Parents’ judgments of their children’s social and language competences: the role of child, parent, and family characteristics

Parents play a crucial role in children’s competence development by providing a stimulating learning environment, contingent on their ability to judge their children’s competences. This study examined parents’ judgments of their preschool children’s social and language competences and their association with child, parent and family characteristics using data (N = 2,206) from the newborn cohort of the National Educational Panel Study. Parents’ judgments significantly correlated with children’s competences, with stronger associations for language than for social skills. Controlling for children’s competences, the frequency of joint home-learning activities significantly predicted parents’ judgments in both domains. In addition, parents’ gender, migration background and the presence of siblings predicted judgments of social competence, whereas children’s gender and parents’ educational level predicted judgments of language competence. The results indicate that parents’ judgments are not only shaped by children’s actual competences but also by various child, parent and family characteristics, with effects differing across domains.