Actively changing the narrative: An exploration of culturally grounded parenting and social skills

Recognizing culturally salient aspects of socialization practices and understanding how these practices support culturally valued aspects of development is an integral component in conducting anti-racist research and validating the lived experiences of minoritized families. With this aim, we explored how Active Direction, an observational rating of an African American approach to parenting measured during mother–child interactions at age 2.5 (n = 172), supported social skills and emotion regulation for children living in a Southwestern metropolitan area of the United States concurrently, in kindergarten (n = 109), and in 1st grade (n = 108). Descriptive findings indicated few significant associations between Active Direction and socials skills or emotion regulation. Exploratory analyses, which included traditional parenting behavior measures of Sensitivity and Intrusiveness, also indicated limited significant relations between any measure of parenting and child skills. However, moderation analyses indicated that high levels of Active Direction attenuated the effects of sensitivity on aspects of child social skills. The lack of significant findings across the current study highlight how extant measures—of child social skills and parentings behaviors—are not performing as expected within these African American families.