Supporting Early Language by Supporting Systemic Solutions

Abstract

A large body of research shows connections between infants’ and toddlers’ home language input and a wide range of receptive and expressive early language skills. Some facets of caretaker input and early language skills are associated with socioeconomic status (SES), though not all. Given the complexity of language learning, language use, and its many pathways of connection to SES, testing causal links between these dimensions is difficult at best. Interventions aimed at changing parent language use have seen mixed success, in part because “language infusions” generally fail to target underlying challenges facing underresourced families, and perhaps because parent language is the wrong target. System-level interventions such as paid parental leave and expansion and enrichment of childcare and early education options hold greater promise for improving families’ lives, with positive repercussions for a broad range of family and child outcomes, including linguistic ones.