Poster #95 - Low-Income Taishanese- and Cantonese-Speaking Chinese American Preschoolers’ Perceptions of Parental Support for their Learning

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Much research has been done on the parenting side of socialization, but little research exists on the receiving end of children. Research shows that middle-class four-year-olds recognize parental socialization, and such recognition predicts their achievement (Li, Yamamoto, Kinnane, Shugarts, & Ho, 2018). Given that socialization is strongly subject to both cultural values and SES, our research examined children of Chinese immigrants (CCIs) from both middle-SES and low-income families. We focused on CCIs based on extant research showing that parents tend to be involved in their children’s education early on due to Chinese culture’s emphasis on learning (Chao, 1994; Yue & Ng, 1999). Yet, poverty and minority status can impede parents’ ability to develop positive parent-child relationships and support their children’s development (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010; Linver, Brooks-Gunn, & Kohen, 2002). Low-income CCIs face similar challenges in addition to their need to retain their home culture’s values and to adapt to mainstream culture.
Little is known how young children of low-income CCIs recognize their parents’ expectations and involvement in their learning. Moreover, virtually no developmental research that examined Taishanese-speaking children among CCIs exists. Compared to Cantonese- or Mandarin-speaking families, the Taishanese group, a minority within the Chinese immigrants, is unique for their distinct dialect and migration history as they are the earliest Chinese immigrant group in the US (Hsu, 2011).
Using a mixed method approach, we explored low-income second-generation 100 CCI’s perceptions of parental support in their learning processes (63 Cantonese-speaking and 37 Taishanese-speaking families) compared to 113 middle-SES CCIs. To capture children’s views of parental support for their learning based on free narratives, two scenarios that depicted children’s positive and negative learning processes were employed. After hearing story beginnings accompanied with pictures, children completed the stories. Children’s responses were transcribed and qualitatively analyzed for coding.
In qualitative analysis of our data, five types of critical themes related to parental expectations and involvement emerged; (1) parental guidance/teaching, (2) respect for parental authority, (3) parental expectations, (4) sharing achievement/social teaching, and (5) joint activities with parents (Table 1). Native-speaking coders who achieved reliability coded all children’s narratives into the five types of codes and counted the frequencies. Then we performed a series of ANCOVAs with gender, age in months, narrative volume, and missed probing as covariates to examine the effects of SES and minority status. Of the five variables, both low-income and middle-SES children mentioned parental guidance/teaching most. However, Low-income children mentioned parental guidance and parental authority significantly more than middle-SES children. In the low-income group, Taishanese-speaking children referred to parent-child joint activities less than Cantonese-speaking children.
CCIs are keenly aware of various types of parents’ support in their learning processes even at age four. Low-income children reported more parental guidance and parental authority than middle-SES children, indicating early development of beliefs that may result from greater family emphasis on the traditional Chinese value of filial piety. However, there was a difference between Taishanese-speaking and Cantonese-speaking children. We will discuss these findings in relation to culture, SES, and immigrant contexts.

Authors

• Yoko Yamamoto, Brown University
  Presenting Author

• Jin Li, Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Helen Pang, Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Huiying Yang, Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author