Latino Parenting Practices within an Anti-Immigrant Political Environment: Talking with Children about Race, Inequality, and Discrimination

Objective: The passage of several anti-immigrant policies has been linked to heighten levels of discrimination for the Latino immigrant community. This is a critical issue as evidence suggests a strong relationship between discrimination and poor health outcomes among Latino youth (Priest et al., 2013; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2015).  Many children are likely to be impacted as 10 million children in the U.S. are children of Latino immigrants. Research on the ethnic/racial socialization process (or how parents talk to their children about race/ethnicity, discrimination, and prejudice) has predominantly focused on the experiences of African American families.  Few research studies have examined this process among Latinos (Hughes et al, 2006). Informed by the ecodevelopmental framework, the purpose of the study was to examine parent-child interactions concerning race, inequality, and discrimination.

Method: In-depth qualitative interviews were completed with Latino immigrant parents (N=54). Parents were asked if their children had experienced discrimination (personal or observed); if so, they were asked to share concrete examples and follow up questions and probing questions were used.  A majority of the participants were women (79.6%, SD=6.47) and on average had 3 children (SD=1.42). Constructivist grounded theory methods were used to complete the analysis. A constant comparative approach was used while completing initial, focused, and axial coding. Multiple steps were taken to support the trustworthiness of the study (i.e., multiple coders, peer debriefing model, and multiple quotes per theme).

Results: Parents reported that their children experience in their day to day interaction with peers, teachers, and neighbors.  Experiences with discrimination ranged from children’s nationality or documentation being questioned to receiving threats of deportation. Findings indicate that parents use a range of messages to support their children as they are faced with issues of race, inequality, and discrimination. The messages or strategies they used were included by three factors, parents own experiences with discrimination and oppression; micro level context, and severity of the incident.  Parents may (a) comfort their children to ensure their safety; (b) educate their children about nativity and documentation status (“And then we told him that well because he has born here and we were not”); (c) encourage children to adapt and expect discrimination; (d) reinforce negative stereotypes; (e) model advocacy and advice children to advocate for their themselves and others (“No te dejes”); (f) build children’s ethnic pride (“I tell my son that we are Mexicans and we have Mexican blood; that this is not a reason to be ashamed or be mocked because of it.”); and (g) talk to their children about the value of diversity and empathy (“There are a lot of cultures in this country and we have to respect each other.”).

Conclusion: Consistent with the ecodevelopmental framework, Latino parents play a critical role in children’s understanding and processing of their experiences with discrimination. Parents’ reports of messages or strategies they employ are broader than those previously reported in the literature.  Findings highlight an opportunity to develop interventions to support families to navigate and change oppressive conditions faced by their children.