Mexican-origin families coping together: Does family coping predict child coping?

Abstract

Family is an important context for the development of adaptive child coping. Further, both family and child coping can promote positive mental health. This study examines whether family coping predicts child coping over 1 year among Mexican-origin immigrant families. Participants included 104 families with a child aged 6-10 years (M age = 8.39, 61% female) and at least 1 Mexican-origin parent. The majority of primary caregivers (M age = 37.13) identified as female (97%), while 82% of secondary caregivers (M age = 43.14) identified as male. Family income was 150% of the poverty line or below. Families completed video-recorded interaction tasks and family coping strategies were coded. Caregivers completed surveys on children's coping. Family problem solving was associated with child primary and secondary control coping concurrently and predicted less use of disengagement over time. Family reframing was linked to less disengagement concurrently, and predicted child secondary control coping over time. Family coping may promote adaptive child coping among immigrant families.

Parents' Coping Strategies for their School Children's Issues: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Regarding the context of issue touched by the selected studies, a total of seven papers involved raising autism children (AlBusaidi et al, 2022;Amireh 2019;Brillet et al, 2023;Gül et al, 2022;Ilias et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2022), while five articles related to COVID-19 pandemic (Aznar et al, 2021;Dawes et al, 2021;Morgan et al,2022;Saini et al, 2023;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022) and raising intellectual disabilities children (Auriemma et al, 2021;Disasa 2022;Karaca & Şener, 2021;Rajan & Romate, 2022;Wilmot et al, 2023). Two papers focused on the parent-children relationship issue (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021) while following issue each research is regarding academic challenges (Tu et al, 2020), the coping strategy applied by children Santiago et al (2021), online learning from home Chara et al (2023), parent level of stress Cepuch et al (2022), raising Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children Wong and Wong (2021), raising disabled children (Kurowska et al, 2021), and social adjustment by left-behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 4).…”

“…Meanwhile, five papers concentrated on adolescents (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021;Morgan et al, 2022;Saini et al, 2023;Tu et al, 2020), while the other three papers fixated on preschool & elementary school children (Chara et al, 2023;Dawes et al, 2021;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022). The following category of children contain a paper each: Children with leukemia or lymphoma (Cepuch et al, 2022), dyslexia children (Wilmot et al, 2023), children of Mexican origins (Santiago et al, 2021), home-school children (Aznar et al, 2021) and left behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 5).…”

“…Some parents applied a positive reframing strategy in the stressful environment during the COVID-19 pandemic by treating the situation as vacation (Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022). Meanwhile, a study by Santiago et al (2021) identified that positive reframing was used by a family of Mexican origins in a Midwestern city in the United States when in a stressful situation.…”

Cultural stressors, youth coping, and mother–adolescent conflict.

“…Yet, the protective role of youth coping has not been explored. Given the interdependence of family emotion systems (Bámaca-Colbert et al, 2019) and the centrality of the family in Latinx culture (i.e., familismo ) for providing emotional and instrumental support to one another (Santiago et al, 2021), youth coping may buffer the effects of cultural stress on both their own and other family members’ experiences of mother–adolescent processes. For example, youth may feel compelled to share their cultural stressors with family members to evoke familial support (Martin Romero et al, 2022), to manage their own responses to cultural stress without contributing disruption to the family system, or to help actively find a solution for family stressors (Vázquez García et al, 2000).…”

“…Support-seeking may moderate the relations between cultural stressors and youth adjustment: It buffered the effects of perceived discrimination on youth externalizing symptoms but only among youth low on Mexican orientation (Brittian et al, 2013). Drawing from literature suggesting relations between youth functioning and mother–adolescent relationship quality (Branje et al, 2010), and the interdependence of Latinx family members and the importance of relational coping (Perreira et al, 2006; Santiago et al, 2021), we expect that support-seeking from family members may evoke familial coping processes and moderate the relations between cultural stressors and relational conflict. However, support-seeking increased symptoms for adolescent boys of Mexican origin experiencing higher levels of family stress (Liu et al, 2011).…”