Parent-Child Interactions and Marginalized Contexts: The Role of Race, Gender, and Discrimination Experiences

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Parent–child interactions are foundational to healthy development, and these interactions occur within important but understudied socioecological contexts. This symposium explores how parent-child relationship processes shape child and adolescent development across multiple levels (individual, dyadic, systems) and specific contexts (racial identity, gender, and discrimination).
Paper 1 examines how trajectories of Black and White adolescents’ internalizing symptoms and parents’ responses to distress unfold over a 6-year period of adolescence. Findings suggest that co-developmental trajectories vary by adolescents’ racial and gender identity, highlighting the importance of considering diverse pathways predicting teen mental health.
Paper 2 extends the conversation beyond identity to consider the impact of adolescent girls’ personal experiences of discrimination—in its multiple forms—on obesity-related health. Results reveal that adolescents’ discrimination distress predicted increased obesity-related health risk, but such risk was buffered by parental “safe haven” behaviors, such as emotional validation and reassurance of adolescents’ safety.
Paper 3 moves this body of work toward much-needed applications to reduce discrimination by encouraging White parents to initiate anti-racist conversations with children, beginning early in development. Pilot data from a 6-week intervention illuminate specific parent, child, and relationship factors that interact to support (or undermine) the quality of their conversations about race.
The Discussant—a leading expert on racial-ethnic socialization and attachment processes in minoritized families—will discuss the implications of this work for understanding the specific relational processes that can promote youths’ mental and physical health, buffer against stress, and address systems of oppression.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Jessica A Stern, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

Discussant

• Angel Sia Dunbar, University of Maryland - College Park

Individual Presentations

• Developmental Trajectories of Youth Psychopathology Symptoms and Parental Responses to Distress Among Black and White Adolescents - Presenting Author: Jason Daniel Jones, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Jessica A Stern, University of Virginia - Charlottesville; R. Chris Fraley; Carl Lejuez, University of Connecticut; Jude A. Cassidy, University of Maryland - College Park

• Adolescent Girls’ Multidimensional Discrimination Distress and Obesity-Related Health: Parents as Safe Havens - Presenting Author: Kelly Kazmierski; Jessica L Borelli, University of California - Irvine; Larissa Wong; Kallie Brown; Jocelyn Lai, University of California - Irvine; Zahra Mousavi; Jianmin Shao; Uma Rao

• A Grounded Theory Approach to Understanding White Families’ Race-Conscious Conversations - Presenting Author: Margaret L. Kerr, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Inés Botto, University of Wisconsin - Madison