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Latina Mothers’ Cultural Beliefs About Their Children, Parental Roles, and Education: Implications for Effective and Empowering Home-School Partnerships

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Abstract

Parents’ cultural beliefs about children, education, and their caregiving roles can influence both the parent–child and parent-school relationships. Given the centrality of the mother–child relationship in Mexican families, mothers were situated as experts in their children’s development and education in the present investigation. Specifically, the childrearing and educational beliefs of six immigrant Latina mothers (five Mexican, one South American) of first-grade children were examined, as well as their beliefs about their roles in their children’s lives. Qualitative descriptive analyses revealed the women’s belief in the centrality of the maternal role, as well as the traditional cultural values of familismo and educación. Five themes that further illuminated the nature and functions of mothers’ cultural beliefs were generated; namely, the salience of relationships with significant others in achieving in school. Educators and schools might well build on this knowledge to create spaces that are open to the perspectives of Latina mothers, and to forge more effective and empowering partnerships with Latino/a families in children’s early and later school years.

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Notes

  1. Although there were a total of seven Latina families in the ethnographic subset of STS families, the interview transcript of one Latina mother was purposively not selected for the present analyses, since the reported household income of the mother was disproportionately higher than that of the other mothers included in the ethnographic subsample. It is also important to note that I did not conduct the interviews; hence, this is a secondary analysis of qualitative interview data from the STS.

  2. For clarity, the in-depth interview data analyzed here come from a single interview with each mother, conducted in the spring of their child’s first grade year.

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  1. Department of Human Development, Wheelock College, 200 The Riverway, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Tina M. Durand

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  1. Tina M. Durand
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Correspondence to Tina M. Durand.

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Durand, T.M. Latina Mothers’ Cultural Beliefs About Their Children, Parental Roles, and Education: Implications for Effective and Empowering Home-School Partnerships. Urban Rev 43, 255–278 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-010-0167-5

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