Poster #47 - An examination of how the family civic context promotes civic engagement among Chinese American adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial-ethnic group but have long been stereotyped as uninterested and uninvolved in civic engagement (CE) and politics (Wray-Lake et al., 2017). Additionally, Asian Americans’ CE may be impacted by the high levels of Sinophobic sentiments since the COVID-19 outbreak (Stop AAPI Hate National Report, 2022). CE is a critical feature of positive youth development especially for minority adolescents because it serves as an empowering response to heightened discrimination and a means to redress social inequalities. However, little is known about what promotes Chinese American youth’s CE. Parents create a civic context that can foster their children’s CE through various practices, including modeling of community involvement (Kahne & Sporte, 2008) and direct communication about social issues, through which parents can transfer civic beliefs and values to their children. Parents who engage in more civic participation are also more likely to engage in political socialization and serve as role models to their children, which in turn might foster their children’s CE (White & Mistry, 2016); however, this model has not been tested. Thus, our study aimed to explore the: (1) association between Chinese American parents’ CE and their adolescents’ CE, and (2) mediating role of parental civic socialization in the relation between parents’ CE and adolescents’ CE.

Chinese American parents (N=368, Mage=44.2, SDage=6.0) reported on their CE (Andolina et al., 2003; Flanagan et al., 2007; Ramakrishan et al., 2017; Wray-Lake et al., 2017). Adolescents (N=388, Mage=13.7, SDage=2.6) reported on their perceptions of parental civic socialization (White & Mistry, 2016) and their CE (de Leeuw et al., 2015; Kahne et al., 2013; White & Mistry, 2016; Wray-Lake et al., 2017). An online survey was used.

First, we created latent variables of CE across 4 dimensions separately for parents and children (Figure 1). Next, we conducted a mediation analysis to examine the association between parents’ CE (parent-report) and children’s CE (child-report) through parents’ civic socialization (child-report), controlling for child gender and parental education levels. Parental CE was significantly and positively associated with parental civic socialization (B=0.60, p< .001). In turn, parental civic socialization messages were significantly and positively related to adolescent CE (B=0.58, p< .001). However, the direct association between parental CE and adolescent CE was not significant (B=0.18, p=.14). The model yielded a good model fit (CFI= .95, TLI= .92, RSMEA= .08, SRMR=.05).

We found that Chinese American parents’ civic actions (helping others, volunteering, protesting, etc.), reflecting their commitment and skills to address social issues, were associated with greater engagement in sociopolitical discussions with, and active support of, their adolescents’ contributions to society. Importantly, these discussions and interactions with parents around civic involvement helped Chinese American adolescents construct their own CE. Parents’ CE in itself was not a direct predictor of adolescents’ CE perhaps because parents’ active messaging regarding addressing social issues, guided by parents’ own civic participation, may be necessary for their adolescents’ internalization of these messages (Shubert et al., 2022). The implications of understanding Chinese American parents’ specific facilitation of their adolescents’ CE will be discussed.

Authors

• Hatice Gursoy, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Yao Sun, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

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