PSU professor launching national study on parenting under immigration stress

Portland State professor Susana Beltrán-Grimm has been studying how bilingual language use influences children's math learning. But when she visited Latiné families last year, parents didn't want to talk about math. Many were afraid to even open the door.

It was something she knew she needed to dig into - how parents were trying to care for and protect their children while living in fear and anxiety amid nationwide immigration crackdowns.

"This is their reality right now. They're worried about whether they should take their kids to school or what would happen if they get deported," said Beltrán-Grimm, an assistant professor of developmental and educational psychology. "For me, as a Latina woman, Mexican woman and scholar of color, I would be doing a disservice to my own community to ignore it."

Beltrán-Grimm piloted a study last summer with 54 families in Oregon, California, Texas and New York, with a particular focus on play - where and how children played, whether parents were comfortable letting them play with others in the neighborhood and how parents' own stress or fear about immigration affected the energy they had to engage in play at home.

"A lot of them were using play as a way to protect or comfort their children," she said. "But at the same time, it was worrisome for them because play happens outside their home - on the playground, in after-school programs - and they didn't want to go out."

Her survey questions for parents ranged from whether they prepared their children to respond if asked about their family's immigration status to whether they avoided taking their children to parks, libraries or public play areas for fear of police or immigration agents.

Preliminary findings showed that first-generation families tend to be more anxious, but that a parent's education level didn't matter - the anxiety was affecting those with a Ph.D. as much as those without a high school diploma.

Beltrán-Grimm says families wanted to share their experiences and thoughts beyond what the survey could capture. Now, with support from a policy fellowship grant from the American Psychological Association's Educational Psychology division, Beltrán-Grimm is building on the pilot study.

The expanded study, set to launch in early February, will recruit up to 450 families nationwide through partnerships with Head Start. Quantitative surveys in English and Spanish will measure parental anxiety and play-based social-emotional play practices, while qualitative interviews with 20 to 30 families will illuminate lived experiences of safety, belonging and parental coping under restrictive immigration conditions.

With this project, Beltrán-Grimm hopes to better understand how macro-level immigration policies shape micro-level family life and how everyday family practices sustain joy and connection in contexts of fear. She hopes the findings will guide trauma-informed practices in schools and policy reforms that support both parents and children.

"How do we help families address their needs and concerns and support them so that they can, in turn, support their children?" she said.