Education and Parenting:
Mexican-American and Puerto Rican
Mothers’ Beliefs and Values
Barbara L. Rodríguez, Ph.D.
University of New Mexico
Carol Scheffner Hammer, Ph.D.
The Pennsylvania State University
Introduction
•
ASHA’s focused initiatives have included improving services to
culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations.
•
In order to improve services to CLD populations, clinicians must be
knowledgeable of the unique characteristics that culturally diverse
families possess.
•
These characteristics differentiate them from mainstream families
and affect family processes (Garcia Coll, et al., 1996).
•
Family beliefs and values represent such characteristics.
•
The extent to which we understand parents’ beliefs and values will
provide us with a broader framework to understand children’s
language learning environments.
Beliefs and Values
•
Relatively few studies have been conducted about the parenting
and educational beliefs of mothers from culturally diverse
backgrounds.
•
Hammer and Weiss (2000) examined African-American mothers’
views about parenting and language development.
• Investigated within group variation as a function of socioeconomic
status
•
Johnston and Wong (2002) compared the childrearing beliefs and
related verbal interaction practices of Chinese and Western
mothers of preschoolers.
• Differences were observed in beliefs about childrearing and verbal
interaction patterns
Beliefs and Values
•
Rodríguez and Olswang (2003) examined the beliefs of
Mexican-American and Anglo mothers whose children were
identified with language impairment.
• Mexican-American mothers, as a group, held more strongly
traditional, authoritarian educational and child rearing beliefs than
mainstream mothers.
•
Hammer, Rodríguez, and Miccio (in press) investigated the
relationship between Puerto Rican mothers’ beliefs and their
home literacy practices.
• Puerto Rican mothers held traditional, authoritarian education
beliefs.
• No relationship between beliefs and home literacy practices were
observed.
Beliefs and Values
•
Preliminary evidence suggests that parents’ beliefs and values
vary between and within cultural groups.
•
U.S. Latino population is diverse, including individuals of
different origins.
• “All sing a different song (Oboler, 1995)
• 66% of U.S. Latino population is of Mexican origin
• 9% of U.S. Latino population is of Puerto Rican origin
•
Culturally competent clinicians are knowledgeable and
respectful of the diversity within cultural groups.
Research Questions
• Goal: To examine mothers’ education and parenting
beliefs within the Latino community
• Are there differences in Mexican-American and Puerto
Rican mothers’ education and parenting beliefs?
• What specific education and parenting beliefs
contribute to the differences between MexicanAmerican and Puerto Rican mothers?
Method
• Participants
• Forty-four Mexican-American and 65 Puerto Rican mothers
• Mexican-American mothers resided in New Mexico and the
Puerto Rican mothers in Pennsylvania.
• Mothers of typically developing children enrolled in
preschool programs (Even Start, Head Start).
• Trained home visitors administered two questionnaires
designed to examine parents’ beliefs about child rearing and
education.
• Questionnaires were presented in English or Spanish
depending upon the mothers’ preference.
Questionnaires
Parental Modernity Scale (Schaefer & Edgerton, 1985)
•
Traditional items reflect authoritarian beliefs that children
should follow adult directives, parents should not question
teachers’ methods, the school has the main responsibility for a
child’s education.
•
Progressive items express beliefs that children learn actively,
should be treated as individuals and should be encouraged to
express their own ideas.
30-item Likert-type scale
22 items – Traditional
8 items – Progressive
1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree
The Rank Order of Parental Values
• involves rank in order of significance self-directing,
conforming, and social values in children
•
Self-directing items include “to think for themselves” and “to be
curious about many things.”
•
Conforming items include “to be polite to adults, “to obey
parents,” and “to have good manners.”
•
Social items include “to be kind to other children” and “to be kind
and considerate.”
There are 3 sets of 5 items—2 conforming, 2 self-directing, and 1
social.
Mothers rank each item from most important (1) to least important
(5).
Discussion
• Mexican-American and Puerto Rican mothers did not
differ in authoritarian and progressive educational
beliefs.
• Mothers shared similar education beliefs.
• high on the traditional, authoritarian and
progressive, democratic subscales
• Traditional, authoritarian educational beliefs
correspond to descriptions of traditional Latino
cultural values (Gutierrez, Yeakley, & Ortega, 2000)
• Traditional Latino families emphasize the importance
of behaving and obeying adults and individuals in
positions of authority.
• The simultaneous traditional and progressive education
beliefs mothers possess may initially appear
contradictory.
• However, these mothers appear to be maintaining the
beliefs of their culture (traditional) while integrating
values that they are exposed to through their children’s
school (Reese & Gallimore, 2000).
• Mexican-American mothers valued conforming
behaviors more significantly than did the Puerto Rican
mothers. Conversely, Puerto Rican mothers placed
importance on self-directing behaviors.
• “To obey adults” specific parenting value that
distinguished between the Mexican-American and
Puerto Rican mothers.
• This difference may be attributed to the mothers’
status in the process of acculturation. The MexicanAmerican mothers may be less acculturated to U.S.
mainstream values.
• Highlights the importance of considering diversity
within the U.S. Latino population.
Selected References
Gutierrez, L., Yeakley, A., & Ortega, R. (2000). Educating students
for social work with Latinos: Issues for the new millenium.
Journal of Social Work Education, 36, 541-557.
Hammer, C.S., Rodriguez, B. L., & Miccio, A. W. (in press). Puerto
Rican mothers’ beliefs and home literacy practices. Language
Speech and Hearing Services in the Schools.
Hammer, C.S., & Weiss, A.L. (2000). African American mothers
discuss their infants’ language development and languagelearning environment. American Journal of Speech-Language
Pathology, 9, 126-140.
Johnston, J., & Wong, M. A. (2002). Cultural differences in beliefs
and practices concerning talk to children. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 916-926.
Oboler, S. (1995). Ethnic labels, Latino lives: Identity and politics of
(re)presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press.
Reese, L., & Gallimore, R. (2000). Immigrant Latino’s cultural
model of literacy development: An evolving perspective on
home-school discontinuities. American Journal of Education,
108, 103-133.
Rodriguez, B.L., & Olswang, L. (2003). Mexican-American and
Anglo-American mothers’ beliefs about child rearing, education,
and language impairment. American Journal of SpeechLanguage Pathology, 12, 452-462.
Handout may be downloaded
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Session Number: 1887