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Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners

Migration is a complex process associated with a range of social, economic, and political reasons. In the U.S., almost one-quarter of the total population of parents are immigrant parents of children ages 0–10. Immigrant parents transmit values from their culture of origin as well as their language...

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Autores principales: Buttiler, Maria Belen, Zhou, Qing, Uchikoshi, Yuuko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10513063/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37744593
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1237143
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author Buttiler, Maria Belen
Zhou, Qing
Uchikoshi, Yuuko
author_facet Buttiler, Maria Belen
Zhou, Qing
Uchikoshi, Yuuko
author_sort Buttiler, Maria Belen
collection PubMed
description Migration is a complex process associated with a range of social, economic, and political reasons. In the U.S., almost one-quarter of the total population of parents are immigrant parents of children ages 0–10. Immigrant parents transmit values from their culture of origin as well as their language to their children. Additionally, they may undergo a process of cultural and psychological change known as acculturation. Research has shown that acculturation can be linked to parenting styles and adolescents’ psychological well-being and behavioral problems. However, little is known about the associations among immigrant parents’ acculturation, their home language and literacy practices, and their bilingual children’s language skills. This study explores the relationships among reasons for migration, parental acculturation, home language and literacy practices, and child expressive vocabulary in English and their heritage language (HL). A group of 190 Spanish-English (N = 66) and Chinese-English (N = 124) dual language learners (DLLs) (mean age = 48.98 months) and their Chinese and Mexican parents (mean age of migration = 18.57 and 21.38 years old respectively participated. Frequency counts revealed that Mexican American families migrated to the U.S. mostly for multiple reasons, including joining family members, getting married, and looking for better education or job opportunities, whereas most Chinese American families migrated for family reasons only. Path analysis models showed that, for both cultural groups, language input in Spanish and Chinese mediated the relationship between parents’ cultural orientations and DLLs’ HL expressive vocabulary. These findings emphasize that despite the heterogeneity of immigrant families and the variability in DLLs’ vocabulary skills in preschool, there exist some similarities across immigrant parents and bilingual children. A deeper understanding of acculturation practices and home language use can help educators better support children from diverse backgrounds and promote cultural awareness and sensitivity in the classroom.
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spelling pubmed-105130632023-09-22 Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners Buttiler, Maria Belen Zhou, Qing Uchikoshi, Yuuko Front Psychol Psychology Migration is a complex process associated with a range of social, economic, and political reasons. In the U.S., almost one-quarter of the total population of parents are immigrant parents of children ages 0–10. Immigrant parents transmit values from their culture of origin as well as their language to their children. Additionally, they may undergo a process of cultural and psychological change known as acculturation. Research has shown that acculturation can be linked to parenting styles and adolescents’ psychological well-being and behavioral problems. However, little is known about the associations among immigrant parents’ acculturation, their home language and literacy practices, and their bilingual children’s language skills. This study explores the relationships among reasons for migration, parental acculturation, home language and literacy practices, and child expressive vocabulary in English and their heritage language (HL). A group of 190 Spanish-English (N = 66) and Chinese-English (N = 124) dual language learners (DLLs) (mean age = 48.98 months) and their Chinese and Mexican parents (mean age of migration = 18.57 and 21.38 years old respectively participated. Frequency counts revealed that Mexican American families migrated to the U.S. mostly for multiple reasons, including joining family members, getting married, and looking for better education or job opportunities, whereas most Chinese American families migrated for family reasons only. Path analysis models showed that, for both cultural groups, language input in Spanish and Chinese mediated the relationship between parents’ cultural orientations and DLLs’ HL expressive vocabulary. These findings emphasize that despite the heterogeneity of immigrant families and the variability in DLLs’ vocabulary skills in preschool, there exist some similarities across immigrant parents and bilingual children. A deeper understanding of acculturation practices and home language use can help educators better support children from diverse backgrounds and promote cultural awareness and sensitivity in the classroom. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10513063/ /pubmed/37744593 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1237143 Text en Copyright © 2023 Buttiler, Zhou and Uchikoshi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Buttiler, Maria Belen
Zhou, Qing
Uchikoshi, Yuuko
Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title_full Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title_fullStr Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title_full_unstemmed Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title_short Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners
title_sort reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of chinese american and mexican american parents and dual language learners
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10513063/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37744593
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1237143
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