- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
- 2-3 annotations.
Judy:
I found two articles about Mexican parenting styles which I think I should include in my podcast. In the first article, “Determinant of Harsh Parenting in Mexico” by Martha Frias-Armenta, explores what factors relate to the use of different level of physical punishments in Mexican families. For example, she states “corporal punishment is seen not only as a necessary disciplinary method but also as a positive practice to produce good citizens” ( 130). This shows how Mexican families and other non-white families have different values they practice which would fall under neglectful and abusive in the lens of CPS workers. This leads families of color to be surveil by CPS increasing removals of children. It was difficult to find analysis of parenting styles, but I think this article will be useful in showing how demographics, history, employment, SES and other factors can influence how parents especially parents of color discipline their children. This article made me think about over the summer at CPS when caseworkers would ask parents how they would discipline their children. But, they would also go in a private room with the children to ask them if they were being abused without their parents influencing their answers. For example, one caseworker asked a child “Do you like living here? What does your mom/dad do when you act out?” Caseworkers would get both perspectives to evaluate whether the parents are doing a good job as a parent.
The second article is “Parental Styles and Harsh Parenting in a Sample of Mexican Women: A Structural Model” by Martha Frias-Armenta and Marcela Sotomayor-Petterson, which focuses on mothers from Mexico. Armenta and Stomayor-Petterson state “as a result of the social desirability of disciplinary punishment, some parents believe in the goodness of punitive parental behavior” (62), which would not be appropriate parenting in the lens of CPS. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, caseworkers would ask parents how they discipline their children. Many caseworkers I shadowed on family visits would advise parents that children should not be in “timeout” for too long or else that would seem abusive. I notice taking away electronics was the most thing CPS workers approved of for parents to do as a discipline mechanism. Also another thing mentioned in the article is “personal experience[s] of parenthood could also affect the development of such parental perceptions and beliefs” which suggests that if there has been a cycle of violence and abuse in the family the next generation could possible continue the abuse. As I looked more at these two articles I thought about how punitive measures to discipline children is a much more “effective” way to rear children, especially in working-class families who do not have the time or resources to nurture their children the way a wealthy white family would.
Let me know if these descriptions are useful for my podcast. I have started recording, and I really want to include the different parenting styles that CPS would evaluate as neglectful or abusive. If I go back to the research proposal I wrote I stated Mexican working-class families would take their children to work cause they couldn’t afford daycare but that is not ideal, which makes it a red flag increasing CPS surveillance.
Citations:
Frias-Armenta, Martha, and Laura Ann McCloskey. “Determinants of harsh parenting in Mexico.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 26.2 (1998): 129-139.
Frías-Armenta, Martha, et al. “Parental styles and harsh parenting in a sample of Mexican women: A structural model.” Interamerican Journal of Psychology 38.1 (2004).