Search

Two generations ago, Latino children and families were often defined as disadvantaged, even "culturally deprived," by psychologists, social scientists, and pediatric researchers. Since then, empirical work from several disciplines has yielded remarkable discoveries regarding the strengths of Latino families and resulting benefits for children. Theoretical advances illuminate how variation in the child's culturally bounded context or developmental niche reproduces differing socialization practices, forms of cognition, and motivated learning within everyday activities. This review sketches advances in 4 areas: detailing variation in children's local contexts and households among Latino subgroups, moving beyond Latino-White comparisons; identifying how parenting goals and practices in less acculturated, more traditional families act to reinforce social cohesion and support for children; identifying, in turn, how pressures on children and adolescents to assimilate to novel behavioral norms offer developmental risks, not only new opportunities; and seeing children's learning and motivation as situated within communities that exercise cognitive demands and social expectations, advancing particular forms of cognitive growth that are embedded within social participation and the motivated desire to become a competent member. This review places the articles that follow within such contemporary lines of work. Together they yield theoretical advances for understanding the growth of all children and adolescents, who necessarily learn and develop within bounded cultural or social-class groups.

We know that social competence contributes to young children's adaptation to, and cognitive learning within, classroom settings. Yet initial evidence is mixed on the social competencies that Latino children bring to kindergarten and the extent to which these skills advance cognitive growth. Building from ecocultural and developmental-risk theory, this paper shows children's social competence to be adaptive to the normative expectations and cognitive requirements of culturally bounded settings in both the home and classroom. Latino socialization in the home may yield social competencies that teachers value rather than reflect "risk factors" that constrain children's school readiness. We draw on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten cohort (N = 19,590) to detail 5 social competencies at entry to school--self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors--and to examine variability among Latino subgroups. We then test the extent to which baseline variation in social competence accounts for children's cognitive growth during the kindergarten year. We find that Latino children from poor, but not middle-class, families display weaker social competencies vis-a-vis White children (all relationships p < or = .05). Social competence levels contribute to Latino children's cognitive growth, which is shaped most strongly by positive approaches to learning. The disparities in competencies observed for Latino children from poor families, relative to White children, are significant yet much smaller than gaps in baseline levels of mathematical understanding. We discuss how the consonance or mismatch between competencies acquired at home and those valued by teachers must consider cultural differences, social-class position, and variation among diverse Latino subgroups.

Early research on the socialization of Latino children has posited that mothers exercise authoritarian practices, compared with lateral reasoning (authoritative) strategies emphasized by Anglo mothers. This work aimed to categorize fixed types of parenting practices tied to the mother's personality rather than to culturally bounded contexts; it often ignored the emotional warmth or harshness present in compliance attempts and relied on interview questions rather than naturalistic observation. We built from ecocultural theory to observe daily home activities in which Mexican American mothers attempted to correct their young child's behavior or encourage completion of a task (compliance attempt). We observed 24 first- or second-generation mothers and their 4-year-old children and analyzed the activity contexts and multiple forms of 1,477 compliance attempts. Mothers typically led with direct verbal commands in their attempt to achieve compliance. Many blended commands with other compliance strategies, rather than repeating simple behaviors. Drawing on Crockenberg and Litman's (1990) differentiation of variable compliance strategies, we find that most mothers relied on low power-assertive methods, including verbal commands, rather than inductive strategies that involved reasoning. Few compliance episodes prompted high power-assertive or harsh strategies. The degree of reliance on verbal commands and the complexity of mothers' repertoires appear to be related to their education and acculturation levels.