Mexican and European Heritage Families’ Elaborations During Two Storytelling Activities

There is important variation in how elaborative parents from different cultural backgrounds are with their children during narratives (Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006; Schick & Melzi, 2010). The present study built on this work by examining whether mothers from three cultural communities varied in the content of their elaborations when in two storytelling contexts: parents sharing their own personal experiences, and narratives elicited using a wordless book, The Lion and the Mouse (Pinkney, 2009). Sixty families: 40 US parents of Mexican descent from two schooling levels, and 20 European Heritage parents shared narratives about the parent and a wordless book at home. Parents’ academic elaborations (print knowledge, labeling, generics, and physical causality) and life lesson elaborations (causal motivation, causal motivation implicit, personal connection, and consejos) were coded. In the personal storytelling context, European heritage mothers shared more personal connections than Mexican Heritage mothers from both groups. In the wordless book context, Mexican Heritage mothers in the basic schooling group shared more causal motivation talk than European Heritage mothers and Mexican Heritage mothers from the higher schooling group, whereas European Heritage mothers shared more print knowledge talk than the other two groups of Mexican mothers. This study advances practical understandings of how the content of elaborations children are exposed to at home varies across contexts in these communities