Poster #148 - Latinx Adolescents’ Daily Family Assistance and Emotional Well-being Before and Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Latinx adolescents engage in various family assistance activities (e.g., cleaning, cooking) almost daily for over an hour (Telzer & Fuligni, 2009). Moreover, 70–90% of Latinx adolescents from immigrant families provide language brokering, translating materials from English to Spanish for their parents (Chao, 2006; Kim et al., 2021). However, theorization and empirical evidence on how such family assistance behaviors relate to adolescents’ emotional well-being remain mixed (e.g., Masten, 2001; Godsall et al., 2004), and little is known as to whether and how times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may alter these relations. Thus, the current study examined whether family assistance consistently served as a resilience or risk factor for the day-to-day emotional well-being of Latinx youth during vs. before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thirteen 18-year-old Latinx adolescents (77% female, all in high school in Wave 1) participated in two waves of a measurement burst pilot study both before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (Wave 1: December 1, 2019–March 10, 2020; Wave 2: December 3, 2020–April 6, 2021). Most (77%) participants self-identified as Mexican American. Over half (54%) of the participants’ parents did not graduate high school.

An adapted measure of daily family assistance (Telzer & Fuligni, 2009) was used, which asked adolescents whether they had engaged in any of eight activities that day (see Table 1). A dichotomous measure, assistance day, was created, which indicated whether an adolescent helped their family with any of the eight activities that day. Family assistance time was measured using adolescents’ self-reports of the total time they helped their family that day. Daily affect was measured using a short form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Mackinnon et al., 1999), where adolescents rated five adjectives of positive affect (PA; e.g., alert, inspired) and five adjectives of negative affect (NA; e.g., upset, nervous) on a 5-point scale (1 “not at all or very slightly” to 5 “extremely”). After inspecting descriptive statistics, we conducted six multilevel regressions to examine how daily family assistance measures (family assistance day, assistance time, language brokering) were associated with adolescents’ daily PA and NA before vs. amid the pandemic.

Three main findings emerged from the analyses. First, assisting the family on a given day was associated with higher levels of same-day PA, both before and during the pandemic, and with lower levels of NA, during the pandemic. Second, longer than usual family assistance time was associated with higher levels of same-day PA and lower levels of NA during, but not before, the pandemic. Third, translating for one’s family on a given day was associated with higher levels of same-day PA, both before and during the pandemic.

In conclusion, this study provides a preview into how family assistance may be a promotive factor for Latinx youth’s emotional well-being, particularly during stressful events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has been a challenging time for all youth, and it is encouraging to find evidence of Latinx youth’s emotional gains from contributing to the family across this crisis.

Authors

• Yishan Shen, Texas State University
  Presenting Author

• Yao Zheng, University of Alberta

• Ari Rios Garza, University of Arizona

• Samantha Reisz, Washington State University