BERKELEY, Calif. (KCBS) -- A UC Berkeley researcher says children born to immigrant Latina mothers tend to have poorer cognitive skills as toddlers than middle-class white children.
Professor of Education and Public Policy Bruce Fuller says the Latino babies start their life with an advantage.
"These newborns are very healthy," he said. "They're fat and happy and sometimes even healthier than babies born to middle class mothers."
KCBS' Patti Reising reports
But Fuller says the toddlers start to lag behind middle-class white children in basic language and cognitive skills by the age of 2 or 3. He has a couple of theories as to "why."
"Latino families overall tend to be larger," he said. "That means that every individual toddler gets individual attention with a caring parent."
Latina mothers are caring, says Fuller, but those studied didn't spend as much time reading, playing games and doing other educational activities with their children as their white suburban counterparts, and the differences were apparent before they reached school.
Education levels also play a part, Fuller says. One fifth of the immigrant Latina mothers had taken college courses as opposed to two thirds of their suburban white counterparts.
(ewi)
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