The Price of Parenting: The Roles of Income and Education in Racial Socialization in Black Families

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Background: Racial socialization is an important parenting technique in racial minority families. Often it is a way for parents to teach their children to be proud of the color of their skin and their culture. Besides cultural socialization, another important aspect of racial socialization is “preparation for bias”, which is defined as “parents’ effort to promote their children’s awareness of discrimination and prepare them to cope with it” (Hughes et al., 2006, p749). One thing that can impact how a parent racially socializes their child can be various socioeconomic factors like income and education, such that the resources that a parent has can reflect their socialization techniques. Therefore, we wanted to analyze how different levels of education and SES are related to the kinds of racial socialization messages used by parents.

Methods: Black mothers (N=324) and fathers (N=252) were recruited to answer various online questionnaires about themselves and one child between the ages of 11 to 18 years old. The average parent age was 44.6 years old. The average child age was 15 years old, and was comprised of 283 sons, 291 daughters and 2 reported as other. They reported on a myriad of topics, including demographic variables like socioeconomic status and parental education level. They also reported on the frequency of cultural socialization and preparation for bias racial socialization messages that they gave their child over the past year (Hughes & Chen, 1997). Regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between SES and racial socialization messages.

Results: Preliminary results showed that parents overall used moderate cultural socialization (M = 3.59) and preparation for bias messages (M = 3.35) with their children. More educated parents employed more preparation for bias messages with their children (β =.021, p=.039). Education was not significantly correlated with cultural socialization messages. Having a higher income had a marginally significant association with preparation for bias messages (β =.081, p=.057) but not cultural socialization messages. Next steps will be to look at the differences in the relation between SES and racial socialization messages based on parent/child gender and racial composition of the families’ social contexts (i.e., neighborhoods and school).

Conclusion: Compared to less educated parents, more educated parents tend to employ more messages that prepare their children for the biases of others. These differences may exist because Black families with higher education and SES may be more likely than those with low education and SES to live in integrated neighborhoods and attend integrated schools (Lacy, 2007). With more interracial interactions, children may be more exposed to racial bias, which may contribute to parents giving more preparation for bias messages. There were not SES differences in cultural socialization messages which suggests that Black parents, regardless of SES, try to impart information about their culture and instill feelings of racial pride in their children. Future studies should explore in more depth the roles of resources and context in the socialization practices of Black families.

Authors

• Lorraine Scott, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Fatima A. Varner, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author