How to measure parenting styles?

Christopher Rauh and Laetitia Renée

No 17326, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: In this paper, we measure parenting styles through unsupervised machine learning in a panel following children from age 5 to 29 months. The topic model classifies parents into two parenting styles: "warm" and "cold". Parents of the warm type tend to respond to children's expressions in a supportive manner, while parents of the cold type are less likely to engage with their children in an encouraging manner. Warm parenting is more likely amongst educated and older mothers. Although styles reveal some persistence, the share of parents with a warm style decreases with the age of the child, in particular for boys. Children of warm parents achieve higher cognitive and non-cognitive scores at later ages. We find that the topic model estimated on different sample splits, such as by education or child age, reveal additional information while maintaining robust overall patterns.

Keywords: Parenting style; Human capital; Inequality; Early childhood; Machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
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Journal Article: How to measure parenting styles? (2023)
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