Children in the Critical Period: Causal Evidence of Reverse Socialization

• In Event: Racial Politics and Political Socialization

Abstract

This paper attempts to causally demonstrate that the children of immigrants influence their parents’ political and social outcomes. To do this, we analyze the 2000 U.S. Census microdata and the 2006 Latino National Survey. We relate both the political and social variables of immigrant parents to whether their children were either born in the United States or arrived in the United States before having reached the “critical period” of language acquisition. We interpret the differences between those immigrant parents whose children fall before and after the critical period as effects of the language skill of the children. With the introduction of this variation we hypothesize that those immigrant parents with children in the United States before the critical period of language acquisition will be significantly more likely to have positive social and political outcomes such as registering to vote, voting, and other forms of political expression than those immigrants who arrive with their children after the critical period. We theorize that immigrant parents benefit from the language skills their children possess to learn about the political world around them. These findings would suggest the acquisition of the English language of the children of immigrants provides them the capital to socialize their parents in ways not typically thought about in political science.

Authors

• Roberto Carlos, University of Georgia

• Carl Gustafson, Stanford University