James Rodriguez

The Role of Racial Socialization in Relation to Parenting Practices and Youth Behavior: An Exploratory Analysis

SUMMARY Racial socialization is receiving research attention because of growing evidence that it can be a protective developmental process in African American families. The present study was an exploration of the relationship of parental mental health, discipline effectiveness, monitoring and racial socialization strategies on child externalizing behaviors in a sample of 140 African American parent/caregivers. Findings indicated that certain types of racial socialization—particularly, spirituality and religious coping—in conjunction with discipline effectiveness was related to child behavior problems. Specifically, among parents who felt they used more effective discipline strategies, moderate to high rates of spiritual and religious coping were associated with a reduction of child behavior problems. These findings support the hypothesis that racial socialization is an important aspect of parenting in African American families that can be associated with the effective management of childrens behavior. Implications for parenting interventions and future research are discussed.

The Effect of Racial Socialization on Urban African American Use of Child Mental Health Services

SUMMARY Objective: To examine how parental endorsement of racial socialization parenting practices relates to child mental health service use among an urban sample of African American families. Methods: A cross-sectional sample of urban African American parents (n = 96) provided ratings of their beliefs concerning various dimensions of racial socialization constructs, i.e., spiritual or religious coping (SRC), extended family caring (EFC), cultural pride reinforcement (CPR), and assessed regarding their use of child mental health services. Results: At the multivariate level, the use of child mental health services was significantly positively associated with moderate levels of endorsement of SRC and EFC. Inversely, scores in the moderate range of CPR were associated with a reduced likelihood of child mental health service use. Conclusion: Parental endorsement of racial socialization parenting practices appear to play a salient role in child mental health service use among an urban African American families. Further research with larger and more representative samples should be pursued.

An Introduction to Parenting and Mental Health Services Utilization Among African American Families: The Role of Racial Socialization

SUMMARY The articles in this special issue are a significant contribution to the literature pertaining to racial socialization, which is defined as messages parents communicate about race and culture, how African Americans are perceived societally, and how to cope with discrimination due to their skin color. More specifically, these articles examine the relationship between racial socialization and parental mental health status, child socio-behavioral functioning, and the utilization of mental health and prevention services for both parent and child. Overall, the results of these articles indicate that various racial socialization practices do indeed influence key variables such as the childs behavioral functioning and decision-making, parental mental health status, and the receipt of prevention and mental health services. Implications of these findings suggest that racial socialization beliefs and practices may in fact influence the health and functioning of African American youth and families.

Engagement in trauma-specific CBT for youth post-9/11

Treatment participation was examined among youth enrolled in an evaluation of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for trauma following the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. Staff at nine agencies serving a predominantly low-income, ethnically diverse population were trained to deliver CBT and structured engagement strategies. A total of 445 youth ages 5 to 19 were eligible for CBT, and 417 (94%) received at least one treatment session. Pretreatment and treatment show rates and overall dose were examined. Treatment participation rates were higher than those typically reported in community studies of children’s mental health services. Regression analyses indicated variability across sites in treatment show rates with the highest rates at sites where services were delivered in schools. However, sites, demographic factors, and trauma symptoms accounted for a small amount of variance in treatment participation overall. The study suggests that structured engagement strategies, linked to evidence-based treatments, may improve treatment participation for youth.

Conclusions and Directions for Future Research Concerning Racial Socialization.

The overall findings incorporated in these exploratory studies suggest that parental racial socialization processes are an important factor in: determining favorable outcomes related to youth and parental mental health, and influencing important decisions; such as youth avoiding violent confrontations. A strong sense of ethnicity appears to be a strong protective factor for the mental health and behavioral outcomes of these inner city youth and their families. These multiple effects of parental racial socialization processes suggest that this variable is an important feature in the day to day lives of African American families residing in low income inner-city environments; therefore, the examination of parental racial socialization processes could be included in future studies on resilience in minority populations. Data also revealed that several parental racial socialization processes constructs explained family use of child mental health services. Those providing services to urban adolescents need to be knowledgeable about the effects that culturally and contextually specific variables have on youth residing in urban environments. Therefore, it is important that future research studies on child mental health service use for urban families of color includes culturally specific factors such as parental racial socialization processes. Furthermore, although this study focused specifically on low-income urban youth and families, future studies must investigate the influence of parental racial socialization processes on youth and family mental health outcomes across urban, suburban, and rural, as well as economic strata. This type of research could provide invaluable information on the process of how parental racial socialization processes influence youth and family outcomes across a broad spectrum.

The Protective Effect of Adult Mental Health Upon the Utilization of Racial Socialization Parenting Practices

SUMMARY The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of parental mental health and types of racial socialization. The sample consisted of 169 African-American parents and their children (ages 9–11) who participated in a federally funded research project, “Knowledge about the African American Research Experience” (KAARE). Bivariate analyses revealed significant positive relationships between parent mental health status and two forms of racial socialization: spiritual/religious coping, and racial awareness teaching, while multivariate analyses supported the positive association between parental mental health and spiritual/religious coping. These results suggest that parental characteristics may influence the use of specific types of racial socialization to assist youth in coping with discriminatory societal messages.

Understanding African American Youth HIV Knowledge: Exploring the Role of Racial Socialization and Family Communication About “Hard to Talk About Topics”

Summary This article presents the results of a study examining correlates of urban African American youth HIV knowledge. The influence of family level factors (e.g., family communication, parental AIDS knowledge and myths regarding HIV transmission, along with family composition and family income) are examined. In addition, the current study explores the influence of racial socialization processes, specifically the influence of religious/spiritual coping, extended family caring, cultural pride reinforcement and racial awareness teaching (Stevenson, 1994; 1995; 1997) on youth HIV knowledge. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant association between youth HIV knowledge and being reared in a single parent home. Further, in every model, controlling for all types of racial socialization processes, family communication was significantly associated with youth HIV knowledge. Implications are drawn regarding the development of culturally and contextually specific HIV prevention programming for African American youth and their families.