Poster #172 - Family obligation and adolescent adjustment: The mediating role of parenting practices

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Backgrounds: Studies have found that Mexican American adolescents are at a higher risk of psychological and behavioral adjustment problems compared with other ethnic minority groups (Telzer, Gonzales, & Fuligni, 2014). Nonetheless, family obligation, as a core traditional cultural value in Mexican-origin families, plays a generally promotive role in Mexican American adolescent adjustment. For example, prior studies indicated that family obligation is negatively related to adolescent depressive symptoms, anxiety and delinquent behaviors (Keeler, Siegel, & Alvaro, 2014). However, most previous studies focused on the unidirectional relationship between family obligation and adolescent adjustment, little is known about the potential reciprocal relationship between them. Moreover, the ways in which family obligation affects adolescent adjustment is also understudied. Thus, this study utilized a cross-lagged autoregressive model to test the hypothesis that parenting practices may mediate the association between adolescents’ sense of family obligation and their later adjustment.
Methods: This study used a 2-wave longitudinal survey of Mexican immigrant families in the United States. Participants were 604 Mexican American adolescents (54% female) residing in central Texas. The participants’ ages ranged from 11 to 15 years old (M=12.41, SD = .97). Adolescents self-reported their sense of family obligation, perception of maternal parenting practices and their psychological and behavioral adjustments at both Wave 1 and Wave 2. Parenting practices included maternal monitoring, maternal inductive reasoning, maternal warmth, and maternal hostility. Three adolescent adjustments were collected: depressive symptoms, anxiety, and delinquent behaviors.
This study utilized Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the hypothesized model. All path models were estimated with Mplus 7.0 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2011). The full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation method was used to handle missing data. The direct and indirect effects were estimated in path analyses. The indirect effects were estimated using bootstrapping method (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2011).
Results: The results of the cross-lagged autoregressive model indicated two major findings. First, adolescents’ sense of family obligation at Wave 1 negatively related to adolescent’s perception of maternal parenting practices at Wave 2. Conversely, adolescents’ perception of maternal parenting practices at Wave 1 positively related to their sense of family obligation at Wave 2. Second, adolescent’s report of maternal parenting practices played a mediating role in the link between adolescents’ sense of family obligation and their adjustment (see Table 1). Specifically, maternal parenting practices fully mediated the associations between family obligation and adolescent adjustment.
Conclusion and Implications: The findings highlight the bidirectional relationship between adolescent sense of family obligation and their perception of maternal parenting practices and the mediating role of parenting practices in the link between family obligation and adolescent adjustment. Higher level of family obligation and perceptions of maternal parenting practices can directly contribute to the alleviation of adolescents’ maladaptive adjustment. Through investigating the mechanism between adolescents’ sense of family obligation and their developmental outcomes, this study extends researchers’ understanding of how family obligation has an impact on adolescent’s adjustment via parental practices. It is beneficial to develop more intervention programs of parenting practices training to promote Mexican American adolescents’ psychological and behavioral adjustments.

Authors

• Jinjin Yan, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Yang Hou, University of Texas in Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Su Yeong Kim, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author