Successful Navigation of the Conflict between Doctoral Education and Cultural Expectations of Child Rearing in Hispanic Culture

While the numbers are slowly rising, Hispanic students continue to be disproportionately underrepresented in all levels of higher education, including doctoral education. There are many factors that may contribute to the low numbers of Hispanic doctoral students; for Hispanic women, one of these factors may be the perceived conflict between cultural expectations of childrearing and doctoral education. For Hispanic students who hold strong cultural values, this conflict may prevent enrollment in, or result in attrition from, doctoral education. As the number of Hispanic college enrollment increases, we will see more students trying to navigate between the collectivistic value of childrearing and the individualistic value of pursuing higher education. Thus, it is important to understand the needs of these students to aid in recruitment and retention of student-parents in all levels of higher education. This paper explores the barriers and supportive factors for current Hispanic doctoral student-parents. Suggestions are made to increase support which will allow these individuals to successfully complete a doctoral education, while attending to the responsibilities of parenting.

Examining the Complex Relationships of Early Intervention on Language and Psychosocial Development in Families Facing Multiple Risks with a Focus on Children of Hispanic Immigrants

Abundant research has shown that poverty has negative influences on young child academic and psychosocial development, and unfortunately, disparities in school readiness between low and high income children can be seen as early the first year of life. The largest federal early care and education intervention for these vulnerable children is Early Head Start (EHS). To diminish these disparate child outcomes, EHS seeks to provide community based flexible programming for infants and toddlers and their families. Given how relatively recent these programs have been offered, little is known about the nuances of how EHS impacts infant and toddler language and psychosocial development. Using a framework of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) this paper had 5 goals: 1) to characterize the associations between domain specific and cumulative risk and child outcomes 2) to validate and explore these risk-outcome associations separately for Children of Hispanic immigrants (COHIs), 3) to explore relationships among family characteristics, multiple environmental factors, and dosage patterns in different EHS program types, 4) to examine the relationship between EHS dosage and child outcomes, and 5) to examine how EHS compliance impacts child internalizing and externalizing behaviors and emerging language abilities. Results of the current study showed that risks were differentially related to child outcomes. Poor maternal mental health was related to child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, but not related to emerging child language skills. Although child language skills were not related to maternal mental health, they were related to economic hardship. Additionally, parent level Spanish use and heritage orientation were associated with positive child outcomes. Results also showed that these relationships differed when COHIs and children with native-born parents were examined separately. Further, unique patterns emerged for EHS program use, for example families who participated in home-based care were less likely to comply with EHS attendance requirements. These findings provide tangible suggestions for EHS stakeholders: namely, the need to develop effective programming that targets engagement for diverse families enrolled in EHS programs.

Brief for Amici Curiae Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children in Support of Respondent Edith Windsor Addressing the Merits and Supporting Affirmance

This amicus brief filed by Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children turns the spotlight on children in same-sex families. The brief enumerates the ways Section 3 of DOMA impairs children's interests by denying federal recognition of their parents' marriages.

Brief of Amici Curiae Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children in Support of Petitioners in Obergefell v. Hodges

Supreme Court precedent establishes that the government may not punish children for matters beyond their control. Same-sex marriage bans and non-recognition laws (“marriage bans”) do precisely this. The states argue that marriage is good for children, yet marriage bans categorically exclude an entire class of children – children of same-sex couples – from the legal, economic and social benefits of marriage. This amicus brief recounts a powerful body of equal protection jurisprudence that prohibits punishing children to reflect moral disapproval of parental conduct or to incentivize adult behavior. We then explain that marriage bans punish children of same-sex couples because they: 1) foreclose their central legal route to family formation; 2) categorically void their existing legal parent-child relationships incident to out-of-state marriages; 3) deny them economic rights and benefits; and 4) inflict psychological and stigmatic harm. States cannot justify marriage bans as good for children and then exclude children of same-sex couples based on moral disapproval of their same-sex parents’ relationships or to incentivize opposite-sex couples to “procreate” within the bounds of marriage. To do so, severs the connection between legal burdens and individual responsibility and creates a permanent class or caste distinction.