Mexican-origin parents’ work conditions and adolescents’ adjustment.

Abstract

Mexican-origin parents’ work experiences are a distal extra-familial context for adolescents’ adjustment. This two-wave multi-informant study examined the prospective mechanisms linking parents’ work conditions (i.e., self-direction, work pressure, workplace discrimination) to adolescents’ adjustment (i.e., educational expectations, depressive symptoms, risky behavior) across the transition to high school drawing on work socialization and spillover models. We examined the indirect effects of parental work conditions on adolescent adjustment through parents’ psychological functioning (i.e., depressive symptoms, role overload) and aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship (i.e., parental solicitation, parent-adolescent conflict), as well as moderation by adolescent gender. Participants were 246 predominantly immigrant, Mexican-origin, two-parent families who participated in home interviews when adolescents were approximately 13 and 15 years of age. Results supported the positive impact of fathers’ occupational self-direction on all three aspects of adolescents’ adjustment through decreased father-adolescent conflict, after controlling for family socioeconomic status and earner status, and underemployment. Parental work pressure and discrimination were indirectly linked to adolescents’ adjustment, with different mechanisms emerging for mothers and fathers. Adolescents’ gender moderated the associations between fathers’ self-direction and girls’ depressive symptoms, and fathers’ experiences of discrimination and boys’ risk behavior. Results suggest that Mexican-origin mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of work conditions have important implications for multiple domains of adolescents’ adjustment across the transition to high school.

Adolescent Perception of Maternal Practices in Portugal and Spain: Similarities and Differences

“…In conclusion, the maternal parenting typology developed through this study provided useful information about cultural specificities in socialization practices in Portugal and Spain. The results presented here support the growing body of empirical research, which outlines how parenting practices depend on cultural backgrounds [1,[18][19][20][21]31,65,66]. The description of the parental socialization styles characteristic of each country, due to their cultural influence, has implications for interventions.…”

Impacts of Immigration Actions and News and the Psychological Distress of U.S. Latino Parents Raising Adolescents

“…Community-based organizations must educate Latino residents about their rights, ensure that these rights are not violated, and counteract rumors that can have a chilling effect on Latino families’ use of public services. Given robust negative implications of parent psychological distress for adolescents [21,22], alongside the large portion of Latino adolescents who are U.S. citizens, pathways to citizenship for Latino parents are critical in order to mitigate long-term, collateral consequences for numerous Americans.…”

“…The costs and burdens of psychological distress extend far beyond an affected individual. Parents’ psychological distress is especially important; adolescents whose parents are depressed and/or anxious face heightened risk of poor social functioning [21], academic failure [22], and mental health problems [21].…”

Work and Family in the Second Decade of the 21st Century

“…Parents' experiences of racial discrimination at work predicted poorer adolescent outcomes through different mechanisms for mothers and fathers, showing the importance of assessing work culture in relation to race and gender. In an interesting twist, findings for fathers revealed that workplace pressure was related to increased connections to their child's life, perhaps reflecting Mexican fathers' values of serving as authority figures and role models to their children and “determination to make sure their children are on the right track” (Wheeler, Updegraff, & Crouter, , p. 454). Similar to research with White samples, Wheeler, Updegraff, and Crouter () found parents' positive job experiences were related to the parent–child relationship quality through the mediator of parents' well‐being.…”