SGER: Birth Cohort Study of the NYU Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education: Chinese Sample

吉川博士和塔米斯-莱蒙达博士作为美国国家科学基金会资助的文化、发展和教育研究中心的一部分，对低收入移民家庭进行了一项大规模的出生队列研究，他们发现，中国移民父母在婴儿出生的第一年将婴儿送回中国的比率非常高。在中国其他地区的其他中国移民样本中也观察到了这种模式，但目前的研究是由美国国家科学基金会探索性研究小额赠款(SGER)资助的，是第一次探索这些亲子分离对非常年幼的孩子发育的预测因素和后果的研究。依恋理论预测，这些孩子可能会因为很早就与父母分离而遭受情感上的困难。另一方面，在他们的中国家庭环境中，更广泛的社交网络可能意味着更丰富的语言环境。这项研究将调查婴儿被送回中国的情况--包括他们在中国期间的发送、学习和照顾环境的原因，父母与孩子在那里的照顾者的沟通，以及分离后的潜在后果。这项研究将为了解美国最大的亚洲移民群体中日益普遍的跨国模式提供新的线索，这种模式迄今从未在研究中得到研究。这些数据将有助于了解一个研究不足的群体的发展和学习过程，并最终将有助于了解如何才能最好地促进来自移民家庭的幼儿的学习，因为他们的跨国流动日益复杂。

While conducting a large-scale birth cohort study of low-income immigrant families as part of the NSF-funded Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education, Drs. Yoshikawa and Tamis-LeMonda found that Chinese immigrant parents are sending their infants back to China during the first year of life at very high rates. This pattern has been observed in other samples of Chinese immigrants in other parts of the country, but the current research, funded by NSF Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER), is the first study to explore the predictors and consequences of these parent-child separations for very young children's development. Attachment theory predicts that these children may suffer emotional difficulties due to very early separation from their parents. On the other hand, more extended social networks in their Chinese family environments may mean a richer language environment. This study will examine the circumstances surrounding infants being sent back to China -- including reasons for the sending, learning and caregiving environments while they are in China, communication of the parents with their children's caregivers while they are there, and potential consequences post-separation. This study will shed new light on an increasingly common transnational pattern among the largest Asian immigrant group to the United States, one that has never been studied in research to date. The data will contribute to knowledge about developmental and learning processes in an understudied group, and will ultimately help inform how learning in young children from immigrant families can best be facilitated, given their increasingly complex transnational movements.