and Latine mothers with low incomes (Cannon & Ginsburg, 2008), as well as more recent work surveying primarily Latine parents with low incomes across various geographical urban locations and children who included 2‐ to 3‐year‐olds; Peterson et al., 2018; Silver et al., 2023; Sonnenschein et al., 2016). Conversely, in only one study (Missall et al., 2015) did both Latine and non‐Latine White caregivers (mostly mothers with varying educational levels) rate early literacy and math as equally important.…”