A team of six researchers from the MSU Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) worked with families and their children on their latest research to help caregivers teach children how to manage racial discrimination. The results of their study, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Black Children’s Experiences of Emotion-Focused Racial–Ethnic Socialization, Coping, and Antiracist Resistance," was published in Behavioral Sciences.
“We hope that the results of this research will make a difference by informing family-based prevention and intervention efforts that empower caregivers and their children to resist and combat the negative effects of racism,” Dr. Kendal Holtrop said, HDFS associate professor and part of the team led by PI Dr. Emilie Smith.
Their research was unique because it included focus groups with 39 Black children 5-12 years old who shared about their experiences. Children reported that their parents imparted a sense of positive identity in terms of their cultural heritage, skin, and hair-areas in which they experienced frequent bullying.
“It was important to work with this age group because, in developmental research, we rarely get the chance to hear directly from children about their social worlds, emotions, and needs—without those insights being filtered through adult perspectives,” Simone Bibbs said, HDFS doctoral student and member of the team. “Middle childhood is often overlooked in identity and socialization research, so my team and I felt it was crucial to acknowledge their voices and experiences.”
Additionally, Black children also reported learning emotion-centered coping strategies that focus on their inner strengths and private speech. They adopted a range of adaptive coping mechanisms such as kindness, ignoring perpetrators, centering their positive identity, identity framing, and fighting back.
“This research demonstrates that children are learning and interacting with their environments, and even as young as elementary school, are aware of discrimination and are learning adaptive ways to cope and resist,” Dr. Emilie Smith, HDFS professor and research PI.
The team of researchers was made up of Dr. Emilie Phillips Smith, Simone E. Bibbs, Dr. Deborah J. Johnson, Dr. Lekie Dwanyen, Dr. Kendal Holtrop and Dr. LaVelle Gipson-Tansil, representing a significant departmental research collaboration.
“Among our team we have experts in parenting intervention, prevention science, racial-ethnic socialization, and qualitative methodologies,” Dr. Emilie Smith said. “The students at every level, doctoral, masters, and even a high school student were critical in recruiting and engaging families and collecting the focus group data. Importantly, we’d also like to recognize and thank our community partner, Angela Stepter. Stepter was critically important to recruiting and engaging parents and their children in this community-engaged research project.”
To read the full article, visit https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/15/2/222.
By Katie Frey