Martine van der Pluijm

15 General introduction 2010; Rowe et al., 2016; Van Kleek, 2008). Therefore, schools in the Netherlands receive governmental funding based on the number of pupils with parents with low education levels (Roeleveld, Driessen, Ledoux, Cuppen, & Meijer, 2011). Parental education levels are defined as low when they have a maximum of primary education (very low) or lower secondary education (low), which is in line with the definition of the OECD (2015, p. 15). Many lower-educated families are challenged to provide a rich HLE because of less knowledge of child education and different beliefs about activities that stimulate language development (Aarts, Demir-Vegter, Kurvers, & Henrichs, 2016; Hoff, Laursen, Tardif, & Bornstein, 2002; Rowe, Denmark, Harden, & Stapleton, 2016; Van Tuijl, Leseman, & Rispens, 2001). Parental education level is a limiting factor of the HLE. It is one of the main indicators of parental socioeconomic status (SES), together with occupation and income indicators. After all, poverty and unemployment are other prevalent problems that might lead to stress and can impact parental efficacy (Linver, Brooks-Gun, & Kohen, 2002; Roberts, Jurgens, & Burchinal, 2005). However, more factors are associated with HLE variations in lower-educated families that should be accounted for when investigating the language development of young children. One of these limiting factors is parental literacy. Many lower-educated parents have low reading and writing skills or none at all that can impact their role in stimulating child language development (Boyce, Innocenti, Rogman, Jump Norman, & Ortiz, 2010; Malin, Cabrera. Rowe, 2014; Notten & De Wijs, 2017; Reder, Vanek, & Spruck-Wrigley, 2011; Reese, Leyva, Sparks, & Grolnick, 2010). Second, immigration may be a limiting factor. Immigrants may have had less schooling than parents born in the Netherlands (Allemano, 2013; Anderson et al., 2017; Beacco, Lyttle, & Hedges, 2014). Substantial numbers of immigrant parents have no education or at most primary education, up to six times more than parents born in the Netherlands (Mesman, 2010; SCP, 2009). These parents may also have difficulty speaking and understanding the majority language of the host country (Anderson, Anderson, & Sadiq, 2017; Scheele, 2010). Compared to higher-educated parents, lower-educated parents tend to be less familiar with providing rich HLEs. The quality of their interactions may be less stimulating when parents are less skilled in warm, sensitive (verbal and non-verbal) communication with their children (Dodge, Pettit & Bates, 1994; Mistry, Biesanz, Chien, Howes, & Benner, 2008). Research shows that interactions contain less quantity and quality (Hart & Risley, 1995; Leseman & De Jong, 1998; Van Steensel, 2006). Lower-educated parents tend to talk less with their child during daily routines and engage their children in fewer language activities, such as shared reading (Boyce, Innocenti, Roggman, Jumo Norman & Ortiz, 2010; Hoff, 2006; Notten & De Wijs, 2017). Additionally, parents with low language proficiency in the majority language might talk less with their children because they experience limitations when they have to speak the majority language and may become insecure (Canibek, 2018; Notten, 2018). Interactions in lower- educated families often contain a lower quality of language and less decontextualized speech, i.e., oral language referring to distant situations and abstract ideas (Snow, 1991). The use of such