Baby FACES data used to understand young Latinx dual language learners

In a June 6 article in the Journal of Family Psychology, authors Treviño and Gerstein published what they note is one of only a few studies looking at social/emotional development in Latinx dual language learners during childhood, over time. The authors examined how the relationship between parenting style, family stress, and a child’s social/emotional development was moderated by being a dual language learner. Treviño and Gerstein used data collected in the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES) Spring 2009-Spring 2012 (ICPSR 36074), which is distributed by the Child and Family Data Archive (CFData). A longitudinal, nationally representative study that followed two cohorts of children through their time in the Early Head Start program, Baby FACES started in 2009 with newborns, which include pregnant women and children up to 8 weeks old, and 1-year olds, which include children ages 10 to 15 months, and it ended in 2012.

Treviño and Gerstein compared 143 Hispanic/Latino dual language learners to 247 White, non-Hispanic monolingual children, from age 2 to age 3. They analyzed demographic and socioeconomic risk variables, along with data taken from scales measuring parenting style and parental stress, as well as an assessment of the toddlers’ social/emotional competencies and behavior problems. Between White and Latinx families, they found similarities and differences in the prevalence of family characteristics and how they relate to child behavior. For instance, they found that overall, parents of Latinx dual language children used a significantly more intrusive parenting style, however, intrusive parenting predicted higher behavior problems only among White monolingual families. Understanding these characteristics and how they vary in the two contexts could help “close the achievement gap between Latinx dual language learners and their monolingual peers.”