Just for Me! Black Cultural Pride Boxes Aiding Black Mothers in their Cultural Socialization Practices for their Preschoolers.

Exposure to racism is an important risk-factor for Black children's mental health that can be combated through parents' transmission of cultural pride messages. To assist parents in enhancing these practices, we piloted a Black cultural pride box intervention, entitled Just for Me!, that included Black-centered play and educational items. Fourteen families participated in the study with their preschoolers (mean age = 3.6 years). Families interacted with the box contents for 2 months prior to the mothers completing a post-intervention interview. We assessed the impact of the intervention on parents' cultural socialization practices using Wilcoxon signed rank tests. Intervention acceptability was measured using a 5-point Likert scale in four subdomains: engagement, likability, current usefulness, and future utility. We used reflexive thematic analysis to determine mothers' foremost values in their cultural socialization practices and whether the intervention aligned with those values. The intervention was associated with a significant increase in how often mothers practiced the following behaviors with their preschoolers related to their ethnic/racial group: learning history/traditions (p = 0.041), talking about important people/events in history (p < 0.001), and reading culturally-specific books (p = 0.010). Furthermore, there were high ratings for acceptability across all subdomains. Participants shared common values in their cultural socialization practices of ensuring representation of Blackness, affirming Black features, and being intentional about timing conversations about race with their preschoolers. The intervention consistently supported these values, showing the benefit of a community-based approach to aid Black parents' enhanced cultural socialization practices with their preschoolers.