Parental Influences on Adolescents’ Negative Attitudes Toward Immigrants

Abstract

Attitudes toward immigrants are a core component of adolescents' social identities. Although in a globalized world positive attitudes are functional, negative views toward immigrant are widespread. This study investigates the parent-adolescent transmission of attitudes toward immigrants between age 12 and 16. In a longitudinal five-wave cohort-sequential multi-informant survey study on German adolescents (N = 1289; 52.9 % female) and their parents (mothers N = 772; fathers N = 654), self-reported attitudes toward immigrants were measured at each time point. Changes in the adolescents' attitudes were predicted by maternal and paternal self-reported attitudes across time. Predictions of short-term changes revealed that the major effect of the parents' attitudes takes place in early adolescence (between grade 6 and 7). The prediction of the adolescents' long-term attitude changes indicates that these effects sustain until the age of 16. No between-parent differences were found. The results are discussed in terms of early adolescence being a sensitive period for parental effects on the development of adolescents' attitudes toward immigrants.

Young People's Perceptions of Europe in a Time of Change

“…Some studies analyzing adolescents' attitudes toward immigrants have highlighted how parents' and peers' tolerance and xenophobia as well as inter-group friendships affect relative changes in students' pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant attitudes (Davies, Tropp, Aron, Pettigrew, & Wright, 2011;Degner & Dalege, 2013;Gniewosz & Noack, 2015;Miklikowska, 2017;van Zalk, Kerr, van Zalk, & Stattin, 2013).…”

Populist Upheavals: What can we do?

“…The awareness of the overwhelming influence of parents on the formation of xenophobic attitudes is also very important [45,46] as well as the knowledge of the inverse relationship between the ability to be friendly and tolerant towards strangers [36,47,48].…”

Carola Suárez-Orozco, Mona M. Abo-Zena, and Amy Kerivan Marks: Transitions: The Development of Children of Immigrants

“…However, the systematic selection of illustrative studies helps confirm the authority of the arguments and conclusions presented. The analyses also gain legitimacy as they support and join many important studies that focus on immigrant adolescents' experiences in their families (Kam and Lazarevic 2014;Roche et al 2015; and other acculturation contexts (Titzmann and Jugert 2015;Camacho and Fuligni 2015) as well as circumstances that shape adolescents' own attitudes toward immigrants (Gniewosz and Noack 2015;van Zalk and Kerr 2014). Despite this impressive research, gaps remain.…”