Previous scholarship has shown associations between discrimination and health. More recently, researchers have found that a mother\u2019s psychological response to discrimination\u2014notably, high levels of stress during pregnancy\u2014may have implications for the health of her child, such as low birth weight.<\/p>\n In the Health Psychology<\/em> study, the NYU researchers explored the possibility that perceptions of discrimination may be associated with the health of young children.<\/p>\n To do so, they interviewed 98 immigrant mothers from the Dominican Republic and Mexico who had normally developing 14-month-old children. To gauge perceptions of ethnic and language discrimination, they adapted an established survey, the Everyday Discrimination Scale, which asks such questions as: \u201cHow often have you been treated poorly at work by supervisors because of your ethnicity\u201d or \u201cHow often have you been treated with less courtesy than other people because of how you wrote or spoke English?\u201d The mothers also reported the number of times their child visited the doctor for well-visits (regular checkups) and for sick visits (trips to the hospital or emergency room, a clinic, or a private office visit because the child was ill).<\/p>\n To measure ethnic-group attachment, the study employed a commonly used survey instrument, \u201cThe Ethnic Identity Scale,\u201d drawing upon responses to a pair of questions: \u201cI have a strong sense of belonging to my ethnic group\u201d and \u201cI feel a strong attachment to my ethnic group\u201d.<\/p>\n Their findings showed distinctions between recent immigrants (those who had been in the U.S. about three years, on average) and those who had been in the U.S. for longer periods (about 14 years, on average), as well as between perceptions of language and ethnic discrimination:<\/p>\n \u2022 Among more recent immigrants, greater perceived ethnic and language-based discrimination were both associated with more frequent sick-child visits, but only among those who reported less attachment to their ethnic group. \u201cThis study is the first to link greater language-based discrimination perceived by mothers to poorer health in their children,\u201d said David Amodio, an associate professor in NYU\u2019s Department of Psychology and one of the study\u2019s co-authors. \u201cMoreover, these findings highlight the impact of language-based discrimination on Latino immigrants in the U.S., which is distinct from discrimination based on ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n The study\u2019s other co-authors were May Ling Halim, a doctoral student in NYU\u2019s Department of Psychology, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, a principal investigator at NYU\u2019s Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education and currently a professor at Harvard University\u2019s Graduate School of Education.<\/p>\n The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the NYU press release: Children of recent immigrants are more likely to make sick visits to the doctor if their mothers see themselves as targets of ethnic or language-based… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[45,73,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Discrimination.jpg\" "\\"discrimination\\"")
Children of recent immigrants are more likely to make sick visits to the doctor if their mothers see themselves as targets of ethnic or language-based discrimination, researchers at New York University report in a new study. Their research, which appears in the journal Health Psychology<\/em>, provides new evidence that perceptions of discrimination by a mother could have a negative effect on the health of her child within the first 14 months of her child\u2019s life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 The associations between both forms of perceived discrimination and sick-child visits were not observed among recent immigrant mothers reporting high ethnic-group attachment.
\n\u2022 By contrast, among more established immigrants, perceived language-based discrimination was associated with more frequent sick-child visits across all levels of ethnic-group attachment.<\/p>\n