Excavating Culture: Ethnicity and Context as Predictors of Parenting Behavior

Abstract

Ethnic, socioeconomic, and contextual predictors of parenting and family socialization practices were examined among African American and European American families. This is one of a set of coordinated studies presented in this special issue (Le et al.). With the goal of sampling African American and European American children and families that were roughly equivalent on socioeconomic indicators, 103 mothers and their children were interviewed when the children were in kindergarten, and 83.5% were interviewed again in fourth grade. There were no ethnic differences in mothers' reports of warmth and communication at kindergarten; mothers' and children's reports of behavioral control at fourth grade, and children's reports of warmth at fourth grade. Among the ethnic differences in the parenting constructs, a number of them were related to cultural variables. For example, African American mothers expressed higher levels of self-efficacy and this was positively related to beliefs in communicating ethnic pride in their children. Similarly, although African American mothers expressed lower levels of warmth than European American mothers at fourth grade, among African American mothers, warmth was positively related to ethnic pride and beliefs in ethnic equality. A similar pattern was found for Psychological Control at fourth grade. When parenting practices among African Americans are examined in relation to ethnic socialization goals and ethnic identity, endorsement of ethnic socialization and identity was associated with more adaptive parenting practices. Longitudinally, there were several notable changes in ethnic differences in parenting practices across age.