Parenting to Beat the Odds: How Low-Income African American Parents Promote Children's Academic Resilience in Elementary School

For the more than 15 million children currently living in poverty in the United States, the risk for academic failure is high. With significantly greater likelihood of experiencing hunger, poor physical health, abuse and neglect, psychological disorders, developmental delays, and learning disabilities, it is not surprising that children living in poverty are five times more likely to drop out of school compared to children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. However, despite these immense challenges, it must be noted that not all children experiencing economic hardship are failing in school. Parents, who are children's first teachers, play a critical role in helping their children to beat the odds and excel in school. Parents' promotion of children's academic resilience is especially crucial for Black children, who are three times more likely than White children to live in poverty. In order to develop interventions and strategies to support the academic success of low-income Black children, it is necessary to understand the specific attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of low-income Black parents that are positively associated with children's academic achievement. Using a three-paper structure, this dissertation critically examined how socioeconomic status (SES) and race influence the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of low-income Black parents and, in turn, the academic achievement of low-income Black children. The first paper is a systematic review of literature that examined the mechanisms through which Black parents' racial socialization strategies promote academic achievement among low-income Black children in elementary school. Through an ecological systems lens, the systematic review identified child, parent, family, school, and community level factors that facilitate the effects of parental racial socialization practices on the academic achievement of low-income Black children. For the second paper, a confirmatory factor analysis--the first step of conducting general structural equation modeling (SEM)--was conducted in order to ensure that the Elementary School Success Profile (ESSP), an online multidimensional socio-environmental assessment tool used to identify risk and promotive factors for children's academic success, performed the same for low-income Black and White students when assessing the home educational environment and children's academic achievement. After Paper 2 findings indicated measurement invariance and demonstrated that the home educational environment and academic achievement of Black and White students would be measured the same way, multigroup general SEM was conducted in the third paper to test if the relationship between home educational environment and academic achievement was moderated by race. The final paper revealed that the relationship between home educational environment and children's academic achievement was moderated by race with low-income White students experiencing increases in academic achievement and low-income Black students experiencing declines in academic achievement despite both groups experiencing the same level of home educational support. Altogether, the three papers demonstrate the importance of disentangling the effects of SES from the effects of race in order to understand the unique needs and challenges faced by low-income Black families. Families who are low SES are not homogenous as they are affected and respond differently to socioeconomic risk factors based on race. By examining the protective effects of parental racial socialization strategies on the academic achievement of low-income Black children, the findings from this dissertation can be used to develop culturally relevant social interventions to support both Black parents and Black children. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]