NCJ Number
226928
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 38 Issue: 5 Dated: May 2009 Pages: 605-626
Date Published
May 2009
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study examined relationships between adolescents’ and mothers’ reports of ethnic-racial socialization and adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity.
Abstract
Results indicate that feelings of affirmation, exploration of the meaning of one’s ethnicity, and engagement in ethnic behaviors each are associated with messages from mothers regarding culture, history, and heritage and regarding discrimination processes. Girls and boys appear to be differentially attuned to mothers’ messages, with girls being more sensitive to messages about culture, history, and heritage and boys being more sensitive to messages about discrimination. Mothers and adolescents each reported more cultural socialization than preparation for bias. This indicates patterns of socialization across groups and that in transmitting messages about ethnicity and race to adolescents, mothers are more likely to emphasize positive aspects of their heritage and appreciation of their ethnic background than they are to emphasize issues of racial stratification and discrimination. Regarding the relationships between mothers’ reports of the ethnic-racial socialization messages that they transmit, adolescents’ reports of the ethnic-racial socialization messages they receive, and the extent to which there are gender differences in these relationships found a modest size of the overall relationships between mothers’ and adolescents’ reports and gender differences in the pattern of these relationships. Data were drawn from 170 mother-adolescent pairs. Tables, figures, and references