Mexican-origin parents’ differential treatment and siblings’ adjustment from adolescence to young adulthood.

Abstract

Parents’ differential treatment is a common family dynamic that has been linked to youth’s well-being in childhood and adolescence in European American families. Much less is known, however, about this family process in other ethnic groups. We examined the longitudinal associations between parents’ differential treatment (PDT) and both depressive symptoms and risky behaviors of Mexican-origin sibling pairs from early adolescence through young adulthood. We also tested the moderating roles of cultural orientations as well as youth age, gender and sibling dyad gender constellation in these associations. Participants were mothers, fathers, and two siblings from 246 Mexican-origin families who participated in individual home interviews on 3 occasions over 8 years. Multilevel models revealed that, controlling for dyadic parent-child relationship qualities (i.e., absolute levels of warmth and conflict), adolescents who had less favorable treatment by mothers relative to their sibling reported more depressive symptoms and risky behavior, on average. Findings for fathers’ PDT emerged at the within-person level indicating that, on occasions when adolescents experienced less favorable treatment by fathers than usual, they reported more depressive symptoms and risky behavior. However, some of these effects were moderated by youth age and cultural socialization. For example, adolescents who experienced relatively less paternal warmth than their siblings also reported poorer adjustment, but this effect did not emerge for young adults; such an effect also was significant for unfavored youth with stronger but not weaker cultural orientations.

Over-time Fluctuations in Parenting and Adolescent Adaptation Within Families: A Systematic Review

“…Another study suggested that adolescents reported higher levels of maternal and paternal differential parenting in terms of both support and negative interaction at times they also reported more internalizing behavior (Shanahan et al 2008). However, this was not replicated by Padilla et al (2016), who found that only increases in maternal differential treatment in support were related to concurrent increases in internalizing behavior within families, but not paternal differential support or maternal/paternal differential negative interaction. Thus, only a handful of longitudinal studies have assessed concurrent associations between differential parenting and externalizing and internalizing behavior within families.…”

“…Three studies assessed concurrent within-family links of differential parenting (i.e., differential treatment of siblings). The parental treatment was different in respect to negative interaction and support (Padilla et al 2016;Shanahan et al 2008) or control (Richmond et al 2005) and these differences (rather than the absolute levels of parenting) were linked to adolescent adaptation on a macro timescale. Two studies that focused on the link with externalizing behavior suggested that increases in differential parenting co-varied with simultaneous increases in adolescents' externalizing behavior at the within-family level (Richmond et al 2005).…”

“…Two studies that focused on the link with externalizing behavior suggested that increases in differential parenting co-varied with simultaneous increases in adolescents' externalizing behavior at the within-family level (Richmond et al 2005). When differential parenting of mothers and fathers was examined separately, an increase in differential parenting of the father, but not of the mother, was concurrently associated with an increase in the adolescent's externalizing behavior (Padilla et al 2016).…”

Sibling Experiences in Middle Childhood Predict Sibling Differences in College Graduation

“…Second, the sample was European American, twoparent families, limiting the generalizability of findings. Among families in other cultural contexts, for example, PDT can have different implications depending on youth's cultural orientations (Padilla, McHale, Updegraff, & Umaña-Taylor, 2016), and thus research on sibling experiences in other cultural groups is an important direction. Third, our dependent variable was dichotomous given the importance of college graduation for well-being throughout adult life (IOM & NRC, 2015), but future research should assess more fine-grained differences between siblings' education achievement.…”

Family cohesion and a father's warmth are related to the positive lifestyles of female university students

“…Differential treatment from parents is a common phenomenon in family dynamics, and it has been linked to the disruption of well-being during adolescence and youth [20]. in adolescent descendants of Mexicans, the perception of low parental warmth in comparison to their siblings' is associated with greater risk behaviours and depressive symptoms [20].…”