Is There an Immigrant Paradox with Parental Satisfaction of their Children’s Schooling?

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Family-School Relationships

Abstract

Using the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS 2002), a nationally-representative sample of tenth graders in 2002, we examined race, ethnic, and immigrant differences in parental satisfaction with their children’s schooling. We find that overall Latino immigrant parents to be the most satisfied while Black native-born parents to be the least satisfied. We also estimate models that examine the factors that may account for these differences. We include measures of (1) parental beliefs about school; (2) parental involvement; (3) school-initiated negative communication; (4) school-initiated general communication; (5) parent-initiated negative communication; and finally (6) parent-initiated general communication. Our analytic models account for all of the variation in parental satisfaction by race, ethnicity and nativity except for Latino immigrant parents. We argue that Latino parents may exercise a bifocal lens and that their positive attitudes are consistent with notions of immigrant optimism in their possibility of upward socioeconomic mobility.

Authors

• Phoebe Ho, University of Pennsylvania

• Grace Kao, University of Pennsylvania