Child Development

Critique of Mainstream Research

Perhaps the primary critique of mainstream child development research is the emphasis on a “deficiency” model—in other words, scholars compare children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, using White children as the norm. Scholarship that uses a deficiency model often finds that minority children are lacking in key academic and emotional skills compared with their majority peers. A deficiency model is problematic because within-group variation is ignored. The tendency, then, is to conclude that minority children are deficient in some way, as a function of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, rather than examining other factors that may underlie this pattern. Some scholars are moving away from the deficiency model by focusing on the process of child development within certain racial and ethnic groups, rather than outcomes measured at one point in time. What is a normative development path for a Hispanic child? An African American child?

Relatedly, given the focus on comparisons across groups, many studies use problematic definitions of minority groups; it is not uncommon, for example, to see a study that separates children into White, Black, Hispanic, and “Other.” This practice obscures the diversity of minority experiences within groups, conflates ethnic heritage and race, and may misclassify children whose parents or grandparents are from different racial and ethnic categories.

Finally, although mainstream child development theory emphasizes the importance of a child's environment, these theories have not adequately addressed how racism, discrimination, and prejudice shape minority children's development. Theories of child development theory must take into account how these social factors shape children.

Centrality of Race and Ethnicity

To make race and ethnicity central to theories of child development, scholars must begin by acknowledging the challenges that minority children encounter while growing up in a discriminatory and racist society. Instead of pointing to developmental deficiencies, scholars should focus on charting minority children's normative development. In the face of racism, discrimination, and segregation, what strategies do minority families and children develop? In other words, how do children become resilient? Recent studies describe how minority groups have developed an adaptive culture to buffer the negative effects of this environment.

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