Latin American Immigration, Maternal Education, and Approaches to Managing Children's Schooling in the United States

• Author: Kelly M. Purtell,Arya Ansari,Robert Crosnoe,Nina Wu
• Published date: 01 February 2016
• Date: 01 February 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12250

R C  A A University of Texas at Austin

K M. P Ohio State University∗

N W Children’s Council of San Francisco∗∗

Latin American Immigration, Maternal Education,

and Approaches to Managing Children’s Schooling

in the United States

Concerted cultivation is the active parental

management of children’s educations that,

because it differs by race/ethnicity, nativity,

and socioeconomic status, plays a role in early

educational disparities. Analyses of the Early

Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten

Cohort (n=10,913) revealed that foreign-born

Latina mothers were generally less likely to

engage in school-based activities, enroll chil-

dren in extracurricular activities, or provide

educational materials at home when children

were at the start of elementary school than

were U.S.-born White, African American, and

Latina mothers, in part because of their lower

educational attainment. Within the foreign-born

Latina sample, the link between maternal

education and the three concerted cultivation

Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin,

305 East 23rd Street, G1800, Austin, TX 78712

(crosnoe@austin.utexas.edu; aansari@utexas.edu).

∗Department of Human Sciences, Ohio State University,

130C Campbell Hall, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus,OH

43210 (purtell.15@osu.edu).

∗∗Children’s Council of San Francisco, 445 Church Street,

San Francisco, CA 94114 (ninawu85@gmail.com).

This article was edited by Deborah Carr.

Key Words: immigrants, Latinos, parent education, parent

involvement, policy,school readiness.

behaviors did not vary by whether the educa-

tion was attained in the United States or Latin

America. Higher maternal education appeared

to matter somewhat more to parenting when

children were girls and had higher achievement.

B

Given the rising economic returns to educa-

tional attainment and the critical role of the

start of formal schooling in educational trajec-

tories, parents’ management of their children’s

early schooling has become a major policy

focus (Entwisle, Alexander, & Olson, 2005;

Goldin & Katz, 2008; Pianta, Cox, & Snow,

2007). Three themes emerging from related

research are that (a) parents manage their

children’s early schooling in many ways; (b)

differences in parental management map onto

race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES),

and other structural and cultural locations; and

(c) differences in such management predict

children’s achievement because management

both supports learning and elicits better treat-

ment from schools (Lareau, 2003; Pomerantz,

Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). The conuence of

these trends suggests that the degree to which

parents engage in what Lareau (2003) has

labeled “concerted cultivation parenting”—

active, planful, and visible management of

60 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (February 2016): 60–74

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12250