Parent-Adolescent Conflict in Latinx Families: Charting Development from Early Adolescence to Young Adulthood

• In Event: Latinx Parenting Behaviors in Context

Abstract

Conflict between parents and teens is part of family life, and for some families it can be a source of stress and daily challenge (Steinberg, 2001). Parent-adolescent conflicts are more common at some developmental points than others, with long-term studies of predominantly White (European American) families showing increases in daily conflicts from early to middle adolescence and declines in late adolescence (Shanahan et al., 2007). It is unclear how parent-youth conflicts may change across time in families from ethnic-racial minoritized backgrounds and what factors may contribute to increases or declines in conflict. In Latinx families, where there is a strong emphasis on family-oriented values that reflect the significance of close and harmonious family relationships, conflict may have particularly significant implications for children’s and parents’ mental health (Peterson & Bush, 2013). Grounded in developmental and cultural-ecological perspectives, the proposed study advances research on parent-youth relationships by a) charting the developmental trajectories of parent-youth conflict among Latinx families from ages 12 to 22, and b) examining individual (i.e., depression), familial (i.e., parents’ couple relationships), cultural (i.e., Anglo orientation, familism values) factors that may explain variation in parent-youth conflict across adolescence.
Data came from 246 Mexican-origin families in the southwestern United States with younger siblings (51% female, Mage = 12.8, SD = .58; 38% born in Mexico), older siblings (Mage = 15.5, SD = 1.57; 47% born in Mexico) and their mothers (Mage = 39.0; SD = 4.6) and fathers (Mage = 41.7; SD = 5.8) and were collected at four time points over an 8-year period. Youth-reports of frequency of parent-child conflict regarding 11 topics (e.g., curfew, chores, dating; Smetana 1988) were assessed (αs = .76 - .86; e.g., “How often do you have disagreements or differences of opinion with your [mom/dad] about how late you stay up or stay out?). Parents and youth rated their familism values (Knight et al., 2010), Anglo orientations (ARSMA-II; Cuéllar et al., 1995), and depressive symptoms (CES-D; Devins & Orme, 1985), and parents rated their marital love (Braiker & Kelley, 1979) at Times 1, 3, and 4, which were used to create cross-time average scores.
Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted using PROC MIXED in SAS to chart the longitudinal course of mother-youth conflict while accounting for nestedness of time within individuals within families. As shown in Figure 1, mother-youth conflict had a linear decline across ages 12 to 22 (γ = -.15, p = .018), with nonsignificant quadratic or cubic age effects. Results for the predictors of mother-youth conflict are shown in Table 1. Greater youth familism was associated with lower levels of mother-youth conflict, whereas greater mother familism positively predicted mother-youth conflict. Mother and youth Anglo orientation did not significantly predict mother-youth conflict. When mothers reported higher average marital love, mother-youth conflict was lower. Finally, greater youth depression and mother depression separately predicted greater with mother-youth conflict. Results for father-youth conflict will be included in the final presentation. Implications for leveraging parent-adolescent relationships to inform culturally relevant prevention programs for Latinx families will be discussed.

Authors

• Daye Son, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Kimberly Updegraff, Arizona State University

• Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Harvard University