We're still miffed by why these tough-love parents don't vote Republican, after discovering quite traditional child-minding inside a score of Latino households.
Their preschoolers lent a hand clearing the table or clutter, even changing diapers of their youngest siblings. Accented by daily chores and Sunday rituals, these Mexican-American youngsters learned the sanctity of family obligations. Rare displays of misbehavior brought quick reprimands and the occasional spanking, as we watched over a 14-month period.
Turns out that this rather conservative upbringing "“ mixed with ample affection "“ yields kids who enter school with remarkable social agility and emotional maturity, a finding we identified in a study published December after tracking more than 4,700 young children nationwide. These results corroborate other recent studies -- Mexican-American kindergartners display robust cooperative skills, respect adults, and eagerly participate in classroom tasks, whether their behavior is judged by parents or teachers
(RELATED: Highly Social Mexican-American Kindergarteners Weak in Other Areas)
Gaps in cognitive and preliteracy skills remain wide: the average Mexican-American 4-year-old is seven months behind the average white peer. Yet we could detect no differences in social competence, despite the yawning chasm in economic status between the two groups of families. Almost two-fifths of the Mexican-American sample fell beneath the poverty line.