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How to measure parenting styles?

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Change log

Authors

Renée, L 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pIn this paper, we measure parenting styles through unsupervised machine learning in a panel following children from age 5 to 29 months. The topic model, which is a statistical model originally developed to discover the latent semantic structures in text, 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.</jats:p>

Description

Acknowledgements: CR would like to thank the FRQSC for financial support (grant number 2020-NP-267422).

Keywords

38 Economics, 3801 Applied Economics, Behavioral and Social Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Pediatric, Basic Behavioral and Social Science

Journal Title

Review of Economics of the Household

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1569-5239
1573-7152

Volume Title

21

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture (2020-NP-267422)