Dominican Parenting Across Generations

Abstract

Parents are essential partners to schools and overall student success. Yet, schools in New York City have a difficult time consistently engaging and involving black and Latino parents in schools. This is partially because few understand cross-cultural parenting. Parenting practices are defined as the goals and values that parents hold for their children. Baumind’s categories of parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and indifferent have been used to make sense of most parenting practices since their inception. This study expands the way parenting is viewed and provides a more inclusive explanation that schools could use to make more adequate efforts to include and engage Latino families, specifically Dominicans.

This qualitative study overlays Baumind’s widely used parenting styles with Latino cultural values to better understand their parenting practices across generations. These include collectivism, familismo, respeto, simpatia, personalisimo and gender roles. Participants for this study were three generations of eight Dominican families residing in New York City.

The study concluded that protection, respect, communication, familismo/collectivism and support were the prevalent themes fueling some of the parenting practices. The study also surfaced some evolution of parenting practices used across generations. The outcomes of this study provide guidance to educational leaders, school communities and other parent facing organizations to better understand parenting in multicultural communities. The study expands the way parenting is viewed and provides a more inclusive image of Dominican parenting values. Schools are able to make better informed decisions regarding how to engage Latino families specifically Dominican families and their children. This study also empowers Dominican parents with information on the unique aspects of their parenting practices.