Abstract:This article reviews an emerging literature examining the effects of familism across childhood and adolescence. Familism has been described as a Latino cultural value that emphasizes obligation, filial piety, family support and obedience, and its effects have been documented as primarily protective across childhood and adolescence. This review seeks to organize and critique existing research using a developmental science framework. Key tenets of this perspective that are highlighted in the review are close consideration of how familism develops within an individual across time, manifests itself at different points in development, and impacts child, adolescent, and family functioning. Forty-four articles were examined and categorized with results showing that the protective influence of familism is most evident during the period of adolescence. Consideration of expressions of familism and the impact of familism on outcomes during earlier and later periods of development is offered as a recommendation for deriving a more complete understanding of the function of familism in Latino families.

Familism, a Latino value that promotes loyalty, cohesiveness, and obedience within the family, predicts improved outcomes for Latino adolescents. However, few studies have tested whether familism serves a protective role when adolescents are facing stress. We examined whether familism predicted psychosocial outcomes in the context of stress, and whether familism moderated the relationship between peer discrimination, acculturative stress, and economic stress predicting these outcomes in a sample of 173 Latino adolescents. Familism was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and greater school attachment, but it did not moderate the relationship between any of the stressors and outcomes. Discrimination was associated with greater depressive symptoms, worse school attachment, and greater perceived barriers to college, but socioeconomic stress and acculturation stress did not uniquely predict these outcomes once taking into account discrimination. Thus, although familial culture values lead to improved outcomes in youth, they are unable to counter the detrimental effects of discrimination.

Past studies document that Latino familial cultural values (i.e. familism, affiliative obedience and filial obligation) protect against depressive symptoms and promote academic resilience in adolescence. However, some studies suggest that familial cultural values differ across gender, with females reporting greater obligations and fewer freedoms compared to their male counterparts. We examined the relationship between familial cultural values, gender, depressive symptoms and school outcomes in a sample of 179 Latino adolescents (52.9 % female; mean age = 14). Females reported greater levels of familism and greater filial obligations. We also found greater familism to be associated with fewer depressive symptoms and greater sense of school belonging for both genders. Similarly, moderate levels of filial obligations were associated with better grades across genders. In contrast, filial obligation and affiliative obedience were associated with fewer depressive symptoms only for females. While these values serve an equally protective function in the academic adjustment of both females and males, familial cultural values may be uniquely protective for females against depressive symptoms. Effective interventions for Latino youth should capitalize on the protective and resilient effects of familial cultural values and be cognizant of the role gender plays in the relationship between these values and outcomes.Article:

Discrimination is considered a contextual risk factor for ethnic minority youth, but social support provided in the same context may function to offset the risk or encourage adaptive responses. Per the integrative model of child development (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), experiences in the school, familial, and community settings can foster the development of cognitive, social, and emotional competencies in the presence of racism and discrimination. The current study evaluated how perceptions of discrimination and support in the school setting influenced school belonging, college-going self-efficacy, and depressive symptoms in a sample of Latino youth (N = 179). We distinguished between peers and nonparental adults as the sources of discrimination and support. Overall, peer support was associated with all three outcomes, suggesting peers as a positive resource. Adult support was only significant in the school belonging model. Findings supported a limited moderating role for peer support on peer discrimination, but only for the depressive symptoms outcome. Implications and suggestions for mental health practitioners are offered.

Objectives: This study examined the relationship between familism and depressive symptoms across relational contexts in adolescence, and whether maternal warmth and support, and school support moderated the relationship between familism and depressive symptoms.Method: A total of 180 Latino adolescents (53% female) in 7th through 10th grades (average age = 14 years) participated in this cross-sectional study. The adolescents lived in an emerging Latino community in a rural area in the U.S. South. Most of the adolescents were Mexican-origin (78%) and born in the United States (60%), while the vast majority of their parents were foreign born (95%).