Parent Socialization About Economic Inequality in Middle Childhood: Attributions for Economic Inequality

• In Event: Parents’ Contributions to Children’s and Adolescent’s Beliefs about Social Class and Economic Inequality

Abstract

From early childhood to adolescence children change in their attributions for economic inequality. Young children are more likely to provide definitions rather than true causal attributions (e.g., people are poor because they don’t have money) whereas older children become capable of providing causal attributions more reliably (Leahy, 1983). Developmental intergroup theory indicates that socialization experiences could contribute to this change (Bigler & Liben, 2006).

This presentation looks at a new measure for parents of children ages 6 to 11, the Parent Socialization about Economic Inequality – Explicit Attributions (PSEI-EA) scale. We will show (1) psychometric properties of the PSEI-EA; (2) correlations between PSEI-EA and other forms of socialization (e.g., racial socialization, financial socialization); and (3) how the PSEI-EA varies by parent and child sociodemographic characteristics.

Method: We sampled 667 parents from 48 US states and the District of Columbia. Our sample consists of 296 parents who identified as mono-racial Black and 371 parents who identified as mono-racial White. Participants from both racial groups identified as low-income (<$35k; 18.87%-32.27%), middle-income (43.4%-54.39%), and high-income (>$100k; 11.82%-36.12%).

We measure how parents explicitly teach children about attributions for economic inequality using the newly created PSEI-EA. This measure includes subscales for individual attributions for wealth (3 items) and poverty (4 items), structural attributions (4 items), and fatalistic attributions (3 items). Delineations are based on previous research (Flanagan & Tucker, 1999). Parents reported which approach to parent socialization about economic inequality best described themselves (see Figure 1). Other measures used for validation purposes include racial socialization (Hughes & Johnson, 2001), a financial socialization scale adapted for parent report (LeBaron-Black et al., 2021), and a measure of parenting style (Robinson et al., 1995).

Results: Psychometric properties of the subscales indicate good model fit (χ^2= 228.82, p=0.000, RMSEA= 0.058, TLI/CFI =0.967/0.958). Table 1 shows how the PSEI-EA is correlated with racial socialization, financial socialization, and other parenting practices. Figure 1 shows a bar graph highlighting how parents’ self-placement aligns with their score on the PSEI-EA. Parents’ self-placement follows a predictable pattern across all subscales except that parents who indicate that they avoid conversations about economic inequality consistently score the second highest on the PSEI-EA. The presentation will also highlight how PSEI-EA varies by the sociodemographic characteristics of parents and children.

Discussion: The results of this study indicate how essential it is that research on parent socialization about economic inequality occur in the context of other parenting practices, particularly racial socialization. Results also highlight the need for PSEI research to use racially and socioeconomically diverse samples – although this measure meets the standards for measurement invariance between Black and White parents, there are still mean differences in PSEI-EA that follow demographic patterns.

This presentation will indicate areas for future research that include (1) connecting explicit with implicit socialization (i.e., geographic information about the child’s social contexts); (2) relating PSEI-EA to child outcomes; and (3) further exploring the 4.46% of parents who report that they avoid talking about economic inequality, yet score high on the PSEI-EA.

Author

• Andrea Kinghorn Busby, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author