Maternal reminiscing style in relation to family income and ethnicity

• In Event: 2-040 - Cultural Influences on Children’s Socialization through Reminiscing

Integrative Statement

Maternal reminiscing style has been linked to multiple developmental outcomes in children (Fivush, Haden & Reese, 2006). However, reminiscing style varies on a number of demographic factors, including ethnicity/culture (e.g., Schroder et al., 2013; Wang, 2006), child gender (Fivush & Zaman, 2013), and income level (Leyva, Reese & Grolnick, 2009). At least one study has shown that low-income mothers from Hispanic backgrounds can be trained in elaborative reminiscing, which improves their children’s narrative skills (Reese, Leyva & Sparks, 2010), so fuller exploration of how income level and ethnicity may be related to reminiscing is critically important for tailoring appropriate interventions. Thus in this study, we examined how maternal reminiscing style at 4 years old might be predicted by the interaction of ethnicity and income level during infancy and toddlerhood.

Data for this project were obtained from the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a 9-year study of low-income families. Reminiscing data, in which mothers and children discussed an exciting past event, were collected at 54 months from 134 Caucasian, 101 African American, and 33 Hispanic US families. Narratives were coded for maternal cognitive elaboration on a five point scale (1=low, 5 = high), depending on the amount of background detail and description the mother provided, and the quality of questions asked to the child (“yes-no” vs. open-ended). Dyadic intersubjectivity was also coded on a five point scale (1 = low, 5 = high) depending on the dyad’s sense of “togetherness”, and the extent to which mother and child shared a common frame of mind in constructing the story (Zaman & Fivush, 2012). Family income was assessed during infancy (birth to 14 months) and toddlerhood (14 to 24 months) as a ratio of income divided by household size (number of people in the household). Preliminary results indicate that maternal reminiscing varies according to both income levels and ethnicity. For Caucasian dyads, higher income level during infancy showed a small but significant positive correlation with quality of maternal elaboration at 4 years old (r = .175; p = .048). Similarly, for Hispanic dyads, income level during infancy showed a strong positive significant correlation with quality of maternal elaboration (r = .502; p = .005), but there was no relation during toddlerhood. However, higher income levels during toddlerhood were significantly positively correlated with dyadic intersubjectivity for Hispanic families (r = .373; p = .030). There were no significant findings for African American families.

Given that culture plays an important role in quality of maternal reminiscing (Wang, 2006), and that culture and poverty are interconnected in the United States, it is intriguing that early poverty predicts later reminiscing. It is less clear why there are different correlations for poverty during infancy and toddlerhood, but research finds that being born into poverty is more detrimental to a child’s development than later poverty (e.g., Garrett et al. 1994). Our findings point to the importance of considering family income and ethnicity together when examining parent-child interactions.

Authors

• Widaad Zaman, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author

• Robyn Fivush, Emory University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah June Laible, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin Karahuta, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author