Culture or Resource? Disentangling Contextual Correlates and Child Outcomes of Chinese Immigrant Mothers’ Parenting Profiles

• In Event: Leveraging Innovative Person-centered Approaches to Study the Antecedents and Consequences of Parenting and Child Behaviors

Abstract

Inconsistent with the stereotype that most Chinese immigrant mothers (CIM) endorse intrusive and controlling parenting (i.e., tiger parenting), heterogeneity in parenting has been observed among CIMs (Cheah et al., 2013). Recent research has used person-centered approaches to understand heterogeneity in CIMs’ acculturation and parent-child relationships (Chung et al., 2021; Ren et al., 2021), but no study has focused on potential heterogeneity in CIMs’ parenting and its influence on their children’s development. Further, maternal and child characteristics, and contextual and cultural factors, can each play a unique role in predicting CIMs’ parenting profiles (Belsky, 1984). The present study used a person-centered approach to examine: (a) CIMs’ parenting profiles; (b) concurrent and longitudinal child correlates of the parenting profiles; (c) and mother, child, cultural, and contextual determinants of the parenting profiles.
First-generation CIMs (N=255, Mage=37.78, SD=4.57) of preschool-aged children (Mage=4.57, SD=1.12) in the U.S. participated at two time points (T1 and T2 six-month interval). CIMs reported their demographic information, engagement in nine parenting practices, U.S. behavioral acculturation, mental health (depressive symptoms; psychological well-being), contextual factors (stress; social support; marital relationship quality), and perceived child temperament (effortful control, negative affect, and surgency) at T1. Teachers rated children’s internalizing and externalizing problems at T1 and T2.
Latent Profile Analysis revealed three parenting profiles (Figure 1). Supportive mothers reported high levels of supportive parenting and low levels of coercive and controlling parenting, Easy-going mothers reported low levels of supportive, coercive, and controlling parenting, and Tiger mothers reported low levels of supportive parenting and high levels of coercive and controlling parenting. Children of Tiger mothers were rated higher on internalizing difficulties than children of Supportive or Easy-going mothers concurrently and longitudinally; no differences were found for child externalizing problems either concurrently or longitudinally. Gradient boosted classification tree revealed that maternal acculturation, maternal daily stress, and child effortful control were the most predictive factors contributing to CIMs’ parenting profiles (Figure 2). The Supportive Profile was mostly likely comprised of CIMs with high levels of U.S. acculturation, low levels of daily stress, and children with high levels of effortful control. The Easy-going Profile was mostly likely to comprised of CIMs with low levels of U.S. acculturation, middle to high levels of daily stress, and children with middle levels of effortful control. Finally, the Tiger Profile was mostly comprised of CIMs with high levels of daily stress and children with low levels of effortful control.
Important heterogeneity in parenting was revealed among CIMs. A “tiger” style appears to be more reflective of parents’ use of controlling parenting to obtain compliance from temperamentally difficult children due to high stress and lack of resources rather than due to parents’ endorsement of Asian culture (Taraban & Shaw, 2018). This style predicted later child internalizing problems likely because it violates children’s fundamental needs for warmth and autonomy (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). In contrast, adequate psychological and social resources, temperamentally “easy” children, accompanied by parents’ psychological acculturation towards the mainstream U.S. culture, support CIMs’ engagement in warm, supportive, and non-controlling parenting.

Authors

• Huiguang Ren, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Charissa S. L. Cheah, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Bumo Zhang, University of Maryland - Baltimore County