Trajectories of civic socialization in context: Examining variation among children in African American and Black immigrant families.

Abstract

Little is known about how developmental experiences spanning early childhood through adolescence prepare children and youth to engage with society, and even less so for ethnically diverse Black children and youth. Building from work linking positive youth development (PYD) to civic engagement, this study examined how socialization trajectories from early childhood through adolescence in concert with early childhood experiences and contexts related to adolescent civic development. Person-centered analysis (PCA) through trajectory modeling was conducted using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Family-level inclusion criteria was used to identify the subsample wherein at least 1 parent identified as Black or African American (N = 3,562); 49.5% of children were female. The ECLS-K component measure of socioeconomic status (SES) indicated that most families were from low SES backgrounds (54.5%), followed by middle and upper-middle class (36.4%,), then upper-middle class and beyond (9.1%). Civic development was measured by the PYD outcomes of competence, confidence, connection to school and peers, caring, and character, which have positively accounted for civic engagement across ethnically and racially diverse youth. Findings suggest that diversity in socialization experiences, sociocultural background, and context result in differential outcomes of civic development. This builds on previous civic engagement work by affirming the importance of parental perceptions, civic opportunity, socialization practices, and context. Moreover, this work highlights ethnic diversity among Black youth in civic development and suggests that being from an immigrant family is associated with differential civic outcomes relative to their nonimmigrant counterparts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).