Language, Immigration, and Socioeconomic Status: A Latent Class Analytic Approach to Parental Predictors of Child Behavior Outcomes

Parent characteristics at childbirth influence children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors, which are critical determinants of broader socioemotional outcomes. The current study employed a longitudinal, person-centered, latent class analytic (LCA) approach to examine subgroup differences among key parent characteristics and associations with children’s distal internalizing and externalizing behavior outcomes. The study sample (n = 2460) was drawn from baseline and Year 9 waves of the nationally representative Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Project. LCA results supported a 3-class solution to the data, comprising a married, well-educated, wealthy, English-speaking, U.S.-born subgroup; an unmarried, English-speaking, U.S.-born subgroup with low SES and educational attainment levels; and an immigrant, Spanish-preferred, low-SES, low educational attainment subgroup with moderate marriage probability. Children of the wealthy subgroup demonstrated the lowest internalizing and externalizing behavior scores, followed by the low-SES, Spanish-preferred subgroup. Children of the low-SES, English-speaking subgroup had the highest internalizing and externalizing scores. Results suggest a protective effect for children of the immigrant, Spanish-preferred subgroup despite low parental SES and educational attainment levels.