When Behavioral Barriers Are Too High or Low: How Timing Matters for Parenting Interventions

Kalena E. Cortes (), Hans Fricke, Susanna Loeb (), David S. Song () and Ben York ()
Additional contact information
Kalena E. Cortes: Texas A&M University
Susanna Loeb: Stanford University
David S. Song: Stanford University
Ben York: ParentPowered Public Benefit Corporation

No 12416, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The time children spend with their parents affects their development. Parenting programs can help parents use that time more effectively. Text-messaged-based parenting curricula have proven an effective means of supporting positive parenting practices by providing easy and fun activities that reduce informational and behavioral barriers. These programs may be more effective if delivered during times when parents are particularly in need of support, such as after work, or, alternatively when parents have more time to interact with their child, such as on a day off of work. This study compares the effects of an early childhood text-messaging program sent during the weekend to the same program sent on weekdays. We find that sending the text messages on the weekend is, on average, more beneficial to children's literacy and math development. This effect is particularly strong for initially lower achieving children, while the weekday texts show some benefits for higher achieving children on higher order skills. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the parents of lower achieving students, on average, face such high barriers during weekdays that supports are not enough to overcome these barriers, while for parents of higher achieving students, weekday texts are more effective because weekdays are more challenging, but not so difficult as to be untenable for positive parenting. In sum, the findings suggest that parenting support works best when parents have time, attention, and need.

Keywords: text messaging; parental engagement; literacy and reading skills; math skills; and parent-child activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2023, 92, 102352

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12416.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: When Behavioral Barriers are Too High or Low – How Timing Matters for Parenting Interventions (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12416

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().