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Ecological perspectives emphasize social network influences on child rearing, but do these effects vary with ethnicity, and are they mediated by parental well-being? Low-income parents (N = 500) of ethnically and ecologically diverse backgrounds completed a multidimensional hierarchical social map and measures of parental self-esteem and child-rearing practices. Consistent with prior ethnographic studies, American Indians had frequent interchanges with an interconnected web of kin; Hispanic' parents had large, close-knit social networks but a smaller number of people who provided emotional support; and Anglo parents had structurally diffuse but emotionally supportive networks. Within-ethnicity regression analyses, covarying psychosocial risk, revealed that the affective but not structural dimensions of social networks were consistently related to parenting. Parental self-efficacy was strongly related to child-rearing practices across all ethnic groups, and mediated the effects of social support. Implications for the social ecology of child rearing and the central role of parental self-appraisals are discussed.
MacPhee et al. (Sun,) studied this question.