Growing Up with Immigrant Parents Essay

Method. Participants

The study will include about 700 subjects. The subjects will be children from 3-5 years recruited from 34 kindergartens and 40 nursery schools across the United States, albeit there will be a focus on children in Virginia so that geography and regional differences will be limited. The children targeted in the study, alongside their respective parents will take part in the longitudinal study to consider how parenting styles impact the personalities of children. Out of the 700 children included in the baseline study (TI). The participants will be grouped into different classes based on race, socio-economic background, gender, household size, and make-up (single parents versus a “nuclear family” or same-sex parents). The gender will be relatively evenly distributed, with 50% male and 50% female. The beginning of the study will focus on demographics, such as the children’s gender, current age, socio-economic background and income, cultural heritage, and parental educational background. Children with physical and mental disabilities will be excluded to limit variables. All children will be recruited through social media support groups, with an emphasis on Virginia. The methodology will give a snapshot representation of types of parenting strategies in Virginia, and the impact on their children’s behavior at home and in public settings.

Measures

The study will consist of a self-reporting online survey with questionnaires. The survey will be distributed through Qualtrics Survey.

Immigrant parents vs. Natural-born Citizen parenting. The survey will use a modified version of a survey devised for Chinese immigrants in the U.S. and Chinese parents in China (Chen and Yu, 2015). This original survey looked at how the immigration process impacted the way that parents raised children when they left their traditional homelands. Living conditions and experiences will be assessed based on a two-point scale (1=yes, 0=no). The hypothesis states that immigrant families will gradually tend to be more permissive when they arrive in the United States due to changes in social and cultural expectations and experiences. Children of immigrant parents will especially be inclined to “act out” and demand privileges more than their counterparts in China. The results will be tabulated and compared for trends in parental and offspring behavior.

Delinquency. This survey will include between 40-50 questions concerning parenting styles and criminal and general misbehavior among children. The questions will be based on a study by D.K. Vargehe and S.B. Menon’s (2016) study on boys in India. The study will employ a two-point system (1=yes, 0=no), that asks parents to evaluate their system of rewards and punishments concerning child behavior. The study will ask parents to be frank about their observations of other children and their own. Given that the children in this age group are very young, delinquency will be defined to include theft, habitual lying, tantrums, violence, and disobedience. The parents will also be asked to provide their criminal backgrounds for reference. The responses will be tabulated and compared to show how well they fit the hypothesis of permissive parenting as an enabler for poor youth socialization.

Financial Hardship will be measured to see how strongly economic factors influence a parent’s behavior and their children’s expectations. This section will consist of 20 questions drawn from a study by S. J. September, E.G. Rich, and N.V. Roman (2016), who examined how early child development is impacted by socioeconomic status, in which wealthier parents had greater potential to indulge in their children’s demands. The questions will have a two-point scale (1=yes, 0=no) where parents are asked to evaluate how their income level impacts their spending habits on their children, how their careers impact their parental responsibilities, and their views on economic hardships. These responses will be measured based on Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Alabanese, Russo, & Geller, 2019). The responses will be tabulated and compared to illustrate how well economic factors impact parenting styles.

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Procedure

This research will use social media sites from various locations in the United States, although a focus will be directed to households in Virginia. The questionnaire will be advertised on the university’s social media channels and other popular platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. The researchers will also reach out to child psychologists and experts to vet the questions for refinement and to adjust the language. The questionnaire will be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board before the survey is administered.

All respondents will be fully informed of the study's purpose and methodology before they enter the survey. This will be administered through an informed consent form online. The participant will be asked to read the disclaimer check the “I agree” box and click it before they can take the survey. The consent form will fully lay out the details of the study’s objectives, the researchers’ contact information, and a confidentiality notice. The consent form will inform the respondent that will be asked to honestly reflect on their own parenting histories and strategies, provide their background information, and their appraisal of themselves as parents. The form will then remind the respondent that their information will be confidential; their names and contact information will not be collected. The consent form will assure the respondents that the survey is voluntary and that they can withdraw at any time for any reason. The respondents will also be informed that they will not be compensated, but the results of the survey will be made public on the school’s website upon the project’s completion.

Concerning mechanics: the survey will be administered in written and audio English. There will be no non-English option. The study will require 5 social work graduate students to administer and monitor the survey. The student worker will also respond to inquiries from respondents and will be trained to provide satisfactory answers. The survey will be available for one month unless not enough respondents answer. The student workers will not be compensated, although the researchers will provide references upon request.

Critique

The methodology of this study is limited due to time constraints. Ideally, the survey would present a stronger study of permissive parenting throughout the United States. However, due to the time allotted, the researchers narrowed the focus to Virginia and the surrounding university. This may also limit the discussion on race and socio-economic backgrounds given Virginia’s own demographics and regional heritage. The survey’s technological focus will also limit the technology to online surveys in English. Not everyone (especially the poor) has access to the Internet, and English skills may not be strong, which will limit the accessibility of immigrant parents. The researchers hope to address this limitation by presenting a similar survey in selected languages, such as Mandarin or Spanish. This strategy will be mitigated by time constraints, language skills, and “customer service” skills should respondents have questions or concerns. The researchers will have to be familiar with non-English languages linguistically and potential cultural sensitivities.

The survey will also be limited in terms of the issues addressed. One of the main factors is that the researchers are not looking into disabilities. A child’s disability can greatly impact a parent’s permissiveness, encouraging them to be either more stringent in fear of the child misbehaving, or indulging them out of sentiment. Disabilities make up a large portion of children and parents in the United States, but it will introduce too many variables in the study. Therefore, the study will only consider parents and children who do not have disabilities to provide a common denominator. In addition, the make-up of the households will be considered, including parents of mixed ethnicities, same-sex parents, single-parent households, households where the adult figures are not biological parents and transgender parents. While these factors may influence the way parents raise their children, the survey will largely consider these households to be equal in terms of parental psychological profiles. Along similar lines, while ethnicities play a large part in the hypothesis, the survey will downplay religion, unless the parents specifically mention a “religious upbringing” as a key factor in childrearing. The reason that religion will be downplayed is that the researchers lack the background and theories to evaluate religion in the family unit. However, the researchers will allow parents an opportunity to express their viewpoints in a textbox at the end of the survey.

References

1. Albanese, A.M., Russo, G.R., & Geller, P.A. (2019). The role of parental self-efficacy in parent and child well-being: A systematic review of associated outcomes. Child: Care, Health, and Development 45(3), 333-363.
2. Chen, J.J. & Sun, P. & Yu, Z. (2015). A comparative study on parenting of preschool children between the Chinese in China and Chinese immigrants in the United States. Journal of Family Issues 38(9), 1262-1287.
3. September, S.J., Rich, E.G., & Roman, N.V. (2016). The role of parenting styles and socio-economic status in parents’ knowledge of child development. Early Child Development and Care 186(7), pp. 1060-1078.
4. Varghese, D.K. & Menon, S.B. (2016). Home environment and self-esteem: Comparative study among delinquent and normal boys. The International Journal of Indian Psychology 4(1), 2349-3429.