Developmental outcomes of toddlers of young Latina mothers: Cultural, family, and parenting factors
Section snippets
Developmental outcomes of toddlers of young Latina mothers: cultural, family, and parenting factors
Children of adolescent mothers are at risk for poor developmental outcomes across domains, including cognitive and language functioning (Whitman, Borkowski, Keogh, & Weed, 2001). These deficits are related to family demographic characteristics; adolescent mothers are more likely than their non-parenting peers to come from lower socio-economic-status (SES) backgrounds and have lower educational attainment. They are also more likely than adult mothers to be single and live in poverty (Mollborn &
Participants
Participants for the current study included 170 adolescent Latina mothers and their toddlers. All 170 mothers participated at Wave 1 (W1) when their children were 18 months old. Of these, 149 (87.6%) returned for Wave 2 (W2) when their children were 24 months. Families who returned for W2 did not differ significantly from those who did not return on any of the demographic indicators. The mean age of mothers at the time of their child's birth was 17.9 years (SD = 1.3; range: 14.3–19.9). Mothers
Analytic approach
We first present analyses to examine continuity and change in children's cognitive and language functioning, followed by descriptive information on mothers’ cultural orientation. We then describe preliminary analyses used to inform the selection of parenting behaviors and covariates to include in the main analyses. Specifically, given sample size constraints, we tested associations between the maternal behaviors and children's scores at W2 to select behaviors with significant associations with
Discussion
Latina adolescent mothers have the highest birthrate in the US (Martin et al., 2013), yet little is known about their children's development or the childrearing environment in which they are raising their children. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test how cultural, family and parenting factors contribute to children's subsequent cognitive and language attainment among young Latina mothers and their toddlers. In doing so, the study contributes to our understanding of their
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this article was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD46554 to the first author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We thank the families for participating in the study, Dr. Andrea Bonny and Metro Health Medical Center for their collaboration
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