2008 ”Mothers’ Time with Children and the Social Reproduction of Cognitive Skill” mimeo

Please do not quote without permission All comments are welcome Despite the theoretical importance mother’s time with children plays in the literature on children’s cognitive development, few studies have empirically examined this relationship. This study uses children’s time diaries from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate the effect of maternal involvement during pre-school years on children’s cognitive outcomes assessed at ages five to twelve (N = 1,008). I find a positive and persistent effect of the total quantity of time mothers ’ spend with children and the time they spend playing together on children’s language development, but only among children who spend time with verbally skilled mothers. These results are present even after controlling for a range of individual and family characteristics that have not been previously examined—such as children’s health and developmental problems, quality of learning environment and lagged test scores. The results suggest that women differ in their ability to successfully translate childcare time into positive cognitive outcomes. Taken together, this study is the first to identify time use as