ABSTRACT
The home serves as children’s first library, their first laboratory, their first art studio, and their first playground. In their homes, children make initial explorations into literacy, mathematics, science, art, and music. Indeed, it is in the home that children formulate and test some of their first hypotheses about the nature of the world, building and progressively refining their knowledge and skills as well as their learning expectations, beliefs, goals, and strategies. Accordingly, the home environment has long been considered central in shaping children’s growth, although most scholars now reject socialization theories that gave little regard to genetics and the ways that children also shape their homes (Bjorklund & Yunger, 2001; Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000; Kellaghan, Sloane, Alvarez, & Bloom, 1993; Maccoby, 1984, 1992).
