The Huffington Post – Sandra Waxman
“China is not the only nation grappling with policies affecting families with infants and young children. Here in the USA, policymakers and parents alike are wondering how to end disparities in access to high-quality childcare; a new report by the Economic Policy Institute documents that high-quality childcare has become inaccessible to low-income wage earners. Closing the gap matters for several reasons. Most importantly, without access to high-quality childcare, infants and toddlers from low-income families face increasingly steep developmental challenges. In many low-income homes, where parents must work multiple jobs and where childcare alternatives rich in language exposure are well beyond economic reach, young children may hear up to 30 million fewer words than their more advantaged peers. When they enter preschool, these children are already at a disadvantage. This “word gap” is not a fleeting or isolated phenomenon. Instead, it is associated with a cascade of deleterious consequences that serve as barriers to a child’s opportunity to learn, both in and outside the classroom. Ann Fernald, professor of psychology at Stanford University, and her colleagues found that toddlers who had the benefit of rich language exposure processed language more efficiently than those whose exposure to language was sparser. Sadly, this gap became grew wider with age: 24-month-olds from low-income homes processed language at the rate observed in 18-month-olds from middle-income homes.”(more)