Childrearing beliefs and practices for learning as determined in the context of shared caregiving among Chinese heritage families with low-income in the US

ABSTRACT

This dissertation explored shared caregiving practices and culturally salient decisions Chinese heritage, low-income families have in nurturing preschool-aged children's home learning routines. Chinese caregivers raising young children in the US have childrearing beliefs and practices informed by their heritage and family background, experiences living in the US, and individual parenting beliefs. Additionally, the routine care and nurturing of learning experiences for their young children often involve multiple individuals such as mothers, fathers, and grandparents. Yet, Chinese heritage caregivers' intentional and complex childrearing considerations continue to be misunderstood by the dominant US child development frameworks as overly academically focused, controlling, and strict. This predominantly narrow view and the established association between family dynamics and young children's learning necessitates research that adopts a culturally- and contextually-grounded, shared caregiving perspective when exploring low-income, Chinese immigrant families' childrearing beliefs and practices. Twenty-seven primary caregivers (12 dyads and three individuals) representing 15 families were interviewed. Multiperspectival interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore caregivers' meaning-making processes related to cultural orientations, childrearing routines and approaches, relationships with the co-parent, and children's early learning. Findings suggested three superordinate themes relevant to Chinese heritage caregivers raising young children in the US (1) the adaptive nature of low-income, Chinese immigrant families' shared caregiving, (2) caregivers' agency in selecting contextualized and child-oriented learning goals, and (3) a multidimensional understanding of learning success. Findings illustrated the culturally and contextually grounded approaches that Chinese heritage caregivers adopt in supporting children's development of life-long learning skills and provided a strength-based lens through which to view normative family functioning. Importantly, caregivers' narratives elucidated how Chinese immigrants continued to modify their childrearing beliefs and practices as a family to overcome the new and unexpected challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Asian racism. These findings have direct relevance to the home-school partnership with immigrant families by contributing a new framework for educators, researchers, and policymakers to understand the broader contextual influences (e.g., shared caregiving, cultural backgrounds, Chinese childrearing beliefs) on young children's early learning and development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)