A new national study found that the frequency at which parents are reading to their preschool-aged kids dropped significantly post-pandemic and has not bounced back since.
Researchers said this is cause for concern considering the major impact parent reading with young kids has on outcomes like language development and literacy.
The study was run by the National Institute for Early Education Research and looked at five years of data surveying American parents. It found that compared to 2019, when around 85% of U.S. preschool-aged kids were read to at least three times a week, the percentage declined and hasn't risen above 75% between fall 2020 and 2025.
Most recently available data shows 69% of parents frequently reading to kids, said study co-author
Steven Barnett, NIEER founder and education economist at Rutgers University.
The pandemic kicked off a major upheaval in at-home routines and also impacted things like library access, enrollment in preschool programs and parent work schedules, all of which the study cites as possible contributors to the decline.
Barnett said the research also aligns with recent findings from international studies showing reading scores plummeting globally, pointing to the fact that some of the strongest associations with reading decline named in his study, like increasing screen time, match other research.
"It's really concerning," Barnett said. "We know that parent engagement in homes with their kids makes a huge different in their children’s learning and development."
Michigan's own barometers of reading comprehension also show a continued slide, with the state's most recent Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, or M-STEP, results for third-grade proficiency in English Language Arts at 38.2%, the lowest in the test's 12-year history.
Pandemic kicked off decline in parents reading with preschool kids
Research shows that reading with kids before they turn five, during the most important years for brain development, is more than a nice nightly routine. It helps create a foundation for language and literacy development by introducing letters, sounds, words and print concepts, and is associated with better outcomes for children's vocabulary and reading comprehension in school.
The NIEER study found higher parent education levels and higher household income are the two greatest indicators of whether a parent will read three or more books to their kids a week, Barnett said. Black and Hispanic parents reported less frequent reading than non-Hispanic white households, though the racial difference between Black and white households went away when adjusting for factors like household income, daily activities and books in the home.
Interestingly, the same was not true for Hispanic households, Barnett said, suggesting there might be other issues at play like cultural relevance of available books or parent beliefs about language development for their dual-language kids, which he said must be studied further.
The study found that enrollment in an early learning program led to higher odds of frequent reading, as did activities like indoor and outdoor play, and a higher number of physical books in a home.
Screen time was strongly linked to less frequent reading, though the study couldn't parse out exactly why that is, Barnett said. It's likely that screen time eats into reading time, but it's also possible that parents who are laxer with screen time are less likely to read to their kids, he said.
Barnett said the study opens up a number of possibilities for increasing parent-child reading in a kid's earliest years. First, teaching parents how to talk through a book and make it more enjoyable for kids who may have become accustomed to screen time and have a hard time sustaining attention can help.
Second, giving people books does increase reading, said Barnett, pointing to programs like Dolly Parton's Imagination Library that get books in homes for kids between birth and 5 years old for free. And third, parents need convenient opportunities to learn about the importance of reading with their kid where they already are, like at doctor's visits.
Parents say they wish they could read more with their kids
The NIEER study also found that only one-third of parents are "very satisfied" with how much they read to their kids; the other two-thirds aren't. Among the most highly cited reasons for why they don't read more with their kids, parents said it was difficult to find time in the day and that they were too tired, but also that their kid preferred screen time or wouldn't sit for long enough.
Kelly Haynie, a director at Lansing nonprofit Child and Family Charities, said she sees parent stress and overwhelm as a barrier to family time spent reading with kids, especially post-pandemic when many of the low-income parents her organization supports have taken on multiple jobs to keep up with rising costs.
Transportation can also be a barrier to getting to the library, some of which have become less welcoming for families, as they've become central hubs for people experiencing homelessness, she said.
But the most striking barrier to Haynie is lacking education, likely because opportunities for learning about literacy are few and far between in her community.
"Many parents don't realize how impactful reading to your child can be," she said.
Beki San Martin is a fellow at the Detroit Free Press who covers childcare, early childhood education and other issues that affect the lives of children ages 5 and under and their families in metro Detroit and across Michigan. Contact her at rsanmartin@freepress.com.
This fellowship was founded with support from the Bainum Family Foundation. The Free Press retains editorial control of this work.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Families are reading to preschoolers less often since the pandemic
