Although it is widely accepted that parental depression is associated with problems with children’s socioemotional adjustment, the pathways by which parental depression influences children’s adjustment, particularly in low-income Latino children are not fully understood. In our investigation of 1,462 low-income Latino children in the first grade and their Spanish- and English-dominant parents, a factor analysis revealed three main pathways of possible influence of parent involvement in children’s social development: emotional involvement and educational involvement at home and at school. The findings from multigroup structural equation modeling revealed that whereas the first two pathways mediated the effect of parental depression on child social competence for Spanish-dominant parents, only emotional involvement explained parental depression effects for English-dominant parents. Parent educational involvement at school did not mediate parental depression effects for either Spanish- or English-dominant Latino parents. Discussion and implications of findings with respect to research, practice, and policy with Latinos follow.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.