Familismo has been described as a core cultural value for Latinos, but there have been few studies of its attitudinal and behavioral manifestations. We explored attitudinal and behavioral familismo using qualitative data collected from 23 Latina mothers who participated in an ethnographic study. The study employed semistructured interviews and participant observation methods carried out across 10 to 12 home visits for each participant. Results indicate that behavioral familismo manifests in five specific areas-financial support, shared daily activities, shared living, shared childrearing, and immigrationand functions as a dynamic construct that moves along a continuum of costs and benefits, over time and across situations, with implications for children's development. The discussion highlights familismo as both a risk and protective factor for low-income, urban Latino families and underscores the importance of considering the balance between its costs and benefits in studies of Latino child development.

Latino families face multiple stressors associated with adjusting to United States mainstream culture that, along with poverty and residence in inner-city communities, may further predispose their children to risk for negative developmental outcomes. Evidence-based mental health treatments may require culturally informed modifications to best address the unique needs of the Latino population, yet few empirical studies have assessed these cultural elements. The current study examined cultural values of 48 Dominican and Mexican mothers of preschoolers through focus groups in which they described their core values as related to their parenting role. Results showed that respeto, family and religion were the most important values that mothers sought to transmit to their children. Respeto is manifested in several domains, including obedience to authority, deference, decorum, and public behavior. The authors describe the socialization messages that Latina mothers use to teach their children respeto and present a culturally derived framework of how these messages may relate to child development. The authors discuss how findings may inform the cultural adaptation of evidence-based mental health treatments such as parent training programs.

This study examined the mental health and academic functioning of 442 4- and 5-year old children of Mexican (MA) and Dominican (DA) immigrant mothers using a cultural framework of Latino parenting. Data were collected on mothers' self-reported acculturative status, parenting practices and cultural socialization, and on children's behavioral functioning (mother- and teacher-report) and school readiness (child test). Results provide partial support for the validity of the framework in which mothers' acculturative status and socialization of respeto (a Latino cultural value of respect) and independence (a U.S. American cultural value) predict parenting practices. For both groups, English language competence was related to less socialization of respeto, and other domains of acculturative status (i.e., U.S. American/ethnic identity, and U.S. American/ethnic cultural competence) were related to more socialization of respeto and independence. Socialization of respeto was related to the use of authoritarian practices and socialization of independence was related to the use of authoritative practices. Socialization of respeto was also related to lower school readiness for DA children, whereas socialization of independence was related to higher school readiness for MA children. Independence was also related to higher teacher-rated externalizing problems for MA children. For both groups, authoritarian parenting was associated with more parent-reported internalizing and externalizing problems. The discussion focuses on ethnic subgroup differences and similarities to further understanding of Latino parenting from a cultural perspective.

The current paper presents a lifespan model of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) from infancy into adulthood. We conceptualize that ethnic-racial priming during infancy prompts nascent awareness of ethnicity/race that becomes differentiated across childhood and through adulthood. We propose that the components of ERI that have been tested to date fall within five dimensions across the lifespan: ethnic-racial awareness, affiliation, attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge. Further, ERI evolves in a bidirectional process informed by an interplay of influencers (i.e., contextual, individual, and developmental factors, as well as meaning-making and identity-relevant experiences). It is our goal that the lifespan model of ERI will provide important future direction to theory, research, and interventions. Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) encompasses the process and content that defines an individual's sense of self related to ethnic heritage and racial background. It includes labels individuals use to define themselves according to ethnicity/race; awareness, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge they have about their ethnic-racial background; enactment of their identity; and processes by which each of these dimensions evolve (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). ERI is recognized as an important developmental competency (Williams et al., 2012) that can promote positive adjustment in the face of risk or adversity (Neblett et al., 2012). Scholars emphasize that ERI development is dynamic and evolves throughout the lifespan (Syed et al., 2007). However, most conceptual models of ERI have focused independently on distinct developmental periods, such as childhood (e.g., Bernal et al., 1990) or adolescence (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 for review), without an explicit lifespan perspective. This relatively piecemeal approach makes it difficult to chart continuity across developmental periods when identity components are defined specific to a single developmental period, with little effort tracing either the origin or maturation of components beyond a single developmental period. The resulting scholarship gives the impression of disjointed development of ethnic-racial identity. To piece together disparate scholarship in the field's conceptual understanding of ERI, [Adriana Umaña-Taylor and Esther Calzada] assembled a work group funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal of our work group was to develop an integrated model of ERI development that would describe when components of ERI first emerge, how they unfold from one developmental period to another, which components have 2 WILLIAMS ET AL.

This study examines the efficacy of ParentCorps among 4-year-old children (N = 171) enrolled in prekindergarten in schools in a large urban school district. ParentCorps includes a series of 13 group sessions for parents and children held at the school during early evening hours and facilitated by teachers and mental health professionals. ParentCorps resulted in significant benefits on effective parenting practices and teacher ratings of child behavior problems in school. Intervention effects were of similar magnitude for families at different levels of risk and for Black and Latino families. The number of sessions attended was related to improvements in parenting. Study findings support investment in and further study of school-based family interventions for children from underserved, urban communities.