Family Involvement Laboratory (FIL)

Baby Books 2: Using Baby Books to Improve Maternal and Paternal Parenting and Child Outcomes 

A study of the effectiveness of embedding educational information into baby books as a way to educate mothers and fathers about typical child development, injury prevention, and optimal parenting, including coparenting. Educational books written in English and Spanish will be given to (1) mothers only, (2) fathers only, or (3) both parents. Another group will get non-educational books. With seven waves of data collection from when babies are 9 to 30 months, this project is one of the first to test differential and multiplicative effects of targeting both parents and will provide valuable insight into a low-cost and easy to implement intervention for low-income children. Co-investigator includes Stephanie Reich.

Baby Books 2-Middle Childhood: Long-term benefits of Baby Books on parenting and child outcomes in middle childhood

The transition from early through middle childhood is marked by new demands at home and the school settings and is characterized by momentous gains in cognitive and social-emotional skills, but also by increased aggression and risky behaviors. Many children have smooth transitions, but others do not, with potentially long-term negative effects. Understanding how parents and school are implicated in the transition through middle childhood is essential for identifying ways to bolster supports and minimize risks. Based on BB2’s promising finding, we propose to use the initial 8 waves of BB2 data from 9 to 46 months with 9 more waves of data from mothers, fathers, children and teachers from 10 to 12 years to assess the long term benefits of BB2 on parenting and children’s development from early through middle childhood.