Parent-child conflict in Chinese American families: Parental conflict communication strategies, related sociocultural factors, and outcomes

• In Event: The role of culture and language in parent-child emotional communication: From storybooks to disease management

Abstract

Parent-child conflict provides crucial opportunities for children’s social and emotional development. Parental use of supportive communication strategies during conflict may promote well-being in children, whereas rejecting and dismissive strategies may inhibit healthy development. Chinese American children from immigrant families may be especially susceptible to the detrimental effects of parent-child conflict due to intergenerational value discrepancies.

This study examines potentially supportive parental communication strategies that occur during conflict between Chinese immigrant parents and their children, associated sociocultural variables, and links to communication quality in adolescence. This study aims to identify protective mechanisms of parent-child emotional communication to increase engagement in and efficacy of family-based interventions for Chinese immigrants.

This study utilizes waves 2 and 3 (W2 and W3) of a longitudinal study on socioemotional development of Chinese American children from immigrant families. W3 was conducted approximately 7 years after W2. The sample of W2 consisted of 239 children (48.1% females, M age = 9.2 years, SD = .73, age range = 7.5-11.0) and their parents, and 139 families (50.7% female adolescents, M age = 16.66 years, SD = .57, age range = 15.4 to 18.1) returned to W3. At W2, families participated in a videotaped 5-10-minute interaction about previously identified conflict topics. Bilingual assistants coded for the presence of positive verbal strategies (i.e., praise (VP), terms of endearment (ED), agreement (AG), acknowledgement (AK), elicit other’s opinion (EOO), and offer solution (OS)) and emotion discussion strategies (i.e., labeling (LDE), eliciting discussion of (EDE), teaching (TE), and validating emotion (AVE)). At W3, families reported on parent-adolescent open communication.

The majority of parents (92.6%) exhibited one or more communication strategies (Mdn = 6). AK and EOO were most common strategies (used by 66.8% and 59.4% of parents). AVE, TE, and ED were the least common (used by 2.8%, 4.6%, and 4.6% of parents). VP was used by 24% of parents and 8.8% of parents used it more than once during the interaction. Emotion discussion codes were aggregated into one code due to their infrequency. VP was associated with parents’ higher Chinese and Western orientations (βs = .843 and .893, ps <.05). AG was associated with higher socioeconomic status (SES; β = .554, p = .037). AK was associated with higher parents’ Chinese orientation (β = .508, p = .007) and authoritative parenting (β = .331, p = .045), lower authoritarian parenting (β = -.384, p = .022), and children’s 1st generation status (β = -.415, p = .042) and male sex (β = .394, p = .022). EOO was associated with higher SES (β = .359, p = .013) and lower authoritarian parenting (β = -.483, p = .015). Emotion discussion was positively associated with higher Western orientation in parents (β = .411, p = .026). VP was associated with parent-reported open communication in adolescence, above and beyond parenting styles (β = 3.237, p = .039). The findings of this study indicate that though praise is not a communication strategy frequently used among Chinese immigrant parents, praise may have longitudinal effects on open communication.

Authors

• Sara Chung, University of California, San Francisco
  Presenting Author

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carmen Kho, North Dakota State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tsz Chun Chung, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristy Lai, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alexandra Main, University of California, Merced
  Non-Presenting Author