Kiyomi Akita

This paper exarmined to what extent and when parents influence their children's book-reading activities. The following were assumed to be the four aspects of the family environment which mediate this influence : (1) provider of physical environment (PP), measured by the number of books at home ; (2) model of expert book-reading (ME), parents' own frequency of book-reading ; (3) encouragement of children's reading activities (RE), the taking children to the library, etc. ; and (4) co-participant in reading (CP), frequency of reading books with children, etc. Third, fifth and eighth graders (N=506) answered a questionnaire about their family's influence on their reading. The main results were as follows. (1) The parents performed these roles more frequently the more they personally liked reading. (2) Direct parent-child interactions such as RE and CP scores were positively related to their influence on children's feelings, but PP and ME scores were not so related. (3) PP scores were positively related to the frequency of reading. These latter two results show that some roles relate to children's feelings and some roles relate to the frequency of activities. (4) The influence of parents declined at children's higher age levels.