Latino and African American Parental Resources, Investments, and Practices: Supporting Toddler’s Language and Social Skills

• In Event: 2-074 - Building on Family Strengths to Promote the Academic Development of Young Black and Latino Children

Integrative Statement

As a group, ethnic minority children in the United States are more likely to live in economic disadvantage than their peers (Evans, 2004). Young children’s linguistic and social competencies (e.g., self-control, interpersonal skills, cooperation) are the foundation for later skills across the life span (Galindo & Fuller, 2010). On average, economically disadvantaged environments are correlated with poor social and cognitive skills. There is, however, tremendous variability in children’s outcomes within SES groups. Studies show that Latino children’s social skills are, for example, at the same level or better than their counterparts (Cabrera, Malin, Kuhns, & West, 2017) and that many African American young children have strong narrative skills (Gardner-Neblett, Pungello, & Iruka, 2012). These positive findings do not get much attention in the literature and therefore the ways in which low-income families support their toddler’s development is somewhat understudied and not well understood. Part of the reason is that research, in general, embraces a deficit model approach that compares low-income children to their middle-class counterparts and focuses on adversity more than on the promotive and protective factors in these families (Cabrera et al., 2017; Costigan, Taknint & Miao, 2017; Lerner et al., 2017). We address this gap by focusing on the strengths of low-income minority families and how they are related to their children’s social and linguistic skills.
This longitudinal study uses data from the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES) and an ecological and strengths-based approach to ask the following research questions: (1) What are the family resources (income, education, family structure), parental investments (parent-child interactions, literacy activities, learning materials), and key parenting practices (e.g. routines) among African American and Latino families and their toddlers? (2) How are parents’ resources related to parental investments? and, (3) How are family resources, parental investments, and parenting practices related to toddlers’ language and social skills?
Regression analyses revealed differences in terms of the promotive factors between the two ethnic groups. For Latino toddlers, living in two parent families with mothers who reported low levels of spanking were identified as areas of strength whereas for African American toddlers, having mothers with at least a high school education was a strength. We also found similarities. For both groups some father caregiving, engaging in maternal literacy activities once a day, having educational toys and books, and moderate levels of maternal sensitivity were promotive factors. Learning materials in the home and father caregiving were the strongest predictors of Latino and African American toddlers' language skills, respectively. For African American toddlers, father caregiving significantly predicted children’s social competence at age 3; none of our resource or investment variables were related to Latino toddlers' social competence or problem behavior. Overall, these findings suggest that many low-income parents are fairly invested in their children and spend the time and money to ensure they have what they need to learn and develop. Our findings also argue against a one-size-fit-all programmatic efforts as there are differences in the strengths that characterize ethnic families.

Authors

• Catherine Kuhns, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Natasha Cabrera, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Avery Henninger, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jerry West, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author