Links between parenting styles, parent–child academic interaction, parent–school interaction, and early academic skills and social behaviors in young children of English-speaking Caribbean immigrants

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Abstract

This study examined the influence of parenting styles, parent–child academic involvement at home, and parent–school contact on academic skills and social behaviors among kindergarten-age children of Caribbean immigrants. Seventy immigrant mothers and fathers participated in the study. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that fathers’ authoritarian parenting style was negatively associated with and father–school contact was positively associated with receptive skills, vocabulary, and composite scores over and above that of mothers’ contributions in these areas. Fathers’ authoritative parenting style and father–child academic interaction at home were positively related to children's social behaviors. Mothers’ authoritarian parenting style was negatively and mother–school contact was positively associated with children's social behaviors. Analyses indicated that fathers’ parenting carried the weight of influence over mothers’ parenting for facilitating both child academic skills and social behaviors. The roles of parenting styles, parent–academic activities, and parent–school contacts in early schooling are discussed.

Section snippets

Parenting styles and academic skills and social behaviors

Parental socialization practices have been identified as critical in determining children's cognitive and social development in diverse ethnic and cultural groups (Aunola & Nurmi, 2005; Chao, 2001, Lansford et al., 2005; Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992). Effective socialization behaviors such as the display of warmth and acceptance and appropriate control have repeatedly been shown to be associated with behavioral and cognitive competence in children (Baumrind, 1996; Darling & Steinberg,

Academic activities at home, school contacts, and children's academic skills

Following the work of Grolnick and Slowiaczek (1994), parental involvement in academic activities was conceptualized as a multidimensional construct composed of parents’ interactions in children's learning activities at home (e.g., supervision of homework, practicing what was learned in school, etc.) and school contact initiated by parents (e.g., volunteering at school, attending parent–teacher meetings, and monitoring school activities). Both of these constructs have been linked to school

Caribbean immigrants

The pre-kindergarten and kindergarten years is an appropriate time to assess school readiness, schooling, and interpersonal adjustment (Hill, 2001) among children of color who have been identified as being “at risk” for disparity in school outcomes (Entwisle & Alexander, 1989; Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Data on the educational achievement of children of English-speaking Caribbean immigrant parents in the New York City area are rather sparse. Generally, research on children of immigrants and

The present study

The present work was conceived using three sets of interrelated frameworks. First, there is solid evidence on the associations between sensitive parenting practices that exude in warmth, encourage two-way exchanges, and value psychological autonomy and positive childhood behaviors (see; Barber, 1996; Collins et al., 2000; Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Eisenberg et al., 2005, Porter et al., 2005). Second, psycho-cultural researchers stress the importance of considering parental beliefs about

Participants

The participants included 70 English-speaking Caribbean immigrant families (English was the primary language in the home) and their pre-kindergarten and kindergarten-age children. Most families resided in different areas of Queens, Bronx, and Brooklyn in New York City, and in Jersey City, Newark, East Orange, Belleville, and Bloomfield, NJ. Families were recruited through heads of community agencies and organizations, churches, early childhood centers, and by word of mouth. The heads of the

Results

Information on the diverse individuals who engage in educational activities with young children and children's use of time at home may provide a contextual basis for understanding the early academic socialization of children of Caribbean immigrants. Thus, initially, we provide some descriptive data on Caribbean immigrant families and children before presenting analyses of the associations between parenting styles, parent–child academic interaction at home, parent–school contact, and children's

Mothers’ and fathers’ parenting styles, academic activities at home, parent–school contact, and children's academic skills

A power analysis was conducted using the PASS software (Hintze, 2000). A sample size of 69, alpha set at .01, and 6 predictors, a hypothesized effect size of .14 would be considered statistically significant. The study would have power of 66% to detect an R2 of .20.

The relationships between the three parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive), two academic socialization behaviors (parent–school academic interaction at home and parent–school interaction), and children's

Mothers’ and fathers’ parenting styles, academic activities at home, parent–school contact, and children's social behaviors

Two separate regression analyses were conducted on mothers’ and fathers’ scores. Control variables were entered in Block 1, followed by parenting styles, parental involvement in academic activities at home, and parent–school contact in Block 2. Next, similar to our analyses with academic skills, in the model involving mothers, we examined whether maternal variables explained additional variance after controlling for father variables. A similar procedure was conducted in the model involving

Discussion

The relative importance of different parenting styles, parent–child academic activities at home, and parent–school contact for children's early cognitive and social development in diverse ethnic and cultural groups has received increased attention (see Aunola & Nurmi, 2005; Chao, 1994, Chao, 2001; Nelson, Hart, Yang, Olsen, & Jin, in press; Steinberg et al., 1992a, Steinberg et al., 1992b). In an attempt to examine further the generalization of earlier findings to diverse ethnic/cultural groups

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by grants from The Research Foundation of The City University of New York and Syracuse University to the first author. Portions of this paper were presented at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD, 2003, and at the National Head Start Conference, Washington, DC, June 2004. We thank Nancy Beth Roopnarine, Pauline Bynoe, and Dion Curtis for their assistance with data collection and testing, and Jeff Kowlesar, Joe Somai, Ronald

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      Recent research has investigated potential consistencies and distinctions in the parenting styles of mothers and fathers in relation to their children’s behavioral outcomes. For example, greater authoritative parenting yields benefits to children’s outcomes regardless of parent gender, with lower levels of externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors (Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Roopnarine, Krishnakumar, Metindogan, & Evans, 2006). But more maternal authoritarian parenting has been associated with both child externalizing and internalizing behavior problems (Tavassolie et al., 2016), whereas paternal authoritarian parenting was significantly associated only with children’s externalizing, not internalizing, problem behaviors (Rinaldi & Howe, 2012; Tavassolie et al., 2016).

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