“Whatever I Can Imagine, We Did It”: Home-Based Parental Involvement Among Low-Income African-American Mothers With Preschoolers Enrolled in Head Start

ABSTRACT

Researchers are increasingly focusing on the home-based parental involvement experiences of low-income, African American families with young children. These studies document the positive ways that parental involvement can promote the school readiness of preschoolers who are at risk of not being ready for kindergarten. In light of the paucity of research on this demographic group and developmental period, this study examines the parental involvement beliefs and practices of low-income, African American mothers with preschoolers transitioning to kindergarten. Specifically, we conducted qualitative interviews with 20 low-income, African American mothers of preschoolers enrolled in Head Start. This research was informed by the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (HD-S) model of parental involvement and resilience theory, which allowed us to explore mothers’ beliefs about who should be responsible for preschool children’s transition to kindergarten and how these beliefs were implemented in mothers’ home-based activities. Our findings are consistent with tenets of both the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler model and resilience theory. However, our findings expand these frameworks by detailing the unique experiences of low-income, African American mothers. The research findings offer recommendations for promoting parental involvement in early child care settings and the elementary schools into which children will be transitioning.

KEYWORDS:

• African American
• Head Start
• parenting beliefs
• parenting practices
• parent involvement
• qualitative research
• resilience

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 793-357 [accession number: 1007545]. Megan-Brette Hamilton assisted with bibliographic searches and literature reviews, and preliminary analyses. Maria Greaves-Safadi Barnes assisted with data collection and transcribing. Kimberly Crossman and Aisha Griffith assisted with transcribing. Ashley Bernardo, Shaliyah Brown, Kaitlyn Pugh, Asura Osborne and other members of the Ethnographic Research Lab team in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at UIUC, also contributed to the research project. We gratefully acknowledge the enthusiastic involvement of our participants and Mariette Myers Preschool who made this study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Names of the community, preschool site, and families are all pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 793-357 [accession number: 1007545].