Support is a two-way street

Immigrant parents have extremely high expectations for their children's educational pathways and research has shown that children internalize these expectations and use them as motivation to succeed.

But family is a complicated influence. In research by Fuligni and colleagues they found that while feelings of family obligation aided children in school, family obligation behaviors (amount of time spent helping family) could have the opposite affect.

In a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center on "Latinos and Education" we again see a conflicting influence. While Latino parents were more likely to say that children should go to college after school than other parents, the most common response for why Latino young adults did not continue their education was that they needed to support their family.

It seems reasonable to believe that when families are better supported through policy we will see less of a gap between educational expectations and educational attainment.

Great expectations

Ruby Takanishi, the president of the Foundation for Child Development, has spent her life working to translate research into positive policies for American children. In an interview with New America Media this past week she discusses several types of expectations.

On expectations for the new administration:

"The fact of the matter is that immigrant children are not on anybody’s agenda, except in a negative way."

On expectations of immigrant parents for their children:

"...it’s really hard to find any immigrant family that doesn’t have extremely high aspirations for the education and future of their children. It doesn’t matter if they are getting a Ph.D., or if they have less than a fifth grade education. There is an enormous faith and belief in education that may be an important selection factor for the groups that come to the United States instead of going to another country."

On the ability to capitalize on expectations:

"Different immigrant groups have different amounts of social capital. Some immigrant groups are very well organized to do this, others are not. In the groups that don't have enough social capital, it’s an opportunity for other immigrant serving organizations to step in and fill that gap."

Dr. Takanishi has co-edited a book Immigration, Diversity and Education, which was released this Summer.