Poster #106 - Child and Adolescent Social Skills: Examining the Role of Mothers’ Ethnoracial Identity Attachment and Birthplace

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Parents play a prominent role in shaping their children’s social skills. Notably, parental influence is shaped by the caregiver’s own developmental experiences. For example, strong ethnoracial identity among mothers of marginalized backgrounds is positively linked to their children’s social development. Additionally, caregivers’ birthplace provides a proximal understanding of their positionality in experiencing the U.S. context, such that children of immigrants often endorse better developmental outcomes than children of non-immigrants. Furthermore, seminal work underscores that caregivers’ ethnoracial identity attachment and birthplace have varied impacts on their children’s developmental outcomes across ethnoracial identities. However, few studies investigated whether a mother’s ethnoracial identity attachment and birthplace have differential effects on social skills development based on developmental timing (e.g., childhood vs. adolescence). This study examined 1) whether ethnoracial identity attachment and birthplace are related to social skills in childhood and adolescence and 2) whether childhood social skills mediate the relationship between predictor variables and adolescent social skills.
We used longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The ethnoracial groups were stratified in three groups: White (n= 937; 898 US-born), Black (n= 2042; 1945 US-born), and LatinX (Hispanic) (n= 1144; 704 US-born). Mothers’ ethnoracial identity attachment was measured by mothers’ self-report on “I feel attachment toward my racial/ethnic group” from the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure at age 1. Mothers’ birthplace was measured by mothers’ self-report on “Were you born in the U.S.?” from the demographics section. Social skills in childhood and adolescence were measured by latent variables of mothers’ self-reports at ages 3, 5, and 9 (childhood) and by adolescents’ self-reports at age 15 (adolescence) using an adapted version of the Social Behavior Inventory and the Social Skills Rating System. We included the mothers’ age, income level, education status, marital status, and adolescents’ gender as covariates. We conducted multi-group structural equation modeling.
The overall model had an excellent fit. Among children of mothers of color, having mothers with stronger ethnoracial identity attachment (β = 0.070, SE = 0.034, p < 0.05 (Black); β = 0.208, SE = 0.048, p < 0.01(Hispanic)) and born in the U.S. (β = 0.150, SE = 0.042 , p < 0.01(Black); β = 0.239, SE = 0.052, p < 0.01 (Hispanic)) were linked to overall greater childhood social skills. Children of White mothers did not show such associations. There were no significant associations with adolescent social skills, ethnoracial identity, and birthplace. Additionally, among children of Black mothers, childhood social skills mediated the positive relationship between mothers’ birthplace (US-born) and adolescent social skills (β = 0.011, S.E. = 0.006, p < 0.01).
Our study supports the differential effects of ethnoracial identity on social skill development. Moreover, developmental timing differences exist, in which childhood social skills were more responsive to the mothers’ report on ethnoracial identity attachment and birthplace at children age one. Our findings underscore the needed attention to providing support relevant to the sociocultural contexts of caregivers to help shape the social skills of children and adolescents across ethnoracial identities.

Authors

• Sunghyun Hong, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Felicia Hardi, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Deaweh Benson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Kathryn Maguire-Jack, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor