Table of Contents
- A new Rutgers/NIEER study finds regular parent-child reading dropped from 85% of preschoolers in 2019 to under 75% now, and it has not recovered in the years after the pandemic began.
- Researchers say the drop is significant: shared reading builds language, early literacy, and social-emotional skills in ways screen time and structured classes do not replace.
- Rebuilding the habit does not require a full storytime ritual: short, frequent reading sessions still carry most of the benefit.
Reading together dropped five years ago and families never fully went back
If bedtime stories have gotten rarer in your house, you are far from alone. A new nationally representative study from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University finds that parents are reading to their preschool-age kids noticeably less than they did before 2020, and the habit has not bounced back.
The short version: in 2019, roughly 85 percent of preschoolers in the US were read to three or more times a week. By 2025, that number had settled below 75 percent and stayed there. Researchers surveyed nearly 7,000 parents of three- to five-year-olds who were not yet in kindergarten to track the change over time, and the pattern held across income levels and regions.
What the research actually measured
The study defines “frequent” shared reading as a parent or another household member reading to a child at least three times in the past week, a fairly low bar that makes the drop more notable, not less. Reading dropped sharply in the early pandemic months, from 85 percent down to 66 percent by spring 2021, then climbed back partway but plateaued well under the old baseline.
Steven Barnett, NIEER’s founder and a co-author of the study, called the finding “really concerning.” He pointed to a body of research showing that parent engagement at home makes a real difference in how children learn and develop, and shared reading is one of the clearest, most studied examples of that engagement. Researchers point to a mix of causes rather than one single culprit: disrupted routines that never fully reset, reduced access to public libraries and story hours amid closures, more screen use filling the same evening windows, and parents working longer or less predictable hours than they did before 2020.
It is worth being specific about why this particular habit gets so much research attention. Shared reading exposes kids to vocabulary well beyond typical spoken conversation, gives them practice following a story from beginning to end, and creates a stretch of undivided attention between parent and child that a lot of other daily routines do not offer. A meta-analysis of reading research across multiple countries has linked consistent early shared reading with stronger resilience, fewer behavior problems, and better prosocial skills later in childhood.
What experts say about closing the gap
Literacy researchers are careful to say this is not a story about bad parents. Work schedules, childcare gaps, and the general strain of the last five years are structural, not personal failings. Even so, the research is clear that the dip has real costs for kids who miss out, and pediatricians and early-childhood specialists have started raising the topic more directly at well-child visits.
The encouraging part of the research: the benefit of reading together does not require long sessions or a perfect nightly ritual. A short storybook at breakfast, a few pages before naptime, or a story read aloud in the car from a phone app all count. Consistency across the week appears to matter more than the length of any single session. Experts also point out that older siblings, grandparents, and other caregivers reading to a child count toward the same benefit, so the responsibility does not have to sit with one parent alone.
What this means for your family this week
If reading time has quietly slipped in your house, a few practical fixes tend to work better than guilt:
- Pick one predictable slot, like right after dinner or right before lights out, so it does not compete with a dozen other decisions each evening.
- Keep books somewhere your child can grab one without asking, in the car, by the couch, in a bathroom basket, so reading happens outside the “official” bedtime slot too.
- Let your child pick the book, even the same one for the tenth night in a row. Repetition builds vocabulary just as effectively as variety does at this age.
- Use library story hours or a school reading program if your own schedule is unpredictable. Any adult reading to your child counts.
- Swap one screen-time window for a read-aloud a few nights a week rather than trying to cut screens entirely. Small trades stick better than big overhauls.
If your child is school-age and reading independently now, the habit still has value in a different form: reading the same book separately and talking about it, or taking turns reading pages aloud, keeps the connection going without the storybook format.
The bigger takeaway
This data lands at an interesting moment, when a lot of families are also rethinking how much structured activity and screen time actually serves their kids. Shared reading is one of the few habits that is both nearly free and backed by decades of research, which makes the five-year dip worth taking seriously rather than filing away as one more thing to feel behind on. Small, repeated habits are usually easier to rebuild than the numbers suggest, and the research on this one is about as encouraging as it gets: the payoff shows up fast, and it does not require getting everything else right first.
What this looks like at different ages
Infants and young toddlers get the most out of board books with simple, repetitive language and bright pictures. At this age, the goal is exposure to a parent’s voice and the give-and-take rhythm of pointing and naming, not comprehension of a plot. A five-minute session before a nap is plenty.
Preschoolers, the group at the center of the NIEER study, benefit from longer storybooks with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This is also the age where asking simple questions while reading, such as what a character might do next, builds real comprehension skills rather than passive listening. It is also the age where habits form most easily, so a consistent slot in the daily routine pays off for years afterward.
Early elementary kids who are learning to read on their own still benefit from being read to, especially books above their independent reading level. Listening comprehension develops faster than decoding skills at this stage. Reading a chapter book together, one chapter a night, keeps kids engaged with stories more complex than what they can read solo, and it keeps the shared habit alive past the storybook years.
One family example illustrates how small the fix can be. A mother of two in Ohio told researchers involved in a related literacy program that she had all but stopped reading with her kids after returning to a longer work schedule in 2021. She restarted with a single rule: five minutes with one book before bed, no exceptions, no negotiating for a second book. Within a few months, both kids started asking for it unprompted, and the five-minute rule quietly grew into fifteen most nights, not from her pushing it, but from the kids wanting more once the habit was back in place.
Signs it is worth talking to your pediatrician
Missing reading time here and there is normal and not a reason for concern. Pediatricians recommend a closer look if a preschooler shows little interest in books at all, struggles to sit for even a short story by age four, or if a school-age child avoids reading time and seems to be falling behind peers in vocabulary or comprehension. Those signs do not point to a single cause, and they are worth raising at a well-child visit rather than diagnosing at home. A pediatrician can help sort out whether the issue is attention, vision, hearing, a language delay, or simply a habit that needs rebuilding.
The obstacles parents report most often
When researchers asked parents directly what got in the way, the answers were not mysterious. Evening exhaustion topped the list, followed by unpredictable work hours, kids who resist sitting still after a full day, and competition from tablets and television that require far less setup than pulling a book off a shelf. None of that is a character flaw. It is a scheduling problem, and scheduling problems respond to small structural fixes better than willpower does.
Public libraries used to absorb a lot of this pressure through free story hours and easy access to new books without a purchase, and many families leaned on that routine before 2020. Closures and reduced hours in the pandemic broke that habit for a lot of households, and not every family found their way back once libraries reopened fully. If your local branch still runs a weekly story time, treating it as a fixed weekly appointment, the same way you would a swim lesson, can rebuild the habit faster than trying to add reading to an already full evening at home.
Cost is a smaller barrier than it looks. Most public library systems let families check out a stack of storybooks at once, and many also offer digital lending apps that put books on a phone or tablet for free, useful for a car ride or a waiting room without adding screen time in the usual sense. Secondhand bookstores, school book fairs, and neighborhood little free libraries round out low-cost ways to keep a rotating supply of books in the house without a real budget line.