Sometimes Medicine, Public Health, Public Policy, Media and Advertising intersect in some interesting ways.

The L.A. Times just ran an interesting article citing the results of a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine study comparing the TV consumption habits of children of Spanish-speaking Hispanic moms with those of English-speaking Hispanic moms. Interestingly, the study found that after the first year, children of Spanish-speaking moms watch less TV than their counterparts with Hispanic English-speaking moms during their 2nd and 3rd years of life.

Here is a link to the abstract published by the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The report explicitly states it’s purpose upfront: “Excessive television viewing in early childhood is associated with a multitude of negative health outcomes, including obesity, attention problems, and sleep troubles.”

The report speculates that TV viewing might be less important to Spanish-speaking moms. They also speculate that their may be a supply issue – not a lot of Spanish-language kids programming.

My take is that Spanish-speaking moms, who are by nature less acculturated and probably immigrants from Latin America, bring with them more traditional values. I bet more of them are also stay-at-home moms than their more acculturated English-speaking counterparts.

I also agree that there is a dearth of quality, Spanish language toddler programming. As the Spanish-speaking parent of a 1 and 2 year-old, there are only a few hours of children’s programming on Univision and Telemundo on a weekly basis. Digital TV has increased options exponentially, with Spanish-language versions of popular children’s stations such as PBS’ Noggin and Nick Jr. (my daughter loves watching inverted “Dora the Explorer” where Dora speaks in Spanish with English words mixed in). However, I would assume that most unacculturated Spanish-speaking households do not have access to digital cable / fiber yet.

These findings also seem to reinforce the traditional Hispanic acculturation segmentation model – showing how different Hispanics of different acculturation levels are.

The long-term implications for children of English-speaking Hispanic moms is also obviously disconcerting…

This entry is filed under advertising, demographics, hispanic, media, multicultural, research, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.