Examining the relationship between parents' mental health and children's school readiness

This study examines the relationship between parental mental health and children's school readiness and describes the relative impact that parental coping skills and depressive symptoms have on four dimensions of children's school readiness: self-regulation, social expression, self-regulation, and kindergarten academics. The relationship between school readiness at kindergarten entry and later academic and social outcomes is clear: the more ready children are at an early age to enter a lifelong engagement with learning, the better able they are to sustain and excel at their engagement with the social and intellectual learning that takes place over years of schooling, and into adulthood. Thus, kindergarten readiness is a strong predictor of later academic and social outcomes. But before children enter the school environment, early parent-child relationships provide the foundation upon which readiness skills may be built. As such, the health and stability of the early parent-child relationship is likely to exert a strong influence on the success of the child's school readiness. Data from the 2007 and 2009 waves of school readiness assessments conducted in a large urban school district in California will be used to assess the extent to which parents' ability to cope with the demands of day-to-day parenting and the extent to which parents suffer from symptoms of depression affect their children's kindergarten readiness. Differences across demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status will also be investigated.