The education that children receive is very much dependent on the education that
their parents received when they were children. Research shows that the literacy of their
parents strongly affects the education of their children. Teale found in his studies that
“children experience literacy primarily as a social process during their preschool years.”
(Teale 192) Parents strongly affect this social learning process because they are the
biggest influence at this early stage in their children’s lives. One of the reasons why it
strongly affects their children’s education is because “parents who have gone beyond a
high school education are found to be more involved with their infants and children than
those who did not finish high school…many less educated parents simply have more
unmanaged stress in their lives, and this stress interferes with ability and opportunity to
interact with their child” (Sclafani 88). Typically, parents who have finished high school
and gone on to receive additional schooling understand the pressures and stresses of
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school and are more equipped to handle them with their children when they go through
school. Parents who have obtained further educational opportunities also have less stress
in their lives because they most likely making more money while spending less time
making that money than those who, unfortunately, have not been able to finish high
school for one reason or another