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Article Excerpt
The intent of this study was to examine the development of peer interaction in low-income Mexican-heritage families in the United States. Eighty-eight children (44 girls) were observed and mothers interviewed when children were 14, 24, 36, and 54 months old. We used the Attachment Q-Set (Waters, 1990), the Peer Play Scale (Howes & Matheson, 1992), and the Children's Behavior Ratings (Ladd, 1999). Complex peer play, particularly social pretend play, was relatively infrequent for all children. Children with more secure mother-child attachment relationships also had more concurrent complex play and more rapid growth of complex play. Children who engaged in more social pretend play at 54 months were more likely to engage in more language interaction when younger.
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In Mexico mother-child interaction occurred in work contexts such as doing the laundry, washing dishes, cooking food or caring for real babies, instead of dolls. Often children were given simple tasks, and while "working" alongside their mothers, they followed her model and directions and playfully imitated her behavior. Mothers did not socialize with children. Instead, after the daily chores were done, mothers sat with other mothers ... while their children played together outdoors. Farver (1999)
In this essay we describe the development of social pretend play in children whose immigrant mothers are negotiating their mothering roles in a context that is very different from how they learned to play as children themselves and as described above. Much of the extant literature on the development of social pretend play is based on European American families in the United States. This literature suggests that it is while playing with a more expert partner that children learn to construct and share pretend (Lillard & Witherington, 2004). In European American middle-income families in the United States, mothers most often are the expert play partner, encouraging and participating in pretend play with their toddler-age children (Farver & Howes, 1993; Haight & Miller, 1992). Research examining mother-child play in the United States suggests that children whose mothers are active play partners, helping them expand and elaborate on their ideas, are most skillful in playing pretend with peers as well as adults (Haight & Miller, 1992; Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993; Howes & Matheson, 1992).
For mothers, being a partner in children's social pretend play may require a set of adult beliefs about the cultural appropriateness of the interaction (Tudge, Odero, Hogan, & Etz, 2003). Within some cultures mothers play with their children as part of preparing them for school (Rogoff, Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, 1993). In other cultures engaging in pretend play is an opportunity to have fun and share positive affect with their children (Haight & Miller, 1992). Still others may feel that play is the domain of peers not mothering (Farver, 1992). Despite these differences in maternal beliefs about play partners, Farver (1992) found that Mexican children in her study engaged in complex pretend play at similar rates as their North American peers. The intent of the current analysis is to examine factors that influence the development of complex pretend play among Mexican immigrant families. Specifically, we examine variations in contextual factors such as family and household organization and practices around caring for children as well as how cultural practices for adult-child interaction influence the development of complex pretend play. To move away from the traditional comparative approach to cultural psychology, the present study takes a within-group longitudinal approach to investigate cultural variations in Mexican American children's experiences in sharing pretend play. We hypothesize that there are important and significant variations in cultural practices among low-income Mexican immigrant families and that these variations have important impacts on developmental outcomes, including the development of shared pretend play.
We assume that competent social pretend play with peers is important for children's readiness for school (Coolahan, Fantuzzo, Mendez, & McDermot, 2000), an important issue for Mexican-heritage children. Spanish-speaking Latino children are at higher risk for academic difficulties and continue to receive lower scores on tests of reading achievement than other groups (NCES, 2003). Communicating meaning in social pretend play is one of the foundations of later literacy and narrative development (Clawson, 2002; Howes & Wishard, 2004). During social pretend play, children develop elaborate imaginary play scenarios in which symbolic meaning must be effectively communicated to and expanded on by the children (and adults) involved. These meaning-making explanations consist of narrative-like discourse including explanations of the here and now, past-tense descriptions of what characters have done, and future-oriented explanations of how each character should act and which rules to live by. Early narrative interactions require children to simultaneously attend to linguistic form and function as well as the process of meaning-making, an inherent skill in both narrative production and literacy acquisition (Bailey & Moughamian, in press). Complex social pretend play provides a type of social scaffold that facilitates narrative interactions among children, supporting oral language skills such as development of story structure, vocabulary, and syntax. Despite its potential importance to Mexican-heritage children, there is little extant literature on their development of social pretend play.
We expected that children's development of social pretend play would vary according to specific cultural practices within their families and communities in the United States, their experiences in child care, and their relationships and interactions with adult caregivers. This theoretical framework is informed by the need for longitudinal research focusing on minority groups (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), by the construct of cultural communities (Rogoff, 2003), and by research on the roles of adults in children's development of peer interactions (Howes & Lee, 2004; Howes & Matheson, 1992; Howes, Matheson, & Hamilton, 1994). The conceptual model guiding this research is depicted in Figure 1. In this model, all families participate in cultural communities that are defined by a shared set of cultural practices. As such, cultural community participation informs not only practices for caring for children but also practices for engaging with children, both of which influence the individual development of competent peer interaction and play. Practices for caring for children include supervision of play, play partners, and child care selection (informal care or more formal center-based care). Practices for engaging with children include child-caregiver attachment and child-caregiver language interactions.
Based on studies of European American children, we assume that competent peer interaction in children's toddler and preschool years includes both structural complexity and positive affect (Howes, 1988). Social pretend play is the most structurally complex form of peer interaction because it involves understanding and communicating shared symbolic meanings (Howe, Petrakos, Rinaldi, & LeFebvre, 2005; Howes & Wishard, 2004). Furthermore, pretend play with peers rather than adults may require greater communicative clarity because peers, particularly same-age peers, are less able than adults to scaffold meaning (Howes & Lee, 2004). Finally, social pretend play is a type of routine social interaction shaped by cultural values and norms that vary across cultural communities (Goncu, Mistry, & Mosier, 2000). The measure of peer play used in this study has normative data (Howes & Matheson, 1992) and has been validated with a Mexican sample (Farver, 1992; Farver & Howes, 1993).
There is an extensive psychological literature on the development of competent peer interaction and social pretend play in young children, again primarily based on European American middle-class children (Goncu, Patt, & Kouba, 2002; Haight, Wang, Fung, Williams, & Mintz, 1999; Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993; Howes, with Unger & Matheson, 1992). From this literature we identified practices for caring for children and practices for engaging with children that have been found to predict the development of competent peer interaction and play. Examining the presence (or absence) of these predicted relations in Mexican American families will help us to understand the cultural specificity of developing peer interaction.
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Cultural Community Participation and the Development of Complex Pretend Play with Peers
Participants in cultural communities have a common set of everyday practices that serve to organize the care of and interaction with children (Rogoff, 2003). In our previous work with these Mexican-heritage mothers, we identified four different cultural communities that were heterogeneous in their household social and economic organization, relations to their home country, social networks, and willingness to incorporate host country parenting advice and practices (Howes, Wishard Guerra, Zucker, 2007). Key to differences among these groups was the mother's social and material relationship to extended family. In three of the groups mothers participated in a family cluster. Families within a family cluster share social and economic resources: child and elder care, leisure activities, celebrations, and finances (Velez-Ibanez, 1996). In one group--family cluster in the extended family's home--the mother, the child, and the child's father lived with the child's aunts and uncles in same household, with the grandparent generation staying in Mexico. These households were monolingual Spanish speaking. Child care in these groups was informal care by whoever in the household was not working. In the second group of mothers--family cluster straddles the border--the mother and child were usually the only family cluster members in the United States. Financial resources and at times older siblings tended to go from the United States to the rest of the family cluster in Mexico. These households also were monolingual Spanish speaking. Mothers in this group tended to work outside the home and use formal child care. In the third group of mothers--family cluster in the neighborhood--mothers were the least likely to be immigrants and to speak Spanish, although the majority did prefer Spanish. The mothers in this group were the most likely to be dependent children and rely on older family cluster members for child care. The mothers in the fourth group--independent living--did not participate in a family cluster and were isolated from their extended families, living with only the father of the child, and tended not to work or use child care outside of the home. In these families the mother tended to be Spanish speaking and the father English speaking. These mothers were the most receptive to the parenting practices advocated by the Early Head Start home visitors. While mothers in every group were reshaping their parenting practices as they engaged with the host culture, different social and material ties to Mexico through extended family on one or the other side of the border appears to differentially influence parenting practices within these cultural communities (Howes & Wishard, 2004; Howes et al., 2007). We expected that mothers who participate in these different cultural communities would differ in their practices around caring for and engaging with children and that these differences in practices would be associated with their children's peer interaction.
Practices in Supervising and Caring for Children
Adult values and beliefs about play not only help determine the children's play partners but also communicate what is valued within cultural communities (Tudge et al., 2003). Adults make decisions about who supervises and cares for children and where children spend their days. Whether or not children have access to same-age or older children, whether older siblings or cousins are expected to supervise toddlers and young preschoolers, whether children are permitted to play outside and under whose supervision, and whether children are in a child care program and the formality of the child care program are all reflections of adult beliefs and values about how to parent. For immigrant parents, these decisions reflect a combination of strategies that parents bring from their experiences in their home countries and cultures as well as newer tactics adopted from the host culture (Contreras, Narang, Ikblas, & Teichman, 2002; Dumka, Roosa, & Jackson, 1997; Gonzales, Knight, Morgan-Lopez, Saenz, & Sirolli, 2002; Roosa, Morgan-Lopez, Cree, & Spector, 2002; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). And like parents everywhere,...
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