When parental aspirations aren’t enough: An exploration of the importance of parental aspirations in the socioeconomic gradient in child outcomes

We use data from the Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) longitudinal study on child development, which follows a cohort of children from before they were born in 2009/2010, to investigate the importance of parents’ aspirations for their children in the positive correlations between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s pre-school educational and socioemotional outcomes. We first show that GUiNZ data exhibit a strong positive correlation between mothers’ education and children’s pre-literacy skills, early numeracy skills, and socioemotional outcomes measured at age four-and-a-half. We then investigate the extent to which differences in mothers’ aspirations explain the relationship between mothers’ SES and children’s outcomes. Next, we examine the extent to which parents’ financial resources, other time commitments, and involvement with their children’s education explain the relationship between mothers’ SES and child outcomes. Finally, we examine how these associations differ for mothers of different ethnic backgrounds. We find that, although some parental aspirations differ with socioeconomic status (SES), these differing aspirations play at most a minor role in the socioeconomic gradient of children’s educational and socioemotional outcomes at the pre-school age. In contrast, parental involvement is a consistent predictor of early literacy and numeracy skills.