Language Brokering, Prosocial Capacities, and Intercultural Communication Apprehension Among Latina Mothers and Their Adolescent Children

Abstract

Past research on language brokering has primarily focused on the positive and negative outcomes that children of immigrant families experience from brokering. Little is known, however, regarding the positive experiences that language brokees—the immigrant family members for whom children broker—garner from participating in this interaction. Utilizing survey data from 120 Latina/o mother–adolescent dyads, we examined whether more frequent participation in brokering was positively related to mothers’ (i.e., brokees) and adolescents’ (i.e., brokers) prosocial capacities. In turn, we considered whether their prosocial capacities were related to feeling less apprehensive interacting with people outside their cultural group (i.e., intercultural communication apprehension). Multigroup path analyses revealed that mothers’ and adolescents’ frequent participation in brokering was positively related to general perspective-taking and empathic concern; however, only empathic concern was negatively related to intercultural communication apprehension. Our findings reveal that brokers and brokees may experience benefits with positive implications for their intercultural interactions.

How do mothers manage their privacy with adolescents? Exploring mother–adolescent communication in Mexican immigrant families

“…Recent research suggests that the process of enculturation has the potential to be problematic for the health and well-being of Latino immigrant adolescents (Kam, Guntzviller, & Pines, 2017; Kam & Lazarevic, 2014b). In particular, adolescent children tend to be interpreters for their parents both in terms of the language and cultural expectations and as a result, parents often rely on their children to navigate for their parents (Guntzviller, Jensen, & Carreno, 2017; Kam, Basinger, et al, 2017; Kam & Lazarevic, 2014a).…”

“…Most of parentification research, to date, has been conducted from the perspective of family counseling psychology and therapy (Champion et al, 2009; Hooper et al, 2012; Kuperminc et al, 2013) while very few communication studies investigated language brokering as a type of parentification (Guntzviller et al, 2017; Kam, Basinger, et al, 2017; Kam, Guntzviller, et al, 2017). Yet, previous findings indicate that parent–adolescent communication plays a key role during the process of emotional parentification (Kuperminc, Jurkovic, & Casey, 2009; Shin & Hecht, 2013; Telzer & Fuligni, 2009), less is known about how parents, particularly Mexican immigrant mothers, manage their private information with their children during the process of emotional parentification.…”

How language brokering relates to empathy and psychological well-being

“…Past research has found some links between empathy and language brokering. Kam, Guntzviller, and Pines (2017) found that, among Latino adolescents, the path from brokering frequency to intercultural communication apprehension was mediated by empathic concern (i.e., sympathy and compassion for others), indicating that empathic concern may lessen the anxiety over communicating with people from different cultural backgrounds. Similarly, Guan et al (2014) reported that, among diverse, languagebrokering, undergraduate students, there was a bi-directional relationship between empathic concern and brokering for others besides the parents.…”

“…In the research literature, feelings about language brokering can be summed as focused around three core experiences: efficacy, role reversal, and burden (Kim et al, 2014). Previous research suggests that efficacy, role reversal, and burden may interact with language brokering frequency to predict some outcomes like risky behaviors (Kam & Lazarevic, 2014), but may not moderate the relationship between language brokering frequency and prosocial capacities like empathy (e.g., Kam, Guntzviller, & Pines, 2017). Instead, positive and negative feelings have been found to directly relate to psychological correlates and outcomes.…”

Associations Between Mother–Child Communication Apprehension, and Young Adult Resilience, Depressive Symptoms, and Self-Esteem

“…Moreover, apprehensive individuals have trouble transitioning to new life events, including college (Hall & Scharp, 2018). High levels of communication apprehension are also associated with lower levels of compassion (Salazar, 2016), empathetic concern (Kam et al, 2017), and persuasive self-efficacy (Daly & Thompson, 2017).…”