Cultural Orientation as a Moderator of Parenting Discrepancy-Adjustment Links Among Chinese Canadian Children

• In Event: 3-181 - Exploring Moderating and Mediating Processes in the Links between Parenting and Ethnic Minority Youth’s Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Immigrant parents and children live within two sets of cultural norms. In Chinese Canadian families, children’s views of ideal parenting may be heavily influenced by Canadian norms whereas parents’ actual parenting may be heavily influenced by Chinese norms. As a result, discrepancies between what children desire and what they perceive in terms of parenting may be exacerbated for youth with immigrant backgrounds, and may negatively affect their adjustment. In a sample of Chinese Canadian children, we investigated relations among discrepancy in perceived and ideal levels of parenting, cultural orientations, and depressive symptoms.

Hypotheses: We predicted that ideal-actual discrepancies in parental warmth and monitoring would predict poorer adjustment and congruence would predict higher adjustment. We also explored whether children’s Chinese cultural orientation moderated these relations.

Study Population: The sample consisted of 96 youth aged 8 to 15 years (mean 11.90 years, 56% female) with immigrant Chinese parents. Two-thirds of the children were born outside of Canada.

Methods: Youth self-reported their perceived and ideal level of maternal and paternal parenting, Chinese orientation in various domains (behavioural orientation and facets of family obligation), and depressive symptoms. We employed polynomial regression and response surface analysis ((Edwards, 2002) to test relations between parenting ideals and perceptions and adolescent adjustment. In polynomial regression equations, an outcome is regressed onto individual predictors, each predictor squared, and each predictor multiplied. Response surface analysis maps the independent effects of each component and their combined effects in 3-D space.

Results: Children’s Chinese cultural orientation played a significant role in exacerbating the risk of discrepancy between ideal and perceived parenting. In most instances, perceiving parenting that did not meet one’s ideals was linked with more depressive symptoms when children were highly orientated to Chinese culture. This pattern was evident for both mothers’ and fathers’ monitoring: greater magnitude of monitoring discrepancies was linked to higher depressive symptoms when children reported higher Chinese behavioral orientations and greater valuation of future support and current assistance (see Figure 1). Children who are highly invested in Chinese culture may experience greater disappointment and despondency when parents are not meeting their ideals, compared to children who are less oriented to Chinese culture. A similar pattern was found for reports of mothers’ warmth: unmet expectations for warmth from mothers was associated with more depressive symptoms. Interestingly, the opposite was true for fathers’ warmth: discrepancies between ideal and perceived paternal warmth was associated with more depressive symptoms when children’s Chinese orientation was particularly low. A higher Chinese orientation may be protective in this particular instance. Perhaps a greater appreciation of the traditional role of a Chinese father as an authority figure renders discrepancies in warmth less important.

The results illustrate the complexity of immigrant children’s interpretations of parenting and suggest that parenting discrepancies may be a manifestation of the internal cultural conflict that immigrant children experience growing up across two cultures.
Reference

Authors

• Vivien So, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria
  Presenting Author

• Catherine Costigan, University of Victoria
  Non-Presenting Author