Parental Attitudes

Leichter (1984) shows how parental attitude towards literacy and parents' aspirations for their children must be taken into consideration when looking at the emotional and motivational climate in the home for learning. Meanwhile, Snow and Tabors (1996) highlight how familial behaviours and characteristics promote literacy achievement in children. Scarborough, Dobrich, and Hager (1991) report that children of parents with poor reading skills become poor readers in school because they are exposed to less reading and book experiences and lack special routines for book sharing at home. In contrast, their findings show that children of parents with at least average reading ability acquire more positive attitudes about reading, are exposed to more reading and become better readers in school.

Beliefs about how children learn are closely tied to child rearing philosophies, influenced by that which a parent has been exposed in his or her own upbringing. To generalize, parents in this study do not see learning as a continual, naturally occurring process inherent in daily activities. They hold to the belief that what is learned in school is important and must be done in a certain way or harm can ensue. Therefore, some of them are reluctant to work with their children and do not prepare them for school, for fear they would, as Andrea describes, "do it the wrong way" and they want to make sure that the teacher does it "the right way." The reality, however, is that these parents may be unwittingly jeopardizing their children's potential. By having them start school at a disadvantage compared to those children who have been exposed to a variety of school-like activities, these low-income children may potentially face greater challenges ahead.