Bedtime story & Co.: Parents with a higher education read aloud more often

Bedtime Story & Co.
Parents with higher education read more often

Immerse yourself in foreign worlds with mum or dad, look at pictures and read your first stories: According to a study, this is rarely or never done in 40 percent of families with children aged between one and eight. Here the parents do not read to their children regularly, as can be seen from the reading monitor published in Berlin on Monday. 61 percent of parents read to their children regularly – at least several times a week.

Compared to 2019, the proportion of families in which reading is rarely or never increased – at that time it was 32 percent. In 2019, however, data was only collected for children between the ages of two and eight, not for one-year-olds.

Parents should start reading aloud early

“If the parents don’t read to their children, then the children start with significantly worse educational conditions in the day-care centers, in the elementary schools and in the secondary schools,” said Jörg Maas, managing director of the Reading Foundation. A country like Germany cannot afford that. “Parents in Germany have to start reading to their children earlier, not just at the age of two,” said Maas. “And they have to hold out longer.” Responsibility should not be passed on to daycare staff or teachers.

With the transition to school, “reading breaks out in many families and apparently stops suddenly,” said Simone Ehmig, head of the Institute for Reading and Media Research at the Reading Foundation. This is problematic because children would then have difficulties with more complex texts. If you then stop reading, it can lead to frustration.

But why do some parents rarely read to their children? Above all, a low level of formal education on the part of the parents is a “risk factor,” said Ehmig. In 31 percent of families in which the parents have completed elementary or secondary school or have no qualifications, the children are never read to. For families in which the parents have a higher qualification such as the Abitur, this proportion is 18 percent. The immigration history of the parents, on the other hand, does not play a major role. The decisive factor is the education of the parents, “regardless of where the family comes from”.

The more books in the household, the more people read

How can countermeasures be taken? Ehmig sees a major influencing factor: parents who used to be read to themselves are more likely to do the same to their own children. “And this connection can be seen particularly clearly in the case of parents with little formal education.” In addition, the availability of books in the children’s households is important. After all, the more books there are in a household, the more parents regularly read to their children. However, 44 percent of families have a maximum of ten children’s books at home – 56 percent have more. “The books are a factor, but you can read aloud regularly with just a few books.”

Above all, digital offers offer further possibilities. 40 percent of the families surveyed regularly use apps for children – half of them also use apps for reading and reading aloud. Digital offers could “parents who don’t have many books” jump a hurdle, said Ehmig.

The reading monitor is a joint project of the Reading Foundation, the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” and the Deutsche Bahn Foundation. Since 2007 it has been published annually with a focus on reading aloud – from this year the monitor should enable better comparisons thanks to a new study design.

Of the 839 parents interviewed, only 42 were men. The institute with which you work usually interviews the “mother as a key person,” explained Ehmig. However, they were always asked about their own reading behavior and that of their partner. The results are nationwide representative for families with children between the ages of one and eight years, said Ehmig.

Homepage reading monitor

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