"African-American Mothers’ Socialization Strategies to Address Adolescent-related Academic Expectations and Risk Concerns"

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Nestor Tulagan  (left) is first author, with Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles (right) co-author, of an article in the Journal of Child and Family Studies about parental socialization strategies and expectations.

The title of the article is “African-American Mothers’ Socialization Strategies to Address Adolescent-related Academic Expectations and Risk Concerns.”
​
Tulagan is National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow studying family influences on Latinx middle schoolers’ math motivational beliefs and performance. 

​As a student in the school’s Ph.D. in Education program, Tulagan specialized in Human Development in Context (HDiC). His dissertation research examined the role of stage-environment fit in the socialization strategies that African American mothers implement to foster seventh graders’ academic achievement. Eccles served as his advisor.

Eccles is a member of the National Academy of Education, a World Scholar at the University of London, Visiting Professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, and Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia. Her academic research focuses on gender-role socialization, classroom influences on student motivation, and social development in the family and school context. She is internationally recognized for her development of the expectancy-value theory of motivation and her concept of stage-environment. ​​Eccles directs UCI's Motivation and Identity Research Lab (MIRL).
 
Abstract
 
Parental socialization entails purposeful and goal-driven strategies that promote positive youth development and prevent youth-related risks and challenges. Guided by a family management perspective, we examined the variety in African-American mothers’ academic expectations and risk concerns for adolescents, and the parenting strategies they employ to address each of these beliefs. We also examined the associations between mothers’ beliefs and strategies, as well as variations across adolescent gender and socioeconomic status (SES). We used open-response data collected from 619 African-American mothers of eighth-graders from Prince George’s County, Maryland, varying in adolescent gender, maternal education, family income, and family structure. We systematically coded interview data and tabulated main categories, subcategories, and first-round codes. Then, we conducted multivariate regression analyses to examine the relations between academic expectations, risk concerns, socialization strategies, and socio-demographic characteristics. Overall, mothers held high academic expectations, perceived contextual and behavioral problems for adolescents, and reported strategies that positioned them as direct and positive socializers. When mothers reported concerns for underachievement, they had increased odds of providing necessary materials and services, holding discussions, and expressing negative reactions. Finally, adolescent gender and family SES predicted academic expectations and risk concerns, as well as parenting strategies. Our study highlights the importance for studies to consider the purposeful nature of parenting, as socialization strategies were linked to specific developmental goals. Our findings call for the development of measures that capture a wider range of parenting strategies and contextualize these strategies to parents’ aims.
​