The Longitudinal Effects of Racial Identity on Parenting Styles and Racial Socialization of African American Children
Marva L. Lewis
This is a project to evaluate the long-term impact of African American parents' ethnicity and racial identity on their parenting styles with infants and toddlers. The project expands Ron Rohner's theory of parental acceptance and rejection to include the racial context of African American children's development. The Principal Investigator argues there are intense emotions associated with being accepted or rejected or teased about phenotypic racial features by various members of the child's family and social networks. Phenotypic racial features -- skin color, hair texture, nose and lip size -- may have been an ongoing source of ridicule, pride or shame to during the parent's early childhood. These early intense emotional experiences associated with race compose the parent's ethnobiography. Their ethnobiography includes their ethnic identity, early childhood experiences of racial acceptance and rejection and internalized stereotypes. We also propose that the best culturally valid context to study the interactions between parents and children is to use the racially charged task of hair combing. Several exploratory and pilot studies have been conducted by the P.I. over the past several years using a questionnaire based on this theory and using the hair-combing task. The findings from these pilot studies suggest that early experiences of racial acceptance and rejection are associated with depression and anxiety, feelings of security and insecurity, self-esteem, and racial identity and racial pride in adult African American mothers. Further, early experiences of racial rejection were associated with higher levels of internalized stereotypes about Blacks. A pilot study funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental health was conducted with 41 mother-child dyads and examined the robustness of Hair Combing Task (in conjunction with a teaching task and free play task) as a viable context to evaluate parenting styles. The current project is to plan research and to develop the measures. The primary research questions to be addressed are: 1)."Is there a relationship between African American parents' ethnobiographies and their current childrearing beliefs and attitudes about children? 2). What is the relationship of African American parents' early experiences of racial acceptance and rejection with their parenting styles with their children?" The goal is to develop a scientifically rigorous project to replicate and expand the previous research findings.
