Start with acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of Latinx families and communities

The past 20 years have seen dramatic shifts in the location of Latinx communities, stretching beyond traditional jurisdictions in California, Texas, and New York into areas that are much less familiar with their needs and cultures. Indeed, the label “Latinx” does not capture the diversity of Latinx-identifying families and individuals born and raised in the United States versus recent and earlier arrivals who hail from different countries of origin and heritages, and who are fluent in different Spanish dialects and indigenous languages. (Latinx is a gender-neutral term used in the United States to refer to Latino/Hispanic individuals of Latin American or Caribbean heritage.)

This diversity can sometimes overwhelm rigid and unfamiliar systems, which can contribute to frustration, confusion, and tensions in receiving communities. Correspondingly, fear and distrust among Latinx populations and between Latinx populations and other groups can escalate. What may actually be misinformation or confusion among Latinx parents can be internalized as failure. In reality, Latinx parents bring with them hope, optimism, a sense of family cohesion, and a strong work ethic, which are key strengths that support children’s success.

Three key strengths: Optimism, work ethic, and family cohesion

It is hard to overstate the optimism that Latinx immigrants have today and have always had when they arrive in the United States. They feel they have had to risk everything, leaving behind family and the life they knew to move to a better life, one filled with hope of economic opportunity and promise for their children’s futures. This optimism carries them through difficult times. Such positivity protects their well-being and mental health and drives success.

Service and public infrastructure such as transportation, internet access, and schools can be extended in ways that capitalize on co-location of community organizations and neighborhoods that parents trust.

Optimism is just one of many strengths Latinx families bring with them, whether they are born in the United States or are recent immigrants. Their capacities include a strong work ethic, with many Latinx parents working long hours and producing high-quality output, rarely missing work or calling in sick, often at the risk of losing earned income and with no mechanism for recourse in case of injury or emergency.

This strong work ethic goes hand in hand with an equally strong commitment to their children, ensuring that they receive proper nutrition and feel safe, and attending to their children’s learning and education. As in all families, Latinx parents balance the competing demands of being a worker and a parent, and ensure that their children get not only resources but also their time.

Family cohesion is the hallmark of adapting and thriving in the United States. Latinx families provide love and support for each other in the form of social and financial capital. The strong family bond can protect them from adversity and provides a personal safety net that helps the family not only survive, but in many cases, thrive. An integral part of the family is the belief that children thrive when raised by two parents—mothers and fathers.

Photo: David Beoulve. Creative Commons.

Fathers’ role is not only to provide financially for their children, but also to be there for them and be involved in day-to-day parenting. Latinx fathers have a strong commitment to their family and their children, and their involvement in their lives matters for the development of children’s basic language and social skills. Fathers and mothers also co-parent and combine resources to ensure that their children have more opportunities than they had. 

Celebrating learning and education

The value placed on education and learning is infused throughout stages of child development, as demonstrated during children’s earliest years. Both Latinx mothers and fathers engage in active storytelling which is sustained through support of formal schooling.

Investments in early education in the United States have yielded high enrollment in programs serving preschool-age Latinx children, and the benefits to Latinx children, including dual language learners, sometimes outpace those of other groups of  children. Families also benefit from the role early education and care play in supporting parenting, access to other resources in the community, and connections to social networks.

The strong Latino parent work ethic goes hand in hand with an equally strong commitment to their children. As in all families, Latinx parents balance the competing demands of being a worker and a parent, and ensure that their children get not only resources but also their time.

Indeed, Latinx fourth and fifth graders’ math and reading achievement has increased over time, as have Latinx high school graduation rates and subsequent enrolment in post-secondary education programs. When researchers visit Latinx homes, parents ask about where and how they can purchase the educational toys used to observe children’s play. It is not unusual for young children to ask their teachers for more books to bring home from school, declaring: “One is for me, and one is for Mom.” Modelling good behavior is a tool parents use to inculcate in their children a love of learning, with many parents “doing homework” with their children. Family members, and sometimes entire communities, come together to participate in and witness schooling milestones, such as graduations.

Educational preparedness for many Latinx children includes fluency in two languages, mastering English and Spanish. Schools that embrace equity-oriented practices – including strategies to facilitate family engagement and family-school partnerships, and extended learning opportunities – have reduced disparities in Latinx students’ school progress compared to peers.

A foundation of good health

Across many metrics of children’s health, Latinx children fare well, notably in low rates of infant mortality. Latinx parents care deeply about the health of their children and the foundation that good health provides for their children’s educational attainment and economic opportunities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Latinx families, like many other families, expressed concern about the social isolation and mental health of their children. They also experienced high rates of economic, food, and housing insecurities, which threatened the well-being of their children.

Yet their abilities to meet the physical and mental health needs of their children are often hindered by structural barriers to medical care, public services, and other resources needed to support children’s well-being. As one example, 12 states, many in the U.S. South, have chosen not to expand Medicaid, a health insurance program for low-income persons. Even with insurance, Latinx families can face a variety of barriers to care, including limited time off from work to obtain medical care, limited access to transportation, and a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate services in the communities in which they live.

Pandemic challenges

Optimism can wear thin when families are faced with health risks and economic uncertainty over a prolonged period. During the first few months of the pandemic, the mental health of Latinx parents was initially buoyed by their optimism and strong co-parenting support, but high rates of unemployment, especially among Latina parents, reduced household income. Not all eligible Latinx families received pandemic-related government assistance.

Although most Latinx families did their best to keep children engaged in learning activities at home, Latinx children’s learning suffered because they did not receive the support they needed for education transmitted remotely or online. Latinx children did not have consistent access to technology or equipment, such as extra iPads or laptops. In some cases, children missed online testing because digitally accessible equipment, including a smart phone, was shared by an entire household. 

As Latinx parents struggled to cope with extra demands, Latinx teens and young adults were expected to help their younger siblings with learning.

Photo: Jhon David. Unsplash.

Opportunity for policy investment and the price of policy failure

These and other stories speak to Latinx family strengths. How can these strengths of optimism, work ethic, and family cohesion be harnessed – and not undermined – by investments in education, health care, and child care policy?

Latinx children arrive at formal schooling curious and eager to learn. Although Latinx children quickly catch up to their peers in some academic domains, lack of support for their home language and cultural barriers contribute to dashed hopes and disillusionment with educational opportunities. As economic pressures on the family, youth are forced to disengage from the educational system as they face competing demands, including working to financially support their family or sharing in the responsibility of raising younger siblings. This path can lead to lost years of formal education.

Child care providers have difficulty accommodating the complexities of work schedules among some Latinx parents, and early education and care arrangements are not always culturally responsive, lacking support for Spanish-speaking or dual-language parents and children and failing to adequately accommodate children with special needs. The supply of child care slots is low, resulting in fewer options to reconcile work and parenting commitments.

Many Latinx families with children are left out of health insurance because of discrimination against individuals whose immigration status is not regularized. Latina adolescents have some of the highest rates of depression and suicide attempts in the United States. Longer-term consequences are documented in poor cardiovascular health, diabetes, and suboptimal functioning in adulthood.

When family cohesion faces such stressors, how far can the safety net it provides its members be stretched before it snaps? It is hard to know precisely. Low-wage work is deeply problematic, setting tight limits on what parents can do for their children. When a mother works two or three jobs, who cares for her children? When can a mother or father engage with the school if they are both working long hours? When is there time to navigate the health care system?

How can parents ensure that child care is good? If work is unreliable and unstable, with no benefits and few hours required on short notice, children may have to be placed in three or four different child care arrangements. Typically, there is no formal child care on weekends, so low-paid Latinx families are forced into an informal network of supports, some of which are not of very high quality.

How do parents square the circle of wanting to spend loving time with their children and earning enough money to feed their family? One father we know works three jobs, getting home at 11 pm every night. His two-year-old naps until 10:30 pm, then is wakened so she can play with her father for half an hour – but she is tired the next day.

A manifesto for change

It is time for public programs and services to re-envision their engagement with Latinx families and support Latinx children’s paths to success. They must also respect the rights of Latinx individuals: Most young children of immigrants are U.S.-born, thus have rights and privileges equal to all other U.S. citizens such that their parents’ immigration status is not a barrier.

Service and public infrastructure more generally—including transportation, internet access and schools—can also be extended in ways that capitalize on co-location of community organizations and neighborhoods that parents trust. Community schools have proven their worth in, for example, improving access to children’s health care and reducing the administrative burden on hard-pressed parents of accessing other services.

Latinx families bring such strengths – so much energy, skill, and commitment – to raising their children well. A public commitment to policies and practices that harness and align with these strengths can go a long way to recouping returns to investments.

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Why might Latina teenagers spend more time with family? We studied data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) between 2003 and 2019, and found that differences in household structure, family structure, youth’s work hours, parents’ education, parents’ work, and geographic region could not fully explain differences in time Latinos’/as’ time spent with family versus with peers.

“Extra time with family, especially for Latina youth, could be due to differences in attitudes and values related to familismo and marianismo.”

Instead, we believe the extra time with family, especially for Latina youth, could be due to differences in attitudes and values related to familismo and marianismo. Familismo attitudes place a high value on family closeness, cohesion, and reciprocity. Marianismo involves the belief that girls should be nurturing and self-sacrificing for family.

Extra time with family, especially for Latina youth, could also be both an asset and a constraint. Several studies show that when familismo is strong, there is likely to be less family conflict, lower adolescent-parent conflict, more tight-knit families, and fewer suicide attempts. Yet, extra time with family could be a constraint on Latino/a youth if familismo values such as spending time together are not shared between parents and children or if time with family is burdensome or overwhelming. Additionally, extra time with family could be detrimental if it entails saying no to opportunities outside the household, such as educational or extracurricular activities, or even going to college away from home.

Other findings from our research

In our analysis of the ATUS from 2003 to 2019, we examined daily family contact patterns –  the total daily minutes spent with both nuclear and extended family – among Latino/a 15- to 18 year-olds. For the sake of comparison, we also included Black and White youth of the same age. Opportunities for family time may depend on who lives in the household, so we focused on youth who had focal family members (e.g., siblings, grandparents) living in their households.

On average, Latino/a youth spent more time with their parents than did Black youth, and more time with siblings than did both White and Black youth. Latino boys spent less time with parents, but more time with siblings, than did White boys.

“It may be time to reconsider what we think of as a “typical” U.S. teenager who distances themselves from family.”

Our analysis yielded some unexpected results: We thought Latino/a youth in immigrant households would spend more time with family than Latino/a youth whose parents were born in the United States, yet we found no such differences. Latino boys in immigrant households did spend more time with siblings but also spent less time with household adult relatives than Latino boys in non-immigrant households. We also thought Latino/a youth might spend more time with extended family than their White and Black counterparts did, but we found few racial/ethnic differences in time with extended families among the three groups.

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About 33 million children worldwide are displaced or in refugee camps, and many lack any form of education due to the pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many children in the United States are struggling with remote learning and emotionally distressed by the absence of social interactions. But significant numbers of children in the world do not have access to the Internet or to any education during the pandemic.

Children are our future. Yet about 33 million children worldwide are displaced and most of them are out of school. Refugee children are a case in point. More than 92% of refugee children live in developing countries. Lack of education during COVID-19 has the potential to become an even more destructive pandemic.

Rohingya children are receiving no education during the pandemic

In August 2017, more than 742,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar. More than 800,0000 Rohingya refugees now live in Cox’s Bazar in the largest and most crowded refugee camp in the world, and more than half are children and adolescents. Prior to the pandemic, children in Rohingya refugee camps were not allowed to receive education in local schools, barring them from opportunities to integrate into the local community in Bangladesh.

As a result of the lockdown due to the pandemic, about 315,000 Rohingya children and adolescents lost access to education in the camps’ more than 6,000 learning institutions, which closed in mid-March 2020. In January 2020, the government of Bangladesh promised to give Rohingya children access to education and skills training, but we know little about the fine points of the pledge because the pandemic has stalled any progress, creating an education gap ever since.

“They are neglected, lack proper nutrition and health care, do not have access to any education, and are caught in a limbo of an uncertain future, from which there seems no apparent escape. It is time to give these children a fair chance at life.”

What is being done to close the education gap?

For many decades, Rohingya parents in the Rakhine state of Myanmar have seen their children being killed, maimed, violated, abducted, attacked in schools and hospitals, and denied a chance at a decent life. The situation was so bad for these and other refugee children worldwide that in 1999, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1261 to protect children in conflict regions for the first time. But Rohingyas in Bangladesh continue to live in danger. The lack of access to education is likely to result in parents marrying their children off at an early age or losing them to human trafficking. This means that generations of children will not realize their potential.

Considering these issues, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner of Bangladesh agreed that “it will definitely help” to educate children in the camp. Yet despite similar language from policymakers, a government directive in 2019 banned Internet access in the camp, so during the pandemic, even remote learning is not an option for children there, worsening the education gap.

Photo: taken at a learning center by Fatima Zahra in October 2019 (before the lockdown). It shows two siblings – getting ready to go home after school. Location: Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar.

The violence against children affects not only the refugees in the camp but also the social architecture of the host community. Refugee children in Bangladesh are a big part of the future of the country’s political economy and national security. Many fear that the inequalities and violence in the camps already contribute to enhanced violence in the host communities surrounding the camps.

How to right the wrong against refugee children in three steps

Sadly, the fate of Rohingya children in Bangladesh is similar to that of most refugee children in the world. They are neglected, lack proper nutrition and health care, lack access to any education, and are caught in a limbo of an uncertain future from which there seems no apparent escape. It is time to give these children a fair chance at life through three steps.

1. Access to high-quality education

First, children need access to high-quality education that is in both the children’s mother tongue and the language of the host country.

Language of instruction determines the effectiveness of education. It also determines how children perceive their future (in the host country) and how they are accepted as people from another country (their home country). Rohingya children were allowed some form of education in the Rohingya language before the pandemic in the informal learning institutes in the camps, but the host community looks down on Rohingya culture and language so the children did not learn about their home country.

“We often forget that refugee children are just like our children – and that they are in our space because they have nowhere to go. Governments,including the newly elected U.S. government, the private sector, and donors can step up their game and play a major role in supporting the future of refugee children.”

Bangladesh should give refugee children access to the curriculum in public schools in the country. This will create a cultural bridge between refugee and host community children. The Bangladeshi government has been very clear from the start that they do not want to do this. While learning one’s first language has tremendous benefits, it also helps facilitate learning another language (such as Bangla and English) when the children are living in Bangladesh. Children who speak the Rohingya language can build on the language and literacy they know to acquire another language.

2. Access to mental health support

Second, children in the camp need mental health support. Many children and adults in the camp are suffering from acute depression and anxiety. These children need teachers who are trained to support the learning of children who have experienced severe trauma, anxiety, and depression, and who continue to live with constant uncertainty.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the camps are invested in supporting children’s education – assistance from the local and national governments will mean they can scale their efforts in training teachers to extend high-quality education to the children in order to close the education gap.

3. Access to high-speed internet

Finally, people in the camp need access to high-speed Internet. The first two steps that are needed to improve education are possible only if refugee children have access to the outside world.

Using the Internet is crucial for children to access both education and mental health support. NGOs and companies can set up Wifi hotspots throughout the camp, as has been done in the past in other camps. Once that happens, children can access remote learning programs. Parents also need access to the relevant technologies (such as smartphones and the Internet) so they can oversee their children’s learning, which is instinctive for most parents.

As leading post-colonial scholarHomi Bhabha said, “the refugee condition makes the most stringent and severe demands on the national community or the ‘world community’ to recognize the global right of hospitality which is at the heart of human survival itself … for a ‘good life lived with others.'” We often forget that refugee children are just like our children – and that they are in our space because they have nowhere to go. Governments (including the newly elected U.S. government), the private sector, and donors can step up their game and play a major role in supporting the future of refugee children.

Closing the education gap for refugee children will move us one step closer to building a strong and diverse leadership for the world.

Header photo: taken during a focused group discussion with Rohingya children and adolescents about their learning preferences and aspirations as part of a research study at the South Asia Institute at Harvard University. The picture shows a child solving some basic math problems to demonstrate what he learned back in his school in Myanmar. Location: Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar.

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New data on test scores of five-year olds suggest supporting parents to balance work and care, and providing subsidised preschool daycare, could help to limit the consequences of income inequality for children.

Previous research on income inequality has shown that differences in early cognitive development between children from high-income and low-income families are greater in the USA than in other countries. A new research project shows that a given level of income inequality is associated with larger gaps in how five-year-olds complete cognitive tests (language and literacy) in the USA than in the UK, Australia and Canada.

Three researchers, Bruce Bradbury, Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook, explored the role of five factors known to be related to child development in reinforcing income inequalities: the extent to which children in different income groups live with both parents, the likelihood that children attend daycare, the likelihood that children have an immigrant parent, the average hours worked by mothers, and the likelihood that a child’s mother was very young when she gave birth. For all these factors, higher-income families in USA have a greater advantage over lower-income families than do their higher-income counterparts in other countries.

This finding is consistent with the policy conclusions derived from other research: income inequality’s contribution to unequal child development can be reduced by helping parents to balance work and care, and by providing subsidised preschool daycare.

Using existing income inequality studies in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada, the researchers compared five income groups across the four countries (using price adjustments to show all in US$):

Quintile 1 (Q1)            <$27K

Quintile 2 (Q2)            $27K-$44K

Quintile 3 (Q3)            $44K-$65K

Quintile 4 (Q4)            $65K-$96K

Quintile 5 (Q5)            > $96K

Previous work has shown that income itself is very important. A better income not only allows parents to invest more in their children (including living in a safer neighborhood), but also supports family stability and resilience to stress. Income inequality is greater in USA. Compared to all the other countries, a larger proportion of families in the USA are in the lowest income group. And compared to Australia and Canada, a larger proportion of families in the USA are in the highest income group.

But income is not the only factor that can drive inequality. Setting aside the fact that in USA a greater proportion of parents are in the very low and very high income groups, the difference in average cognitive test performance of children from the highest group (Q5) compared to the lowest group (Q1) is larger in the USA, though not very different from the UK. Strikingly, where the USA truly stands out is in how far the highest-income children (Q5) pull away from the middle-income group of children (Q3).

The researchers found that in the five areas, differences between the higher-income (Q5 and Q4) and middle-income (Q3) groups in the USA were significantly more pronounced than in other countries.

• Five-year-old children living with both biological parents

The difference in the proportion of five-year-olds living with both biological parents in Q4 and Q5 families versus Q3 families is considerably higher in the USA compared to the other countries.

Living with both biological parents is associated with better cognitive outcomes, so this factor may be contributing to the greater difference between average- and higher-income families in the USA.

• Attending center-based care before going to school

Q4 and Q5 parents in the USA are much more likely than Q3 parents to send children to preschool, compared to the other countries.

This is probably because preschool care is more subsidised in the other countries, so less exclusively available to the well-off. This disparity is likely to be linked to differences in average cognitive test scores.

• Proportion of children with an immigrant parent

Q4 and Q5 families in the USA are less likely than Q3 families to include an immigrant parent. In the other countries, Q4 and Q5 families are more likely to include an immigrant parent.

Having an immigrant parent is associated with additional difficulties associated with social integration. This finding suggests that higher-income children in the USA are less likely to be held back by such difficulties, on average.

• Average hours worked by mothers of five-year-olds

In the UK, Canada and Australia, mothers in higher-income families are likely to work considerably longer hours than middle-income mothers, which could be associated with lower cognitive scores for their five-year-olds. But in the USA, mothers in higher-income families work less, potentially combining the benefits of higher income and greater parental presence.

• Proportion of mothers under age 20 at childbirth

In the UK and Australia, very few mothers in either the middle- or high-income groups were less than 20 years old when their child was born. In the USA, however, the proportion of such mothers is considerably higher in the middle-income group. Having a young mother is known to be associated with lower cognitive performance at age five.

The research project didn’t look at some other potential factors that could be related to income inequality. For one, the cost of high-quality daycare is higher in the USA because the other countries provide more universal publicly funded care. That means access to high-quality daycare is more exclusive to higher-income groups in the USA. (This is offset, however, by substantial programmes, such as Head Start, for very low-income families in the USA.) Another key factor may be residential segregation: more segregation exacerbates income quality because it leads to more concentration of advantages and disadvantage between income groups in different neighborhoods.

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Researchers analysed data from 18,716 14- to 15-year-olds from immigrant families in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries) and looked for explanations for this finding. Data were collected from children of both immigrant and of native origin. The study examined five factors:

• Family cohesion (closeness, time together, harmony)
• Parental warmth (love, care, understanding)
• Parental monitoring
• Parental interest in schoolwork
• Parental separation

The researchers measured these factors and also asked the children whether they experienced internalising problems (such as worry, depression, anxiety, headaches, and difficulty sleeping) or externalising problems (such as aggression and bad behaviour).

Like other research, the study found that the children in immigrant families have better mental health than native children (though the difference is not very large).

Among Middle Eastern and South European families, nearly all the difference in mental health between immigrant and native families could be accounted for by family factors – more cohesion, parental warmth, parental monitoring and parental interest in schoolwork. For Asian and African families, family factors accounted for some of the difference. Latin American immigrants, however, showed higher mental health despite higher frequency of family separation and weaker family relations.

The researchers propose other factors that might be at play to account for the rest of the difference. Perhaps immigrant families are more likely to have parents who are healthy and ambitious. Perhaps the children in these families are comparing their lot favourably with their previous situation, and this could be a factor in improving their mental health.

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Funding parental support for reading is more cost-effective than funding classroom support – and is particularly beneficial for boys.

Many parents underestimate their children’s reading potential. It’s not unusual for them to say: “My boy’s not that good at reading, and that’s the way he is.” So they’re less inclined to make an effort to read with their children. They tend to believe that it won’t help much, that their children’s skills and abilities are fixed.

This “fixed mind-set” is mistaken. Children who read more get better at it, whether or not they are good at the outset. Furthermore, our research shows particular improvement among children whose parents have this mind-set, if they are offered advice on the benefits of helping and a concrete way to support the child. In these cases, children can make significant progress in both reading and writing. The improvements are at least as significant as those achieved through methods that support classroom learning. They’re also a lot less expensive, which suggests that educators should reconsider how they spend their funds on reading support.

Our findings raise many fascinating possibilities that are currently the subject of further research. First, might the same problem of parental underestimation apply to other basic skills, such as numeracy? If so, could encouragement of more positive attitudes and giving parents straightforward ways to help their children be similarly cost-effective in improving children’s mathematical skills?

Poorer children benefited

“The biggest improvements were for children whose parents had previously strongly underestimated their capacity to read better.”

Our insights may also begin to offer what the social sciences value highly – new ways to reduce the impact that socioeconomic status typically imposes on children’s achievement. We know that poverty is linked to lower expectations of children’s performance. Our findings show that with the right supports, parents with such low expectations can be helped to bring about significant improvements in their children’s educational outcomes. The improvements we identified were found even among poorer parents and immigrants.

Talking about reading

Our randomised trial involved 1,587 children aged 8 to 9 from 72 classrooms in Denmark. We gave parents a booklet and access to an online video explaining that their child’s reading ability could be improved, whether the child was already good or bad at reading.

Second grade is when children typically start to read for themselves, making the leap from decoding single words to comprehending text and relating it to their own lives. Parents talking with their children about a book before, during, and after reading can be a way to help them shift from decoding to proper understanding.

That’s why, for our study, we used what’s called a “dialogical reading model”. We provided some books and specific guidance on how to talk about books with children in a constructive and positive manner. So, for example, before children began the first page, parents encouraged them to read the front title and the back cover to gain an overview. Then they helped with difficult words as the children read. Once children had finished, parents were advised to talk to them about what they had read and how it related to their lives. We recommended that parents praise the children’s effort, rather than performance or results.

Photo: Ann Fisher. Creative Commons.

Largest reading gains among underestimated children

We found that such involvement was associated with the biggest changes among children whose parents had previously strongly underestimated their capacity to read better. During the two-month experiment, the reading age of such children improved by six months, compared to a four-month average improvement for all children in the study. Their writing also got better. Meanwhile, the control group, not subject to the programme, gained two months in reading age, as one would have expected.

Our data don’t allow us to separate fully the effect of shifting parental mind-sets from the effect of reading support strategies. However, our findings clearly show that the biggest impact was on children whose parents had most underestimated their potential to get better at reading.

We also found that the rate of reading improvement tailed off about seven months after the experiment began. This suggests that support for parents’ positive attitudes – and the provision of reading strategies – may need to be strengthened over time to ensure that they sustain their efforts.

Approach is good value for money

“A similar approach might work to enhance children’s numeracy and social and emotional skills. We’re designing studies to examine this question.”

Engaging parents to directly support children’s reading is much cheaper than increasing the time children spend with teachers in school. We have run randomised trials that increased children’s lessons and the numbers of co-teachers in the classroom. These changes had effects of similar magnitude on reading skills but cost at least twice as much.

We suspect that a similar approach might work to enhance children’s numeracy and social and emotional skills. Parents’ views of their children’s reading potential may reflect more deep-seated attitudes about their skills in general. We are designing studies to examine this question.

Our researchers are also trying to assess how parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds may underestimate the effects of spending time with their children. Our studies so far suggest that people from lower socioeconomic groups don’t fully appreciate the positive impact that they could have on their children’s educational achievement. We are looking for ways to reverse this underestimation, so that children enjoy more positive support in learning. This work may help to alter the strong relationship between parent’s poorer educational background and children’s lower educational achievements.

It’s also worth noting that the reading improvements children gained in our study were more pronounced for boys than girls. This may reflect the fact that the boys generally performed worse at the outset, leaving more room for improvement. However, it may also be that parents are more inclined to underestimate boys’ reading potential. If so, reversing this inclination could prove particularly fruitful for increasing boys’ achievement.

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Mexican-American youth are better family members and citizens when they have a strong sense of their ethnic identity finds study of young people.

There are those who think that Mexican-Americans don’t make good Americans. Our research suggests the opposite. We’ve found that the more young people retained their Mexican-American identity, the better they behaved as family members and, ultimately, as citizens. America might actually be a nicer place if more – rather than fewer – young Mexican-American people felt a strong sense of their ethnic identity.

We surveyed the cultural values, ethnic identity and behaviors of hundreds of Mexican-American young people from fifth to 12th grade. We found strong interconnections between whether these young people felt a sense of being Mexican-American and what are known as “prosocial” behaviors, such as kindness, helping, sharing, cooperating, and volunteering. Learning more about Mexican-American culture seemed to be integral to behaving well toward family members and, later, becoming good citizens. This picture challenges stereotypes of this ethnic group as lawbreakers. The virtuous relationship we detected between ethnic awareness and prosocial behaviors was true for both girls and boys.

Family support and obligation

We found that parents who were devoted to values of family support, family obligation, and family membership were also more likely to instill in their children an enhanced sense of themselves as Mexican-Americans. In turn, children who learned about and valued their ethnicity more when they were young tended to be more family-oriented.

“Many qualities that we value in child-rearing, in robust families and in the development of good citizenship are intricately tied up with young Mexican-American people retaining and expressing their ethnicity.”

At the core of their value system was a desire to help their families, rather than simply focusing on individualistic needs. In turn, these young people tended, as they grew older, to develop behaviors that helped people other than immediate family members. We found, for example, that young people who strongly identified as Mexican-American were more likely to help someone who sought support, who was emotionally upset, or who faced a dire situation.

Some voices in the US and elsewhere in the world increasingly suggest that immigrant identity is more of a problem than an asset. But our research indicates that—at least with respect to Mexican-Americans—many of the qualities that we value in child-rearing, in robust families, and in the development of good citizenship are intricately tied up with retaining and expressing ethnicity.

Photo: Eneas De Troya. Creative Commons.

It was particularly important for the relationships we saw if mothers endorsed their children’s Mexican heritage; their impact was greater than the fathers’. Moms’ influence was more strongly linked to the features we observed that seem to spring from the young people’s sense of ethnic identity – commitment to supporting family and, as they grew older, to prosocial behaviors in the community. Other findings, largely among European American families, have similarly suggested that mothers may have more influence than fathers on how young people develop prosocial behaviors. However, this generalization should be taken with a grain of salt: our observation might simply reflect the fact that mothers spend more time with teens than fathers do. Mothers may also be more likely to expose young people to behaviors that support prosocial development, such as expressions of sorrow or the comforting of others.

Migrant children are not simply assimilated

Our study also reflects a wider truth, demonstrated by other research—immigrant children don’t lose all the qualities or behaviors associated with their heritage culture and simply become Americans. Mexican-Americans do typically adopt some of the qualities of the mainstream culture. However, largely through family influences, they also acquire and retain some of the characteristics of their ethnic culture that are useful to them and our society. Further, some core Mexican-American values are likely to be acquired even by young people who have lived in the United States all of their lives. Hence, although third- or fourth-generation Mexican-Americans may not speak Spanish, they may still retain their culture’s commitment to family and helping others.

“Learning more about Mexican-American culture seemed to be intragral to these young people behaving well towards their family members and, when older, to becoming good citizens.”

Developing an American identity

This picture of loss and retention plays its part in shaping the notion of being “American,” which represents the integration of identities and behaviors of people from many cultures. For example, a very strong Protestant work ethic is often viewed as a core American value. However, this cultural value may have actually originated from the early northern European settlers who first came to the country that was to become the United States. It may be that some qualities of Mexican-American culture – commitment to family and others – may likewise become embedded in the evolving, broad American identity.

Our research offers insights into how young Mexican-Americans also acquire values that are more associated with mainstream American society, such as valuing material success and individual achievement. The study shows that these values were not associated with their family influences. These mainstream values are likely to be acquired through the association with influences outside the family, such as people beyond home, schools, and media.

Hence Mexican-American youth may well be exposed to two cultural education processes – one involving parents and family and one involving broader mainstream influences. Mexican-American young people thereby acquire and retain two sets of cultural behaviors and values that may be expressed as situations demand. Just as Mexican-Americans may become multilingual, they may also become multicultural and mentally agile, drawing on different values in different circumstances.

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Yang Hou at the University of Texas at Austin, working with colleagues, looked at data from interviews in 2001 with 444 Chinese-American families with 12- to 15-year-old children. 350 of these families were interviewed again four years later.

The researchers looked at how both mothers and fathers experienced discrimination (for example, “people assume my English is poor”, “I am treated with less courtesy than other people”). They asked parents about their own symptoms of depression and about their hostility toward their spouses. They asked the adolescents about mothers’ and fathers’ hostility toward them, and about their own symptoms of depression and delinquent behaviors.

The researchers found a number of links.

• Parents who perceive discrimination against them are more likely to report depressive symptoms and hostility towards their spouses.

• A father is likely to display more hostility towards his children if he reports depressive symptoms and if the mother is more hostile towards him. Neither link was found in relation to mothers. Could this be because the role of a Chinese-American father is less defined by convention and so the father-child relationship is more vulnerable to disruption?

• Fathers’ depressive symptoms are linked to mothers increased hostility towards their children, but not the other way round. Could this be because mothers (relative to fathers) are more aware of and concerned about spouses’ depressive symptoms, as studies have shown that women are more sensitive to others’ emotions than men?

• A mother’s increased hostility to her children is linked to increased mood and behavior problems in her children. There is less of a link in the case of fathers, but the difference between mothers and fathers is small. Could this be because maternal hostility contrasts with adolescents’ expectations of maternal parenting, as children expect more warmth from their mothers than from their fathers?

The research suggests that helping improved family interactions may be a useful way of reducing the negative impact of parents’ experiences of discrimination. It also suggests it would be more effective if help engaged both parents.

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Parents of third-generation Hispanic young people (meaning both parents were born in the USA) find it easier to use school-based social capital – connections with the school and access to the school’s help – to prepare children for college. In contrast, parents of first-generation Hispanic youth (meaning the children were born outside the USA) benefit more from connections with other parents to get their children into college.

Researchers, Sarah Ryan and Robert Ream, looked at Hispanic families of different generations and how parents access help through different social networks and different forms of “social capital”. They examined:

• How often parents contacted the child’s school about a student’s academic progress and future plans.
• How often parents advised their children about college preparation.
• How often parents interacted with parents of other students, for example, by exchanging favours and advice on college education.

They used data collected from 1,880 Hispanic young people between 2002 and 2006 as part of the Education Longitudinal Study.

Overall, Hispanic young people remain less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree than white students who are similar in other characteristics—a significant problem of inequality. Never before has college education been so important for economic and social wellbeing.

The research shows that social capital, though often overlooked, can help support college preparation and successful enrollment among Hispanic youth. Schools and communities can do more to support Hispanic parents as they help their children prepare for four-year college. But this support must acknowledge the unique needs and assets of Hispanic parents across student immigrant generations.

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