Neighborhood Context, SES, and Parenting: Including a Focus on Acculturation Among Latina Mothers

This study examines the influence of contextual factors on parenting strategies among it sample of 104 Latina, European American, and African American mother-child pairs. The parenting constructs under investigation were selected as part of a collaborative research project among members of the parenting subgroup of the Study Group on Race, Culture, and Ethnicity (SCGCE). Hierarchical regression analyses, predicting parenting outcomes, were conducted with mothers' ethnicity entered in the first step and contextual variables (mothers' annual income, education, subjective neighborhood rating, and stressful life events) entered second. While there were no significant differences in parenting strategies (parental efficacy, parental monitoring, parental warmth, and psychological control) across the three pan-ethnic groups, a contextual variable-subjective neighborhood quality-was associated with mothers' sense of parental efficacy and use ofpsychological control. Among our subsample of 54 Latina mothers, level of acculturation was similarly related to parental sense of self-efficacy and psychological control strategies.