School Readiness Amongst Urban Canadian Families: Risk Profiles and Family Mediation

There is an ongoing need for literature that identifies the effects of broad contextual risk on school readiness outcomes via family mediating mechanisms. This is especially true amongst diverse and urban samples characterized by variability in immigration history. To address this limitation, family profiles of sociodemographic and contextual risk were identified when children were 2 months of age. Subsequently, their indirect effect on school readiness at 4.5 years was evaluated via family investments and maternal responsivity (N = 501 families). A latent class analysis yielded four distinct family risk profiles: low socioeconomic status (SES) multilevel risk, 12.0% of sample; maternal abuse history, 15.6%; low-SES immigrant risk, 27.7%; and low risk, 44.7%. Path analyses revealed that children in the low-SES multilevel risk and low-SES immigrant risk profiles had the poorest outcomes in all domains and these effects operated equally and indirectly via investments and responsivity. To date, several studies have suggested that sociodemographic risks impact cognitive outcomes primarily via the investment pathway. The present findings suggest that family relations are equally important when operationalized as observed responsive parenting. Furthermore, pathways of influence are similarly operative despite different patterning of adversity for high-risk immigrant and native born families.