About this session

Friday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Picture books as a tool for parent-child ethnic-racial socialization: Context, content, and conversation

Shared book reading has been posited as a key mechanism for ethnic-racial socialization for young children (Curenton et al., 2022; Husband, 2019), particularly for reducing children’s racial bias (Aronson et al., 2016). However, little empirical work has investigated how aspects of book reading, including context, content, and conversation, influence parent or child outcomes. This symposium collectively explores these nuances. The first paper examines context and conversation, revealing an association between mothers’ subtle messaging about the intentions of racial outgroup characters and children’s explicit ethnic-racial prejudice, across Dutch mothers from ethnic-racial majority and minority backgrounds. The second paper takes a detailed look at the content and context of antiracist children’s books, including the racial identities of characters, whether characters are portrayed positively or negatively, and the creators’ racial identities. The third paper examines content and conversation, demonstrating that books highlighting systemic racism may have benefits for White U.S. parents’ thinking about inequality and children’s explicit attitudes, but finding little impact of book content on parents’ racial socialization self-efficacy. Taken together, these papers help to illuminate important aspects of shared book reading in relation to ethnic-racial socialization (book content, parent-child conversation, and contextual characteristics of families and books themselves), as well as provide preliminary evidence about how these aspects shape children’s racial attitudes. Discussion will emphasize implications of these studies for future research and for the guidance developmental scientists can provide to caregivers and children’s media professionals about how to effectively use picture books to promote healthy racial learning.

Paper #1
Title	Who’s to blame? Subtle messages about outgroups contribute to ethnic prejudice in middle- to late-childhood
Presenting author	Dr. Daudi Van Veen, Ph.D., European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER), Utrecht University, Netherlands

Paper #2
Title	What and who is represented in children’s books about race?
Presenting author	Katharine Scott, Wake Forest University, United States

Paper #3
Title	Can children’s books about race foster White parents’ racial socialization efficacy and effectiveness?
Presenting author	Grace Reid, Haverford College, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Grace Reid, Haverford College, United States

Discussant
Dr. Christina L. Rucinski, Ph.D., EmbraceRace, United States

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