Discrepancies of Parents’ and Adolescents’ Perceptions of Ethnic-Racial Socialization in Mexican Immigrant Families

• In Event: Ethnic Racial Socialization

Abstract

Ethnic-racial socialization is commonly practiced in ethnic minority families (Hughes et al., 2006), and it has been considered as a dynamic and complex process, through which children can misinterpret, ignore or even reject the socialization messages that are delivered by their parents (Hughes et al., 2009). Thus, there might be discrepancies between the messages that parents believe they are transmitting and the messages that adolescents believe they are receiving. However, empirical knowledge regarding the discrepancies between parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions of the ethnic-racial socialization process, or about what family-level factors could influence such discrepancies, is very limited. Based on The Operations Triad Model (De Los Reyes & Ohannessian, 2016), parent-adolescent discrepancies in ethnic-racial socialization may reflect problems in family functioning. In other words, ethnic-racial socialization messages might be more successfully transmitted in a supportive and warm family environment, reflecting small to no discrepancies across parent and adolescent reports. Taken together, the current study had two research aims: (1) to identify distinct patterns of parent-adolescent discrepancies in their perceptions of racial-ethnic socialization; (2) to examine whether parent-child relationship quality would influence individuals’ membership in the observed discrepancy profiles.
The current study used data from a longitudinal study of 604 Mexican immigrant families. The adolescents’ ages ranged from 11 to 15 years old (M = 12.96, SD =. 94, 54% female) at Wave 1. At Wave 1, parents and adolescents separately reported on three racial socialization indicators (i.e., cultural socialization, bias coping, preparation for bias). In addition, adolescents reported on parent-child relationship quality (i.e., warmth, hostility, parent-child alienation).
Latent profile analyses were conducted separately for mother-adolescent and father-adolescent dyads to explore ethnic-racial socialization discrepancy profiles using parents’ and adolescents’ report of ethnic-racial socialization. For mother-adolescent dyads, four profiles emerged (see Figure 1a) with the average high group being the largest (50%), followed by mother higher than adolescent (21%), adolescent higher than mother (20%), and average low (9%) groups. For father-adolescent dyads, two profiles emerged (see Figure 1b), with most of the dyads being in the adolescent higher than father group (62%) and the remainder in the father higher than adolescent group (38%). We then used automatic R3STEP analyses that integrated parent-child relationship quality indicators as predictors of class membership. Results suggested that better parent-child relationships (i.e., higher paternal and maternal warmth) are associated with profiles that have smaller discrepancies or profiles where adolescents reported higher ethnic-racial socialization. Specifically, adolescents who reported higher levels of maternal warmth were more likely to be in the average high or adolescent higher than mother groups compared to the other two groups; those reported higher levels of paternal warmth are also more likely to be in adolescent higher than father group than father higher than adolescent group.
By taking a person-centered approach, the present study highlighted the importance of unpacking the dynamic process of parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions of ethnic-racial socialization. Our findings also suggest that interventions focusing on improving parent-child relationships can be developed to strengthen the transmission of racial socialization messages between parents and adolescents.

Authors

• Shanting Chen, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Jelsma, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Su Yeong Kim, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aprile D Benner, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yang Hou, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author