Ethnic-racial Socialization and Identity among African American Youth: The Moderating Role of the Caregiver-child Relationship
Open Access
- Author:
- Trakofler, Carly Ann
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dawn Paula Witherspoon, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Jeffrey M Love, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- ethnic socialization
racial socialization
ethnic identity
racial identity
parenting
adolescence
African American - Abstract:
- Despite a large body of literature on parenting and youth outcomes, there is much that we still do not know about African American and other ethnic-racial minority families. To broaden scholarly understanding, the current study examined the ways in which African American adolescents’ (N = 612, M = 17.06yr, SD = 0.63) relationships with their caregivers shaped the ways that they received and integrated the meaning of their caregivers’ messages about ethnicity/race (i.e., cultural socialization and preparation for bias) into their ethnic-racial identity. Demographic differences emerged in ethnic-racial identity. Adolescents in higher SES families had a higher ethnic-racial identity and those living in a more positive family climate had higher private regard. However, contrary to expectations, boys had higher centrality than girls. Among ethnic-racial socialization factors, only cultural socialization significantly predicted ethnic-racial identity. Only psychological control moderated the association between ethnic-racial socialization and identity. Findings indicated that psychological control may serve a protective function for African American adolescents who receive little caregiver socialization about how to cope with bias (preparation for bias), but when they do not receive many positive messages about group traditions and history (cultural socialization) and perceive their caregivers as intrusive and engaging in more manipulative behaviors, adolescents feel less positive about their ethnic-racial group. The unique importance of psychological control on the associations between ethnic-racial socialization and ethnic-racial identity inform understanding of the caregiver-adolescent dynamic among African Americans. Future research should extend these findings by exploring other caregiver-child relationship and parenting variables, as well as examining families of other ethnic-racial groups.