Ethnic-Racial Identity Formation in the Early Years
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: May 13, 2021
This report looks at current evidence about the relationship between young children’s sense of their racial and ethnic identity and their well-being and education outcomes.
Primary Takeaways
Some researchers have found connections between ethnic and racial identity and children’s socialization, their mental health, and their academic outcomes. Others have found a relationship between parents’ ethnic and racial identity and early childhood development. Parents are also “critical primary agents for ethnic-racial identity formation,” the authors of this report write. Young children are also influenced by early care settings and educators, while older children are influenced by peers and other children at school.
The authors say more research is needed on programs that help children develop positive racial and ethnic identities. More research is also needed on the stages of identity development, how childcare providers and schools can support positive identity development, and how to measure and assess ethnic and racial identity formation.
Overview and Objectives
“The sizeable achievement gap experienced by racially marginalized children, particularly Black, Latine, and Native American, in comparison to their white (and Asian) peers prior to formal schooling makes it worthwhile to examine racially marginalized children’s early experiences because of an unconscious (implicit) bias that operates and is triggered by skin color (i.e., race), historical oppression, or cultural differences,” the authors of this report write. They wanted to describe the current state of knowledge about how young children develop their racial and ethnic identity and how that identity affects their well-being.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors review existing literature, catalog programs that support children’s identity formation, identify gaps in the evidence, and recommend steps to further our knowledge of ethnic and racial identity formation in young children.
How This Influences Change
Understanding how racial and ethnic identity affects children’s well-being and education outcomes and how to better support racialized children can help researchers and educators create better ways to get more children off to a good start.
Research: Go Deeper
Children’s ethnic-racial identity formation is a critical aspect of their development and has implications across the lifespan. However, there has been limited attention to children’s ethnic-racial identity formation, especially among young children of color. This paper provides the current evidence of ethnic-racial identity formation in the early years (ages 0-8). Guided by the literature primarily focused on older age youth, there is growing evidence of the importance of ethnic-racial identity for young children’s cognitive and social-emotional development, school engagement and success. The early years are a sensitive period for the formation of positive ethnic-racial identification because it is during these years that personality is first formed, so this is an opportunity to grow the evidence and, more importantly, include it as a critical outcome for children’s healthy development and an area for inclusion on national, state, and local indicators of child well-being and worthy of intervention and support. In addition to noting gaps and opportunities for innovation, we call on the need for a cohesive infrastructure, such as a research-practice partnership, focused on developing and implementing a plan that strengthens the research evidence while also integrating ethnic-racial identity and factors that support this outcome in quality rating systems and standards and professional development systems.
Hunt Institute, May 13, 2021
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people:
- Iruka IU
- Curenton SM
- Sims J
- Harris K
- Ibekwe-Okafor N
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