I show that poverty is strongly associated with reduced engagement with young children in South Africa. This engagement by parents and caregivers include stimulating interactions such as talking to or conversing with the child, singing to or with, and reading to or telling them stories. Using nationally representative data on households with infants and toddlers, I show that income and other measures of well-being are strong predictors of child engagement even with a battery of controls and a host of robustness checks suggesting a potential causal link. I then show that a large cash transfer program that increases household income per capita also increases the levels of reported engagement with children. Finally, by using current levels of reported engagement with young siblings as a proxy, I show suggestive evidence that engagement during childhood is linked to outcomes later in life such as literacy, staying in school, and grade repetition.