The aim of this paper was to understand whether and to what extent parenting behaviors mediated the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and 8-year old children’s reading performance. The study used video recordings of parent–child interactions in Danish public schools while the child was assigned a difficult reading task (N = 122). Results showed that low-SES parents tended to get involved in their children’s problem-solving activities in unconstructive ways and that this type of involvement mediated one-third of the association between parental SES and reading performance after controlling for prior measures of children’s academic skills. These results may have important implications for understanding how parents can best assist–or not assist - children in developmental activities such as homework tasks and for interventions aimed at increasing the quality of the time low SES parents spend with their children.