Trajectories of Familísmo, Respéto, Traditional Gender Attitudes, and Parenting Practices Among Mexican‐Origin Families

Thumbnail Image
Date
2020-12-16
Authors
Chen, Chia-Feng
Robins, Richard
Schofield, Thomas
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract

Objective: To investigate the trajectories of culturally specific predictors of parenting practices in Latinx families: familism (familísmo), respect (respéto), traditional gender role attitudes (machísmo and marianísmo), and the degree to which these parental cultural values predict changes in parenting practices.

Background: Cultural values have been suggested to predict Latinx parenting practices, but there is a paucity of direct evidence. The current study fills the gap by testing such associations using corresponding measures.

Method: We followed 549 Mexican‐origin families from when the adolescents (52% female) were in the fifth to eleventh grade. Parental authoritativeness, monitoring, and hostility were reported by multiple informants. Growth curve modeling was used.

Results: Most trajectories of these parental cultural values showed small but significant declines during offspring adolescence, particularly when adolescent use of Spanish or parent–adolescent conflict was high. Parental cultural values predicted changes in parenting practices in four of 36 models, wherein initial paternal familísmo predicted decrease in paternal authoritativeness toward daughters, initial maternal traditional gender values predicted decrease in maternal hostility toward daughters, and initial parental traditional gender values predicted decrease in parental monitoring of sons.

Conclusion: Although parental cultural values do not consistently predict changes in parenting practices, parental cultural values decrease with specific groups during specific times (i.e., during adolescence, especially in families with high parent–adolescent conflict or wherein the adolescent uses Spanish frequently).

Implications: More attention to measured constructs in research on Latinx families and validity of parenting is required. Research on nuanced or lower order components of acculturation is needed.

Series Number
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Academic or Administrative Unit
Type
article
Comments

This accepted article is published as Chen, C.‐F., Robins, R.W., Schofield, T.J. and Russell, D.W. (2021), Trajectories of Familísmo, Respéto, Traditional Gender Attitudes, and Parenting Practices Among Mexican‐Origin Families. Fam Relat, 70: 207-224. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12527. Posted with permission.

Rights Statement
Copyright
Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2020
Funding
DOI
Supplemental Resources
Collections