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Is this something people can be taught to do more of or are a lot of the conversations held by the affluent business people about topics that people without a decent education would struggle more with.

I'm not sure the topics have been shown to matter very muc. BUt yes, people can be taught to do more of it. Here's another NYT editorial about THIS research: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/ Allow me to say that I find the accomapnying illustration rather vomit-inducing. I can't tell if it's supposed to be satirical!


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More recently, Dana Suskind, a pediatric cochlear implant surgeon at the University of Chicago who founded the school’s Thirty Million Words project, did a study with 17 nannies in Chicago. Each attended a workshop on the importance of talk, strategies for increasing it, and how to use the Lena recorder. Then they used it once a week for six weeks. Suskind found (pdf) that the nannies increased the number of words they used by 32 percent and the number of conversational turns by 25 percent.

Suskind has also done a randomized controlled trial with low-income mothers on Chicago’s South Side — not yet published, but with good results: she said that parents asked if they could keep getting reports on their number of words even after the study finished.

All these studies were small, short-term and limited in scope. “One thing is to say we can change adult language behavior,” Suskind said. “Another thing is to show that it is sustainable, and that it impacts child outcomes.”

One thing I always find fascinating is the vast gap between what different people know about what you are "supposed" to do with your baby and child. This comes up a lot with my friends, who find it repulsive and abhorrent that my state's public pre-K system teaches colors, letters, counting, etc. "They all know that already! It's drilling and killing! The children should be playing!" Yes, well--they should be playing a lot of the time, but the thing is, while you have been teaching your kids this stuff since they were born and they DO already know it, some kids have not gotten this foundation and need to catch up. I know it may seem impossible, but it really is true. Likewise, some people really do not talk to their babies and toddlers much other than to tell them to stop, put that down, etc. Not because they are bad parents. They may just not have gotten the cultural message that one is supposed to do this. My SIL is from China and was living with my parents when she had her first child--my mother has told me that she did have to tell her to talk to the baby. You also engage with children less and talk to them less when you are depressed, and depression is more common among people who are poor and struggling.


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That is, do children who have parents or other caregivers in very low child-to-adult ratios wind up better off? They do, right?

Actually, depending on SES, children may be better off in daycare. Daycare really hasn't been shown to be negative. It seems to be neutral as a whole, with positive effects for children whose home environments aren't great and a few slightly negative socioeotional effects for UMC children with good home environments. On the whole, however, you don't find studies that prove that daycare harms children, at all. Obviously, an abusive daycare is bad.