How the content and form of parent-child conversations about race relate to the development of racial attitudes

The present study investigated how parent-child conversations about race relate to children’s racial attitudes. Conversations were collected remotely from 124 children (ages 4-8; 16% Asian, 20% Black, 13% multiracial, 14% Latino/a, 35% White, 2% unspecified; 57% female, 42% male, 1% other) and their parents from across the United States. Parents’ beliefs about race predicted aspects of conversational content (e.g., acknowledgement of racial injustice) and linguistic form (e.g., generic claims), and families who produced a higher proportion of generic references to race had children who demonstrated more anti-Black attitudes. These results illustrate the importance of examining natural language to provide a comprehensive picture of the form and content of parent-child conversations about race.