Drawing on in-depth interview data collected on 18 high-achieving Chinese American students, the authors examine domains of acculturation-based conflicts, parent and child internal conflicts, and conflict resolution in their families. Their analyses show that well-established negative communication patterns in educational expectations, divergent attitudes toward other races and country of origin, and cultural and language barriers contributed to parent-child conflicts. Their findings also illustrate important internal conflicts both adolescents and parents had along the cultural tightrope of autonomy and relatedness. Finally, the vertical in-group conflict resolution style that was evidenced in youths' accounts raises questions about cultural differences in constructive versus destructive conflict resolution styles.

Researchers have consistently reported positive relationships between psychological adjustment and ethnic identity or related elements such as ethnic-identity pride. However, few efforts have been made to determine whether such links are context-dependent. Here we apply person-environment fit theory to examine whether associations between ethnic-identity pride and psychological adjustment (in terms of depression and self-esteem) vary across families and school environments for a sample of 225 Korean American adolescents (M age ϭ 13.97 years). Results indicate a positive relationship between ethnicidentity pride and self-esteem, but only in the context of strong parental support. No association between the same 2 factors was noted for the school support context. No variance was found for patterns involving ethnic-identity pride and depression for either family or school environment contexts.

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Objective Grounded in person–environment fit theory, we examine how different levels of parenting–acculturation match are associated with gifted Chinese American students' psychosocial adjustment. This study identifies parenting profiles indicated by psychological control and decisional autonomy granting and adolescents' acculturation profiles indicated by mainstream American culture and Chinese culture orientations. Background According to person–environment fit theory, optimal adjustment occurs when there is a match between individuals' environments and needs. However, it remains understudied whether academically gifted Chinese American adolescents have optimal psychosocial adjustment when their acculturation orientation matches with their family's parenting profile. Method Using self‐report questionnaires, this study assessed 222 academically gifted Chinese American adolescents' perceptions of parental psychological control and autonomy granting, American and Chinese culture orientation, and psychosocial adjustment (depression, anxiety, social acceptance, and self‐esteem). Latent profile analysis was used to identify parenting and acculturation‐orientation profiles. Results Three parenting profiles were identified: high control oriented (14.9%; i.e., high in psychological control and low in decisional autonomy granting), slight control oriented (44.6%; i.e., psychological control slightly exceeding decisional autonomy granting), and child oriented (40.5%; i.e., low in psychological control and high in decisional autonomy granting). Given that all the adolescents in the sample slightly preferred mainstream American culture to Chinese culture, three levels of parenting–acculturation match were identified: a strong match (for those in child‐oriented families), moderate match (for those in slight‐control‐oriented families), and weak match (for those in high‐control‐oriented families). Conclusion The adolescents with a strong parenting–acculturation match reported lower anxiety and higher social acceptance and self‐esteem than those with a weak match. Implications Practitioners working with academically gifted Chinese American adolescents should seek to understand adolescents' acculturation and the parenting practices in their families and acknowledge how their psychosocial problems are associated with a mismatch in adolescent acculturation and parenting. Strategies for mitigating psychosocial problems in relation to an acculturation–parenting mismatch are discussed.

Variability in parents’ socialization of gender across countries has been understudied. To address the gap, this study compares U.S. and Chilean mothers’ practices in socialization of gender through use of mental state language. Drawing on 90 Chilean and 52 U.S. mother–infant dyads, we examined variation in the frequencies of mothers’ utterances of five types of mental references—emotion, desire, physiological states, causal talk, and cognition—to determine whether they varied by country and infant gender. Infant age ranged between 10 and 15 months. The frequencies with which both U.S. and Chilean mothers in our sample talked about most mental references did not vary according to infant gender, with the exceptions of causal talk in the United States. Specifically, the U.S. mothers used more causal talk with girls than boys. There were more similarities than differences in maternal use of the mental references in the U.S. and Chilean samples. This study did not observe gendered socialization practices through the use of these mental references in infancy among the U.S. and Chilean mothers. Instead, the current study suggests that, using mothers’ mental references in the child’s first year as the indicator, both gender-neutral and cross-gendered socialization practices emerge in the United States, and only gender-neutral socialization practices emerge in Chile.