Parenting among Hispanic and Anglo-American mothers with young children

The authors examined parenting practices and developmental expectations amo ng 38 Hispanic and 38 Anglo-American mothers living in the United States. M others of children 3 to 5 years of age completed the Parent Behavior Checkl ist (R. A. Fox, 1991), a 100-item measure of parents' developmental expecta tions, discipline, and nurturing practices. In addition, the authors apprai sed the Hispanic mothers' acculturation and selected them for participation if their scores on an acculturation scale indicated (a) that their lifesty le was predominantly Hispanic and (b) that they had not been assimilated in to the dominant culture. The 2 ethnic groups were also divided by socioecon omic status (SES). There were significant main effects for ethnicity and SE S on the discipline and nurturing scores but not on the expectations scores . The Hispanic and higher SES mothers reported higher discipline and lower nurturing scores than did the Anglo-American and lower SES mothers. An unex pected finding was the tendency for higher SES Hispanic mothers to report m ore frequent use of discipline than the other 3 groups.