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The goal of this dissertation is to explore how children influence their own environments by evoking caregiver or parent behavior. It examines whether child language and cognitive ability shape caregiver language stimulation and the home learning environment, and whether child academic, behavioral, and health characteristics influence parental use of housing vouchers.

For the first study, I use longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care to examine whether children with more advanced cognitive and language development evoke more stimulating language environments. I find evidence for an evocative response for toddlers (15 and 24 months), but not for preschoolers (54 months). The evocative response does not vary by child care context.

For the second study, I use longitudinal data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine whether children with more advanced language and cognitive skills evoke higher quality home learning environments, and whether these evocative effects are moderated by other child and family characteristics. Using multiple analytic techniques, I find evidence that more advanced skills do evoke higher quality home learning environments, and that these evocative effects function fairly similarly for children of different ages, gender, and socioeconomic background.

For the third study, I use data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) study to examine how child academic, behavioral, and health characteristics influence parental moving behavior. I find that, in parti cular, families with children who have multiple problems are much less likely to move than families whose children do not have problems.

By examining evocative processes across these three areas, I identify evocative processes that shape children's development contexts and discuss their implications for research, policy, and practice.