Understanding Aspirational Parenting After Migrant Childhoods: Language and Values, Work and Sports

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Family-School-Community Partnerships Poster Session

Abstract

Based upon data from focus group conversations with 30 adult Mexican-heritage former migrant farmworkers, this presentation examines the unique parenting challenges these participants face as they aspire to bring their family into the American middle class. Given the disjuncture between their childhoods of immigration and farmwork and their own children’s relative comfort: How can they pass along their values? How do they cultivate bilingualism? Can sports and extracurriculars teach the same lessons as field labor? Unfortunately for our participants, research is at best ambiguous regarding the effectiveness of many of their parenting strategies. For this reason, the specific experiences, motives, and parenting strategies of former migrant farmworkers documented in this study need to inform supportive responses by educators and counselors.

Authors

• Scott A. Beck, Georgia Southern University

• Alma Stevenson, Georgia Southern University