Maternal teaching of reading and children's reading skills in Grade 1: Patterns and predictors of positive and negative associations

• Maternal teaching of reading is beneficial for poor readers.
• Poor readers benefit when mothers’ teaching is combined with help and monitoring.
• Poor readers benefit from teaching when mothers are emotionally supportive.
• Maternal teaching is unrelated to the reading skills of good readers.

The main aim of the study was to identify subgroups of children based on the associations between the reported frequency of maternal teaching of reading and children's reading skills, and whether these subgroups differ with respect to mother-related (i.e., education, controlling behavior, and emotions in homework situations) and child-related (i.e., reading habits and gender) background factors. Data were gathered from 1460 mother–child dyads. The reading skills of 6- to 7-year-old Finnish-speaking children were measured at the beginning and at the end of Grade 1. Information from mothers was gathered by questionnaires. Regression Mixture Modeling identified four latent subgroups of children in which the frequency of maternal teaching showed a differential contribution to children's subsequent reading skills: Among 14% of the children with low reading skills, maternal teaching was positively associated with children's reading skills; among 22% of the children who showed relatively low reading skills, maternal teaching had no association with children's reading skills; among 12% of the children who were good readers, maternal teaching had no association with children's reading skills; and among the remaining 52%, maternal teaching had a negative association children's reading skills. The subgroup of children for whom maternal teaching positively contributed to reading skills was characterized by high levels of controlling behavior by their mothers but simultaneous positive emotional support in homework situations.