A Comparison of Fathers' and Mothers' Speech with Their Young Children

Author(s): Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Gail Johnson Ames

Source: Child Development, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 1979), pp. 28-32
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1129037
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A Comparison of Fathers' and Mothers' Speech
with Their Young Children

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Gail Johnson Ames

University of Delaware

GOLINKOFF, ROBERTA MICHNICK, and AMES, GAIL JOHNSON. A Comparison of Fathers' and Moth-
ers' Speech with Their Young Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 28-32. The verbal
interaction of 12 mothers and 12 fathers with their 19-month-old girls and boys in 2 situations was
assessed. In 1 situation, all 3 family members were together, while in the other, each parent was
alone with the child. Analyses indicated that when all 3 family members were together, fathers
spoke less and took fewer conversational turns than mothers. Other than these significant differ-
ences, fathers' speech to their children was not different from mothers' speech on a range of quan-
titative and qualitative measures.

The vast majority of studies on parent's language acquisition (e.g., Nelson 1977; New-
speech to their language-learning children has port et al. 1977). Any generalizations derived
focused on maternal speech (e.g., Cherry & from such research will be incomplete without
Lewis 1976; Moerk 1975; Nelson 1977; knowledge of fathers' speech.
Reichle, Longhurst, & Stepanich 1976; Seitz
& Stewart 1975; see also Snow & Ferguson In the present study, parental speech was
collected in mother-father-child triads so that
1977). Mothers' speech to their children has
any effects would be due to differences be-
been characterized by reduced sentence length
tween parents and not to differences between
and complexity, much repetition and redun-
children. In each triad, the father worked away
dancy, higher fundamental frequency, and
from the home and the mother did not. If pa-
longer interutterance pauses as compared with
rental speech does differ, it would be most
their speech to adults (Broen 1972; Garnica
likely to differ where caregiving is primarily
1977; Phillips 1973; Snow 1972). Newport,
the responsibility of one parent.
Gleitman, and Gleitman (1977) labeled this
adjustment "motherese," but adult women who
This study also addressed three additional
do not have children adjust their speech to
issues: First, adjustment may differ depending
children (Snow 1972) as do 4-year-olds talk-
on the nature of the communication situation
ing to 2-year-olds (Shatz & Gelman 1973). (e.g., Phillips 1973; Snow 1972). Since the
Thus far, the few studies that have fo-
use of a single context might bias research
cused on fathers' speech have had three results,
or this study included both a free-play
fewer subjects and a small number of mea-and a structured situation. Second, to assess
the relationship between parents' perceptions
sures. Fathers have been reported to speak
far less to their infants than mothers (Fried-
of their child's development and parents' speech
lander, Jacobs, Davis, & Wetstone 1972) and adjustment, a questionnaire was administered
to use more imperatives and threats (Kried- to each parent. Third, the effect of the sex
berg, Note 1, cited in Gleason 1975). Other of the child was examined. Cherry and Lewis
than these minimal data, there is no specific(1976) found that mothers talked more and
information on what sorts of speech adjust- directed more questions to 2-year-old girls than
to 2-year-old boys. Whether their findings
ments fathers use. The main focus of this study
was to compare fathers' and mothers' speech could be replicated and extended to fathers or
with their children. Recent research has begun
whether parents might be more verbally re-
to examine the effects of adjustment on child
sponsive to same-sex children was evaluated.

A briefer version of this paper was reported at the biennial meetings of the Society for Re
search in Child Development, New Orleans, March 1977. We would like to thank Adele Abrah
sen and Marcia Halperin for their critical readings of this paper and Adrienne Matushik for
patience and typing. For reprints, please address requests to Roberta Golinkoff, College of Educ
tion, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19711.
[Child Development, 1979, 50, 28-32. @ 1979 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
0009-3920/79/5001-0004$00.75]

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 Golinkoff and Ames 29

Method for 50 utterances by assigning 0 points t

utterances with no verb, 2 points for eac
Subjects
main verb, and 1 point for an auxiliary verb
Twelve families, six each with firstborn
Thus, "He saw it" received 2 points, and "H
boys (M age = 19.6 months) and firstborn did see it," 3 points.
girls (M = 19.13) were subjects. Recruitment
of subjects was done through state birth rec- 2. Conversational turns.-One conversa-
ords and a childbirth education class. The aver- tional turn consisted of all the utterances of
age father was a college graduate, and the one speaker until the other speaker speaks
average mother reported some college educa- (Cherry & Lewis 1976). The number of times
tion.
a speaker had the floor was the total number
Procedure
of turns. Mean length of turn was the total
number of utterances divided by the total num-
At our laboratory, the family first engaged
ber of turns. For the children, nonlinguistic
in a 10-min videotaped free-play session in vocalizations and utterances were considered
which parents were asked to play with their in counting turns.
child with a standard set of toys. This was
followed by two videotaped 10-min dyadic 3. Directives.-A directive was a request
structured sessions, one with each of the par- for an action or an object in the form of an
ents alone with the child (parent order coun- imperative or interrogative statement (Cherry
terbalanced), during which each parent was & Lewis 1976). Explicit directives were im-
given one complex toy and told to help the peratives, such as "Get the dolly." Implicit
child learn to play with it. directives were interrogative requests, such as
Each parent separately answered 50 ques- "Could you get the dolly?" which had to occur
tionnaire items. An example of the type of within three sentences of a related explicit
directive. Directives were calculated as the
question used to assess language development
was "How often does your child ask the names percentage of all utterances and as the per-
of things he or she does not know?"' Other centages of explicit and implicit directives.
questions were about the child's daily routine
4. Questions.-Complete utterances ending
(e.g., "How often does your child go out
with you to the store?") as well as each parent's in a rising intonation were classified into eight
judgments of their spouse's interactions with categories and calculated as the percentage of
the child (e.g., "How often does your spouse all utterances. "Yes/no," "Can you?" and "tag"
play with your child with his/her toys?"). The questions were one category; others were
questionnaire had a 5-point scale ranging from "where," "why," "who," "what," "which,"
almost never (0% of the time), seldom (25%), "how," and "when" questions.
sometimes (50%), often (75%), and almost
always (100%). 5. Repetitions.-When within three utter-
ances of the original, exact repetitions were
Data Coding utterances repeated in the same form; reduc-
The tapes were transcribed independently tions were repeated in a shorter form (e.g.,
by two assistants; discrepancies were resolved Father: "That's a big dolly." Child: "Dolly.").
by a third listener. Percentage of agreement Expansions were more syntactically complete
on each measure ranged from 90% to 99%. The but without additional semantic information
following items were calculated for each family
(Reichle et al. 1976) (e.g., Child: "Big block."
member in each situation.
Mother: "That's a very big block."). Repeti-
1. Utterances.-One utterance was a word tions were calculated as the percentage of all
or string of words identified by a pause or utterances and the target of repetition (i.e.,
by grammatical completeness. Mean length ofself or other family members). Parental repe-
utterance (MLU) was the total number of titions were also divided into those requesting
morphemes divided by the total number of an action (either a behavior or a verbal re-
sponse), such as "Where's the shoe?" and
utterances (Brown 1973). Quantity of speech
was the total number of utterances. Mean
"What's that?" from those providing informa-
number of verbs per utterance was calculated
tion, such as "The baby's crying."

1 A copy of the questionnaire may be obtained by writing to Roberta Golinkoff.

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30 Child Development
Results fathers and mothers did not differ on either

The Children
of these measures, F's < 1 (for turns, M moth-
ers = 6.58, M fathers = 7.10; for MLU, M
Given that the direction of effects may mothers = 4.17, M fathers = 4.20). The mean
be from child to parent as well as the reverse,
number of verbs per utterance did not differ
it was important to assess whether each child
either by situation or parent sex (M mothers =
presented the same language profile to his or 1.73, M fathers = 1.82).
her mother and father when the other parent
was not present. No significant interactions The data were collapsed into three cate-
between parent and child sex were revealed gories to reflect the relative use of questions,
by a sex of child x sex of parent repeated- imperatives, and declaratives. Imperatives were
measures analysis for the structured situation; only the explicit directives, and declaratives
nor were there any reliable main effects of were all remaining utterances that were not
child sex in either situation when MLU, num- questions. Analyses were done on arc-sine
ber of utterances, number of turns, mean length transformed scores. The only significant result
of turn, and number of nonlinguistic vocaliza-
was utterance type for both the free play,
tions and utterances were tested. The boys' F(2,40) = 15.37, p < .001, and the structured
MLU was 1.14 and the girls', 1.40. The stan- situation, F(2,40) = 14.08, p < .001. More
dard deviations of the boys' measures were questions than imperatives were used in the
often much larger than the girls'. free play (M = 33% and M = 20%, respectively)
The Parents and fewer questions than imperatives in the
structured situation (M = 24% and M = 28%,
To test the effect of parent sex within
a situation, 2 (sex of parent) x 2 (sex of child) respectively), resulting in a situation x type
analyses were performed. To permit compari-
of sentence interaction, F(2,40) = 6.95, p <
sons across situations, 2 (sex of parent) x 2 .05. An analysis of the five most frequently
(sex of child) x 2 (situation) analyses with used question types (yes/no = 12%, what = 8%,
repeated measures on the last factor were where = 5%, why = 0.6%, who = 0.6%) indi-
performed. cated that parents used the same question
types, F's < 1. Across situations, a main effect
Mothers produced a mean of 120 utter- of question type, F(4,80) = 28.06, p < .05,
ances in the free-play situation compared with indicated that more yes/no questions were
a mean of 70.25 utterances for fathers, F(1,20) asked than any other type, Newman-Keuls,
= 6.25, p < .05. However, the number of p's < .01. A situation x type of question in-
utterances was comparable in the structured teraction, F(4,80) = 9.58, p < .05, revealed
situation (M mothers = 201.58, M fathers = that "what" questions were asked more often in
192.30), F < 1. Thus, a main effect of situation the free play (M = 12%) than in the struc-
resulted, F (1,20) = 47.65, p < .001. The tured situation (M = 4%), Newman-Keuls.
number of mothers' turns was significantly
greater than the number of fathers' turns in Both parents produced significantly more
the free-play situation (M mothers = 42.33, exact repetitions (M = 13%) than either re-
M fathers = 32.00), F(1,20) = 4.21, p < .05. ductions (M = 1%) or expansions (M = 1%),
However, in the structured situation, the num- F(2,40) = 158.91, p < .001, and everyone re-
ber of turns was similar (M mothers = 36.83, peated him- or herself significantly more than
M fathers = 35.00), F < 1. Parents of boys anyone else, F(2,40) = 108.65, p < .01. A
mean of 15.6% of the fathers' utterances were
took significantly more turns (M = 42.75) than
parents of girls in the structured situation (M repetitions, as were 15% for mothers. Parents
= 29.08), F (1,20) = 4.82, p < .05. repeated boys' utterances about as much as
girls' (M boys = 10%, M girls = 14.4%). Anal-
In the free-play situation, mothers held yses on arc-sine transformed scores on the
the floor for approximately the same number content of repetitions revealed one significant
of utterances as fathers (M mothers = 2.83,
effect: Parents repeated themselves significantly
M fathers = 2.18) and had comparable MLUs more when they were requesting action than
(M mothers = 3.85, M fathers = 3.84), F < 1. when giving information (M = 70% vs. 28%,
Compared with the free play, in the struc- respectively).
tured situation parents took longer turns,
F (1,20) = 15.17, p < .001, and increased their Across both situations, parents used sig-
MLUs, F(1,20) =5.23, p < .05. However, nificantly more explicit (M = 24%) than im-

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 Golinkoff and Ames 31

plicit directives (M = 6%), F (1,20) = 25.34, mary caregivers take charge, assuming that
p < .05. Parents did not differ in the type or they can show off the child to his or her best
frequency of directives in either situation. A advantage. However, fathers' speech is similar
situation x type of directive interaction indi- to mothers' speech on three other measures,
cated that parents used more explicit directives the last two of which index grammatical com-
in the structured situation (M = 28%) than in plexity: mean length of a turn, MLU, and
the free play (M = 20%), F(1,20) = 6.08, p mean number of verbs per utterance. Fathers
< .05. also used the same relative proportions of
Questionnaire
questions, declaratives, and imperatives as
mothers. Thus, when fathers took a turn, they
Student's t tests were performed on the held the floor for about the same number of
mean of mothers' and fathers' questionnaire re-
sponses on the 13 items pertaining to their utterances as mothers and used the same types
of utterances.
child's language development. Our hypotheses
were that mothers and fathers would differ in Had we just included the free-play situ-
their perception of their child and that these ation, we might have been left with the mis-
perceptions would be correlated with parental taken impression that fathers engage in less
speech. Only one item, "How often do you verbal interaction with their children than
think your child likes to have you talk to do mothers. However, in the structured situ-
him/her?" distinguished between mothers and ation fathers produced the same number of
fathers. Fathers thought their children liked utterances and took the same number of turns
to have them talk to them "sometimes" (M as mothers. In this situation both parents'
= 3.50), while mothers thought their children MLU, length of turn, and frequency of di-
liked to have them talk to them "often" (M = rectives increased. Perhaps because parents
4.50), t(1,22) = 3.63, p < .01. A correlation were given a specific task, they felt under
matrix between questionnaire responses and pressure to convey information and to direct
parents' actual performance revealed that of the child's play-hence, more utterances of a
the 168 correlations only one for mothers and longer and more directive nature. However,
two for fathers were significant (p's < .01). Kauffman (Note 3) reported an increase in
directives when each parent was alone with
Discussion their child without an explicit goal. In the
The results of this study suggest parent-child dyad, parents may fall into a di-
that
fathers who spend far fewer hours at rective mode regardless of intervention.
home
than mothers adjust their speech to their chil-Fathers and mothers responded similarly
dren much as mothers do.2 Although claims to the structured situation even to the extent
supporting the null hypothesis are always of modifying their question types. They asked
in jeopardy, there are three reasons why these
significantly fewer "what" questions, which
findings may be reliable: First, it is notfunctioned
the as attempts to elicit verbal labels,
case that this study had only null results.
and switched to eliciting actions. As Cross
Second, a study conducted in the home (Kauff-
(1975, cited in Cross 1977) reported, the par-
man, Note 3) replicated the main thrust ofrepeated themselves far more often when
ents
the present results. Third, parents' responses
attempting to elicit actions than when giving
to the questionnaire items suggested that information.
they
held similar perceptions of their child's lan-The failure to find correlations between
guage level.
language questionnaire items and parental pro-
The few parental differences foundductions
in may suggest that neither parent has
the free-play situation agree with the impres-
considered why they adjust their speech. This
sion the videotapes yield: Mothers are mayinnot be surprising since 4-year-olds, who
charge. Fathers produced about half as many
are far less reflective than adults, adjust their
utterances as mothers and took significantly
speech too. Alternatively, the questionnaire
fewer conversational turns. Perhaps, because
items or the 5-point scale may not be suffi-
of the novel situation, mothers who are ciently
pri- sensitive.
2 As reported on the questionnaire, fathers spend an average of 3.16 hours per day with their
child as opposed to an average of 8.33 hours for mothers. In fact, Lamb (1975) and Clarke-
Stewart (Note 2) suggest that the amount of actual interaction between parent and child is far
less than the amount reported from questionnaire data.

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32 Child Development
Sex of Child Friedlander, B. Z.; Jacobs, A.; Davis, B. B.; & Wet-
Even though our subjects were 5 months stone, H. S. Time sampling analysis of infants'
younger, our findings on child sex bear on natural language environment in the home.
those reported by Cherry and Lewis (1976). Child Development, 1972, 43, 730-740.
By and large, the present study does not rep- Garnica, O. K. Some prosodic and paralinguistic fea-
licate their findings or Kauffman's findings tures of speech to young children. In C. E.
(Note 3) on interactions between parent and Snow and C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Talking to
child sex. Only one difference between speech children: language input and acquisition. Cam-
to boys and girls emerged, namely, the number bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
of both parents' conversational turns with boys Gleason, J. B. Fathers and other strangers: men's
was greater than with girls in the structured speech to young children. In D. P. Dato (Ed.),
situation. This finding, coupled with a mar- Languages and linguistics: Georgetown Univer-
ginally significant tendency for parents to use sity Round Table. Washington, D.C.: George-
longer turns with girls, suggests that parents town University Press, 1975.
expect girls to be able to pay more attention Lamb, M. E. Fathers: forgotten contributors to child
than boys to linguistic messages. development. Human Development, 1975, 18,
245-266.
In sum, fathers adjust speech to their Moerk, E. L. Verbal interactions between children
children in two different situations much as
and their mothers during the preschool years.
mothers do.3 Of course, differences may exist Developmental Psychology, 1975, 11, 788-794.
on measures not tested. Apparently though,
it is as true for fathers as it is for mothers Nelson, K. E. Facilitating children's syntax acquisi-
tion. Developmental Psychology, 1977, 13,
that differences in quantity of interaction do 101-107.
not necessarily indicate differences in quality
Newport, E. L.; Gleitman, H.; & Gleitman, L. R.
(Rheingold 1960).
Mother, I'd rather do it myself: some effects
and non-effects of maternal speech style. In
Reference Notes
C. E. Snow and C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Talking
1. Kriedberg, G. Hail to the chief. Unpublished to children: language input and acquisition.
paper, Boston University, 1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Phillips, J. R. Syntax and vocabulary of mothers'
2. Clarke-Stewart, A. The father's impact on
mother and child. Paper presented at the bien- speech to young children: age and sex compari-
nial meetings of the Society for Research in sons. Child Development, 1973, 44, 182-185.
Child Development, New Orleans, March 1977. Reichle, J. E.; Longhurst, T. M.; & Stepanich, L.
3. Kauffman, A. L. Mothers' and fathers' verbal Verbal interaction in mother-child dyads. De-
interactions with children learning language. velopmental Psychology, 1976, 12, 273-277.
Unpublished master's thesis, Rutgers Univer-Rheingold, H. L. The measurement of maternal care.
sity, 1976. Child Development, 1960, 31, 565-575.
Seitz, S., & Stewart, C. Imitations and expansions:
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3 Strictly speaking, we cannot speak of paternal speech adjustment since we did not collect
the control data of fathers speaking to other adults. However, since numerous studies have by
now documented a difference in mothers' speech to children and to adults, it seemed safe to as-
sume that fathers speak differently to adults than to children.

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