Examining Relations of Parental and Contextual Characteristics to the Home Literacy Environment of Hispanic/Latinx Families

The development of children's emergent literacy skills is important because these skills are strongly associated with later reading abilities and academic achievement. In the United States, students who are of Hispanic/Latinx descent often begin school with lower emergent literacy skills than Caucasian and Asian peers and the gap persists throughout their education. Most Hispanic/Latinx families provide resources and activities in the home that support children's literacy development but most research to date shows different patterns and types of engagement than in families of other ethnicities. The purpose of the current study was to examine the home literacy environments (HLE) of Hispanic/Latinx families by incorporating personal and contextual characteristics that might relate to families' specific practices. Findings of the current study indicated that parents' orientation to mainstream American culture was positively associated with their household income, maternal education, neighborhood ethnic homogeneity, and their generation in the United States and negatively related to their country/region of origin. Their orientation to Hispanic/Latinx culture was negatively related to their household income and generation within the United States and positively related to their country/region of origin. Families' orientations to both mainstream American culture and Hispanic/Latinx culture were positively associated with HLE practices. Maternal education was positively associated with frequency of and interactivity during shared reading but household income was negatively associated with the HLE. Neighborhood income was positively associated with each of the HLE activities. Much of the prior research has not recognized the great variability within the Hispanic/Latinx families within the United States and the contexts within which these families live. The findings of the current study show the diversity within the Hispanic/Latinx population of the United States and how it is associated with their acculturation and HLE.