Cultural socialization in childhood: Analysis of parent–child conversations with a direct observation measure.

Abstract

Cultural factors influence the development of all children. Yet, current knowledge of explicit cultural socialization processes in childhood remains limited, mainly by failing to incorporate the experiences of young children. To address this critical gap, the authors introduce the OMERS-Peds task, an observational measurement designed to systematically identify and compare the content of cultural messages passed down from caregivers to offspring during early school age years. The OMERS-Peds was administered to mothers and children (n ϭ 275) from three diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds (African American (n ϭ 153), Hispanic (n ϭ 61), and non-Hispanic White (n ϭ 61)) within the longitudinal Multidimensional Assessment of Preschoolers (MAPS) Study. The OMERS-Peds coding system was used to rate how strongly families endorsed 5 key constructs: family culture, religion, identity, ethnicity, and race. A series of 2 statistic tests were used to compare scores across racial/ethnic backgrounds, and within families (between children and their mothers). Analyses revealed that in the cultural socialization conversations occurring in early childhood, parents and children prioritize talking about their family's culture and religion. Independent of their racial/ethnic backgrounds, mothers and children seldom discussed race and ethnicity. Contrary to research with older children, differences were mainly identified

Ethnic-Racial Socialization of White Children by White Parents: A Systematic Review

“…First, according to Brown et al (2007), parents reported more frequent discussions about race with girls than with boys. Second, consistent with research on parents of color's ERS (Aguayo et al, 2021), eight studies documented that parents consider the child's age when deciding whether to engage in explicit ERS (Abaied and Perry, 2021;Aguayo et al, 2021;Barner, 2016;Bartoli, et al, 2016;Gillen-O'Neel et al, 2021;Pinsoneault, 2015;Underhill, 2016Underhill, , 2018Vittrup, 2018). Despite evidence that children learn about race and perceive racial differences at a young age (Pahlke et al, 2012), many parents think that young children cannot understand race (Vittrup, 2018), race is not salient to young children (Aguayo et al, 2021;Pinsoneault, 2015), or discussions of race would be harmful to young children (Gillen-O'Neel et al, 2021;Underhill, 2016Underhill, , 2018.…”

“…They prefer to socialize children when they are older, such as in their teenage years. Teenage children are more likely than younger children to raise explicit questions about ethnicity–race ( Bartoli et al, 2016 ; Aguayo et al, 2021 ), enabling parents to perceive they are ready for ERS. Third, children’s inquiries about ethnicity–race prompt some parents to engage in ERS ( Gillen-O’Neel et al, 2021 ; Vittrup, 2018 ).…”

“…Scholars should examine who initiates ERS discussions and what prompts them ( Abaied and Perry, 2021 ; Eveland and Nathanson, 2020 ) and assess bidirectional relations between parents and children ( Aguayo et al, 2021 ; Barner, 2016 ; Gillen-O’Neel et al, 2021 ) via designs in which parent–child ERS discussions are observed in real time ( Abaied and Perry, 2021 ; Pahlke et al, 2020 ). Future research could examine additional mediators and possible mechanisms that connect parental ERS to children’s outcomes ( Pahlke et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Finally, future quantitative research should employ longitudinal designs to improve the understanding of causal relations. Longitudinal research on age of socialization could determine whether different ERS strategies are used at different ages, children interpret the same messages differently across time, and children’s outcomes vary accordingly ( Aguayo et al, 2021 ; Hughes et al, 2009 ).…”

New conceptualizations and directions in the study of family context.

“…The present set of articles is precisely concerned with these proximal microcontexts, what takes place within them, how they inform and condition theoretical propositions, and how their study can further a richer and more comprehensive understanding of family life. Several articles make creative use of structured or naturalistic video or audio recordings to capture cultural messaging (Aguayo et al, 2021), expressed positive emotion in naturalistic contexts (McNeil & Repetti, 2021), reliable assessment of behavior and affect from preschool children in the home (Micheletti et al, 2020), conversational exchanges between couples (Timmons et al, 2021), and sequences of solicitation and disclosure between adolescent and parent (Mounts & Valentiner, 2021). Another made use of observation and self-reports to classify triadic (mother–father–child) social networks within families (Heshmati, Blackard, Beckmann, & Chipidza, 2020).…”