Applying the family stress model to parental acculturative stress and Latinx youth adjustment: A review of the literature

Abstract

The unique challenges and stressors that occur during acculturation, which are often referred to as acculturative stress (AS), have been associated with psychosocial and health challenges that influence parents, youth, and family functioning. Less is known about the role of parental acculturative stress (PAS) and its association to youth adjustment in Latinx families. Highlighting the role of stress in family mechanisms and youth adjustment, the family stress model (FSM) is increasingly used to inform research that explores the association between PAS and youth adjustment in Latinx families. However, integration of its key components is limited in existing work. This article seeks to critically review and integrate research on PAS and Latinx immigrant‐origin youth outcomes by situating the literature within the FSM framework. Findings are analyzed through the FSM lens to identify future directions for research.

Structural risks and family adjustment in midwestern Latine immigrant families: Extending the family stress model.

“…Building on this prior work, we used mixed-method data to analyze an expansion of the FSM of economic hardship (Conger et al, 2010) that included the impact of multiple culturally informed structural risks on the processes outlined in the FSM with a sample of rural immigrant Latine families. Empirical tests of the full FSM have been limited and Latine populations in the Midwest are underrepresented (Miller & Csizmadia, 2022). Specifically, our conceptual model (Figure 1) replaced economic hardship with objective markers of culturally relevant structural risks (discrimination experiences, immigration experiences, and COVID-19 experiences) and proposed that these risks impact the set of relationships described in the FSM by generating distress in immigrant Latine families both directly and indirectly through increasing economic pressure.…”

“…For the purpose of this article, we define structural risks as broader social, physical, economic, or political environments that shape or constrain adjustment and health of individuals (Brown et al, 2019). Both qualitative and quantitative work has demonstrated that factors such as long-standing social and immigration-related inequities and experiences of discrimination shape the experiences of immigrant families including socioeconomic opportunities (e.g., Lorenzo-Blanco et al, 2017; Miller & Csizmadia, 2022). Moreover, immigrant families of color were among the most vulnerable to the health and socioeconomic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic (Boyer et al, 2023; Prime et al, 2020; Quandt et al, 2021).…”

Racial discrimination, depressive symptoms, and parenting in African American families

“…For example, the sociocultural family stress model (McNeil Smith & Landor, 2018) builds on MEES to describe how racial discrimination, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and colorism affect African American families, while specifically highlighting racial discrimination as a stressor affecting the family system and family processes. Other models outline how the effects of racial discrimination and other contextual stressors on family processes arise through their effects on parents' individual functioning (Emmen et al, 2013; Masarik & Conger, 2017; Miller & Csizmadia, 2022; Murry et al, 2022), such that these stressors increase parents' psychological distress (including depressive symptoms), which in turn impairs parenting and other relational processes. The pathway from parents' psychological distress to parenting in these models is consistent with a large body of research documenting linkages between mothers' and fathers' depressive symptoms and lower quality parenting (for reviews and discussion, see Galbally & Lewis, 2017; Goodman, 2007; Wilson & Durbin, 2010).…”

Social Exclusion and Inclusion: A Social Work Perspective

“…In the case of social exclusion, poor family functioning has been linked with numerous economic and environmental stressors that influence parenting styles and resources (Ceballo et al, 2012). Other processes that emerge from social exclusion are related to the influence of parental stress on detrimental child outcomes (Miller & Csizmadia, 2022). Arditti (2012) proposes that social workers and family scientists should consider the importance of family processes, where social placement plays a key role in influencing each member's diverse experiences and agendas.…”