Home‐Rearing Environment, Domain-General Skills, and the Development of Math Skills in Children: A Longitudinal Study

The home-rearing environment, characterized by the organization of social interactions, material resources, and learning activities in the home context, plays a pivotal role in supporting children’s acquisition of domain-specific math skills and domain-general skills such as language and executive functions. Yet, research on the long-term associations between the quality of the home-rearing environment and the development of math skills in young children remains limited, and the specific pathways require further investigation, especially in Chinese populations. Using a prospective longitudinal study with latent growth curve modeling, this study examined how the quality of the home-rearing environment impacts the development of children’s math skills across the preschool period, and the role of two typical domain-general skills (language and executive function) in mediating these associations. A total of 306 Chinese preschoolers participated in a three-wave longitudinal study. The findings showed that the quality of the home-rearing environment significantly predicted both the initial level and the growth rate of children’s math skills. Children’s language skills, as domain-general skills, served as mediators in the associations between the home-rearing environment quality and the development of math skills. The study underscores the critical importance of early domain-general ability cultivation and highlights the pivotal role of home-rearing environments in developmental foundations.