“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
-Malcolm X I saw this quote every day of school in junior high. It lined the wall above the black board in my homeroom class. This message never sunk in until my graduation day. Now, I am a first generation high school graduate and also, I am a first generation college student. I always strived to be the best at everything I have ever done. I passed this characteristic onto my own daughter, and this was evident even when she was a small toddler. “Go, Dog, Go” by Dr. Seuss was her favorite book when she was two. One day, she picked up her book at bedtime and told me she was reading the story that night. I don’t know if most of the words were memorized but I can tell you that she had me crying like a baby by the end of the story because she had done so well. That is those one of those moments we as parents live for. The study described in the research article, The Influence of Socioeconomic Status, Home Environment, and Childcare on Child Language Abilities, addresses the connection between of childcare, home environment, socioeconomic status the influences they have on child language development. The study was performed by two researchers, one is an Ohio State University scholar and the other is a Professor in Developmental Psychology. What I gathered about them is limited to the specialties, locations, and email addresses for the purposes of this article. Here are the credentials listed: Tracey M. Miser, Cognitive Developmental Lab, and The Ohio State University, and Columbus, OH, USA, email: miser.4@osu.edu. Dr. Julie M. Hupp, Department of Psychology, and The Ohio State University, and Newark, OH, USA email: hupp.34@osu.edu. There is much more information listed on the Ohio State University website and also found on the internet about the researchers. The reason that there is not very much information given about the researchers is to try and eliminate reader bias of the author. There is not much information about the author that is pertinent toward the actually research anyway. The study predicted that there would be a relationship between socioeconomic status, home environment, and the amount of child care on language of three-, four-, and five-year-old children. The researchers also created a new questionnaire called the “Home Environmental Questionnaire”. They wanted to put this Questionnaire to work and see how the results compared to previous studies done on socioeconomic status and home environments. They hypothesized that all of the previous studies would be replicated by using their new questionnaire. The researchers also wanted to determine if the number of childcare hours influenced children’s language abilities after controlling socioeconomic status and home environment, when all hours of attendance are included. It was important to study this subject because it allowed a better understanding the impact of attendance of childcare centers has on the development of language in children. Therefore it helps find the connection between the children that are not at-risk and those who are. It will then allow the children that are at-risk to be assessed and assisted in improving their cognitive abilities to better prepare them to start school. A typical participant in this study was a well-educated, married, Caucasian female aged around 33 years old with a moderate to high socioeconomic status. The participant would also have to have a 3, 4, or 5 year old child that attended one of the targeted child care centers. As a busy, well established female business owner, I have the pleasure of sending my four-year-old daughter to a private childcare center. I am certain that she is getting the attention that she deserves and I can see how excited she is about the new little things she learns every day. Her school was selected to participate in this study and I happily obliged. First, I was sent a consent form for