Abstract
Parental love promotes positive developmental outcomes among adolescents, yet knowledge about how context might influence the behaviors parents deem as loving is limited. This study examined mothers’ beliefs about expressing love to adolescent children in diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Participants were 60 European American, 63 African American, and 60 Latina mothers. Household income (the indicator of socioeconomic status) varied within each ethnic group. Beliefs about the most important ways to express love differed by ethnicity more so than income. Latina mothers were more likely than other mothers to emphasize behaviors that involve family togetherness and practical help and guidance, and less likely to emphasize verbal affection or promoting independence. Mothers from all groups believed that “correction and discipline” was an important expression of love. The findings contribute to an ecologically sensitive understanding of parenting during adolescence, highlighting similarities as well as differences across ethnic and income groups.
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Acknowledgements
Portions of the results were reported at the 2012 meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence in Vancouver, British Columbia; other portions were reported at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development in Philadelphia, PA. We are grateful to the mothers who participated in this study, and the research team that assisted in recruitment and data collection.
Funding
Research reported in this article was made possible by Wake Forest University’s Cross-Campus Collaborative Research Fund.
Authors’ Contributions
C.M.B. designed and coordinated the study on which this manuscript is based; R.R. assisted in conceptualization of the study, coding of pilot data, survey data collection, and early statistical analyses as part of master’s program requirements; C.M.B., T.G., and L.K. formulated the research questions for the manuscript and each contributed substantially to the writing of this manuscript; T.G. performed statistical analyses. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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All procedures performed in the current study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Wake Forest University Institutional Review Board.
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Buchanan, C.M., Glatz, T., Kiang, L. et al. Beliefs about Expressing Love to Adolescents among Ethnically and Economically Diverse Mothers. J Youth Adolescence 50, 536–549 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01347-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01347-2