The Role of Parental Language Acculturation in the Formation of Social Capital: Differential Effects on High-risk Children

Abstract

This person-centered study examines the extent to which parents’ language dominance influences the effects of an after school, multi-family group intervention, FAST, on low-income children’s emotional and behavioral outcomes via parents’ relations with other parents and with school staff. Social capital resides in relationships of trust and shared expectations, which are highly dependent on whether parents share the language of other parents and teachers. This study is based on a community epidemiologically-defined sample of Latino families (N = 3,091) in San Antonio, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. Latent profile analyses revealed three language profiles of parents across the two cities: English-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and bilingual. Path models revealed that FAST did not have a direct or indirect effect on children’s emotional and behavior functioning, although FAST increased parent-parent and parent-school social capital among Spanish-dominant parents in Arizona and these parent-parent relations were associated with better child outcomes. Implications for interventions are discussed.

Parenting Influences on Latino Children’s Social Competence in the First Grade: Parental Depression and Parent Involvement at Home and School

“…We tested parent language dominance as a moderator of the magnitude of relationships between variables because we expected that Spanish-dominant parents would have lower levels of school-based educational involvement due to language barriers, and to some degree, cultural barriers between these parents and school staff, as found in other research [11, 48]. Contrary to expectation, Spanish-dominant parents had slightly higher levels of educational involvement at school than English-dominant parents.…”

“…What may be unique to the Spanish-dominant parents in our sample is that while they may have higher levels of educational involvement in school than their English-dominant counterparts, their primary ties to the school appear to be in the form of parent-parent relations, rather than parent-teacher relations [48]. Thus, while language is an important barrier between immigrant parents and their children’s teachers, the school is a place where parents can get support from similar parents in the community [48].…”

The emergence of social capital in low-income Latino elementary schools

“…After the intervention, parents in treatment schools knew more parents on average and were more likely to share expectations with other parents in their schools as compared to parents in control schools (Gamoran et al, 2012; Turley, Gamoran, Turner, & Fish, 2012). In addition, FAST was most effective in connecting the group historically most isolated from the school, the least acculturated Latino families (Valdez, Mills, Bohlig, & Kaplan, 2013). While these papers use rigorous quantitative methods to examine whether the program impacts school-based networks, they do not explore the processes by which the program achieves these effects.…”

A Culturally Sensitive Approach to Large-Scale Prevention Studies: A Case Study of a Randomized Controlled Trial With Low-Income Latino Communities

“…We focus on conceptual and practical examples rather than empirical outcomes, which are reported elsewhere (see Fiel, Haskins, & Turley, 2013; Gamoran, Turley, Turner, & Fish, 2012; Shoji, Haskins, Rangel, & Sorensen, 2014; Valdez, Mills, Bohlig, & Kaplan, 2013; Valdez, Lewis Valentine, & Padilla, 2013). We make several contributions to the extant literature.…”

“… 2 For empirical examples of within-group analyses from the larger study see Gamoran, Turley, Turner, and Fish (2012) and Valdez, Mills, Bohlig, and Kaplan (2013). …”