Acculturation and SES Effects on Mexican-American Parents' Concepts of Development

Abstract

GUTIERREZ, JEANNIE; SAMEROFF, ARNOLD J.; and KARRER, BETTY M. Acculturation and SES Effects on Mexican-American Parents' Concepts of Development. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1988, 59, 250255. Differences in the complexity of parental reasoning about child development along a dimension ranging from categorical to perspectivistic were examined in a group of Mexican-American and of Anglo-American mothers of comparable SES. A within-culture comparison was provided by subdividing mothers of Mexican descent into 3 groups varying in acculturation. More acculturated Mexican-American mothers were more perspectivistic than less acculturated mothers in higher SES groups. No differences were found between lower SES acculturation groups. A between-culture comparison between the highly acculturated Mexican-American and the Anglo-American groups of mothers at the same SES level showed that the former used more complex developmental explanations than the latter. These results emphasize the importance and usefulness of examining withinculture diversity in developmental research.