Familism through a developmental lens.

Abstract

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.

Financial Strain, Major Family Life Events, and Parental Academic Involvement During Adolescence

“…Other studies should examine this model with other ethnic groups. It could be that the mediating role of the relationship quality between parents and adolescents is salient with Mexican-origin families, due to the important role of family and family cohesion in this population (Parke, et al, 2004; Stein et al, 2014). Conceivably, the relationship quality between parents and adolescents would still be a mediator in other groups, but may be more salient for families that value family cohesion (Telzer, Gonzales, Fuligni, 2013).…”

“…In addition to the chronic stress of financial strain, acute stressors such as major life events may play a role in family functioning by impacting daily life activities (Compas, 1987), such as the ability of a parent to be academically involved in the life of their adolescent. Given the importance of family in the lives of these parents (Stein et al, 2014), Latino populations may provide an ideal context to study the role of family stress as a predictor to academic involvement (Parke, et al, 2004). Therefore, our study will first examine whether financial strain and major family life events are associated with lower levels of parental academic involvement at home and at school.…”

What is the role of culture, diversity, and community engagement in transdisciplinary translational science?

“…For example, if an intervention is developed with an intended focus on certain Latino populations, cultural factors such as familism which taps into familial support, obligations, and other referents for behavior, and respeto, or familial hierarch dynamics and filial obedience, are important considerations throughout the translation process [28,29]. These are also important factors in sustaining outcomes given demonstrated impacts on both family and individual outcomes; but also in transitioning to relevant systemic impacts in this area [30,31]. From a broader global translation perspective, variations and levels of importance of such factors for different Latino subgroups or other cultures would also have to be weighted appropriately.…”

Mexican-origin youth’s risk behavior from adolescence to young adulthood: The role of familism values.

“…For Mexican-origin youth, scholars have proposed youth's adherence to familism values (i.e., a set of normative beliefs about the importance of family as a source of support, guidance, and obligations; Marín & Marín, 1991) as a key protective resource or risk reducer for a variety of adjustment outcomes, including engagement in high risk or deviant behavior (Gonzales et al, 2012; Neblett et al, 2012). There is empirical research to support this proposition (Stein et al, 2014), but rarely has the role of familism values been examined from a developmental and longitudinal perspective. Thus, as guided by developmental frameworks that broadly emphasize the importance of culturally-relevant strengths that are unique to minority youth's developmental outcomes (Fuller & García Coll, 2010; García Coll et al, 1996), and calls to move beyond investigations including status measures of culture (e.g., English or Spanish language use) to understand cultural mechanisms of resilience or protection (Schwartz, Unger, Zamboanga, & Szapocznik, 2010), our second goal was to examine fluctuations in familism values as linked to risk behavior trajectories, after accounting for behavioral acculturation (i.e., Anglo cultural orientation) as a covariate related to variation in risk behavior (e.g., Ebin et al, 2001).…”