Low-income Latino mothers’ and fathers’ control strategies and toddler compliance.

We explored children’s compliance to their mothers’ and fathers’ control strategies in a sample of 49 Latino toddlers and their immigrant parents during a cleanup task. We report 3 sets of findings. First, both mothers and fathers primarily used direct and indirect commands to elicit compliance. Second, there was no difference in the type of control strategies mothers and fathers used with their daughters versus sons. Mothers who used praise and indirect commands had children who complied more, whereas mothers who used direct commands and incentives had children who were less compliant. Toddlers were more compliant to their fathers than mothers, and girls were more compliant to their mothers than were boys. Third, mothers who used more direct control strategies also strongly endorsed the value of respeto. These findings highlight the importance of examining the variation in Latino mothers’ and fathers’ control strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)