Latino Children Research Paper

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In today’s society parents are looking for explanations to understand their child’s actions and lack of obedience. Some studies focus on the child’s perspective while others focus on the parent’s perspective. In reality both attributions should be considered together. It is commonly believed that negative mother attributions produce an oppositional child. Another study says parents that blame the child for their misbehavior and choose a harsh discipline may cause the child to act out. Oppositely some children will hear what their parents say about them and start to place blame on themselves for their actions. Realizing that the parent child relationship is difficult to comprehend from all sides was the reason for the study done by Colalillo, …show more content…

Almost 25% of the U.S population is Latino children under the age of 18. Latino families are known to value respect in their culture. The research study done by Holtrop, Smith & Scott examines five specific parenting practices of Latino families and whether or not they affect how Latino children externalize their behavior. The five parenting practices include monitoring, discipline, skill encouragement, problem solving and positive involvement. For the sake of my research I will just focus on discipline which includes setting limits and consistently enforcing rule violations with non-punitive sanctions. This is in contrast to European-American parents who are inconsistent with their discipline and sometimes hostile. The study was conducted with 83 Latino immigrant families with 2 parents and at least 3 children. The results showed that the more the parents disciplined, the more the children externalized their behavior. This was attributed to the fact that Latinos are known to use non-coercive discipline and the study was biased to this fact (Holtrop, McNeil Smith, & Scott, 2014). The fact that the Latinos demand respect in their culture is derived from their religion which is Catholic Christianity. 1 Peter 2:17 says “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor”. However, using non-coercive discipline is not Biblical. Proverbs 23:13-14 tells the fathers “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from

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