Student Research Report: Impact of Race and Gender on Interactions with Caregivers
In Fall 2021, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this assignment was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here throughout the spring to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.
By Ali Hunstad
The benefits of child and caregiver interactions early in childhood are clear, but what impact do the race and gender of the child have on these interactions? Warikoo et al., (2020), examined the parent expectations and children’s relationships with parents among Asian American and white youth. This study finds that racial differences play a major role when considering differences in parent-child interactions; specifically, Asian American youth overall reported having a worse relationship with their parents than white youth did. Furthermore, Asian American males reported that their parents held them to higher expectations than Asian American females, resulting in a relationship that lacked comfort and love.
For my experiment project in PSYC 211W Research Methods and Design, I wanted to examine this idea further by observing the interactions between child and caregiver while considering the race and gender of the child. I used four different categories: white males, non-white males, white females, and non-white females. I completed a naturalistic observation at the food court in the River Hills Mall in Mankato, Minnesota. While observing, I documented the race and gender of the child as well as the number of interactions the child had with their caregiver. These interactions were both positive, full of smiles and laughs, and negative, consisting of crying and yelling. I also noted the number of distractions that the parent experienced, like having a conversation with another adult or looking at their phone.
The results showed that race and gender did not have a significant impact on the relationships between child and caregiver. However, this experiment held many limitations. Further studies might evaluate more relationships as this study only consisted of eight. Creating a survey asking children and parents specific questions about parenting styles as well as the relationship they feel they have might be more beneficial than observing these factors in an extremely public setting. Start examining your own relationship with your current caretakers or the ones that you grew up with: does your race or gender impact these relationships?
References
Warikoo, N., Chin, M., Zillmer, N., & Luthar, S. (2020). The influence of parent expectations and parent‐child relationships on mental health in Asian American and white American families. Sociological Forum, 35(2), 275-296. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/socf.12583