The Nature and Correlates of Mexican‐American Adolescents' Time With Parents and Peers

Abstract

Drawing on cultural -ecological and person -environment fit perspectives, this study examined links among Mexican-American adolescents' time with peers and parents, parents' cultural orientations, and adolescents' psychosocial adjustment and cultural orientations. Participants were 492 MexicanAmerican adolescents (Ms = 15.7 and 12.8 years for older siblings and younger siblings) and their parents in 246 families. Family members described their family relationships, cultural orientations, and psychosocial functioning in home interviews, and time-use data were collected during a series of nightly phone calls. Mexican-American adolescents spent the majority of their peer time with Mexican youth. Some support was found for the hypothesis that the mismatch between parents' cultural orientations and adolescents' peer involvement is linked to adolescents' psychosocial functioning.Adolescents' daily activities are important contexts for development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Grounded in an ecological perspective, a growing body of work documents that how and with whom youth spend their time has important implications for their psychosocial functioning (e.g., Larson & Verma, 1999;McHale, Crouter, & Tucker, 1999;Osgood, Wilson, O'Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996). As yet, however, we know little about the nature and developmental significance of Latino adolescents' activities, despite the fact that they are part of the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States (Ramirez & Patricia de la Cruz, 2002).Scholars interested in minority youth and families have called for more research on normative socialization processes, noting that most research on minority youth focuses on risk and pathology (García Coll et al., 1996; Hagen, Nelson, & Velissaris, 2004;McLoyd, 1998). In addition, these researchers highlight the importance of ethnic-homogeneous designs, designs that illuminate the diversity of experiences within cultural groups, and the cultural and ecological factors that give rise to within-group variations in youth development. Ethnichomogeneous designs move the field away from pathologizing minority youth (García Coll et Social Contexts of Mexican-American Adolescents' Daily ActivitiesEcological and cultural frameworks posit that activities are building blocks of development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979): Daily activities provide opportunities for developing interpersonal bonds, for learning skills, and for forming a self-identity (Bronfenbrenner, 1979;Larson & Verma, 1999). Elaborating on ecological and contextual paradigms, Szapocznik and Kurtines (1993) drew attention to the multicultural settings in which individuals' and families' lives are embedded and underscored the significance of the "culturally pluralistic milieu" (pp. 401 -402) that is an everyday reality for minority youth. To better understand the social milieu of Latino youth, our first goal was to describe Mexican-American adolescents' time spent in Mexican, non-Mexican, and ethnically heterogeneous peer groups as well as adolesce...

Developing Moral Agency through Narrative

“…The period from late childhood through young adulthood coincides with a major shift from parents as the primary audiences for personal storytelling to friends as an additional, and very important audience for such stories [Buhrmeister, 1996;Cooper, 1999;Hartup, 1996;Hazan & Zeifman, 1994;McLean, 2005;Updegraff, McHale, & Whiteman, 2006]. Nevertheless, there is little empirical work bearing on friends' influences that is specifically focused on moral development.…”

A longitudinal examination of parenting behaviors and perceived discrimination predicting Latino adolescents' ethnic identity.

“…Nevertheless, part of the value of the ecological approach is that it acknowledges the multiple environmental factors that impact and interact with individual characteristics to influence developmental processes and outcomes. Because individuals spend increasingly more time with their peers and less time with family during adolescence (Updegraff et al, 2006), and adolescents also tend to place a greater importance on their peers during this time (Harter, 1999), it will be important for future research to consider the role that peers play in adolescents' ethnic identity formation. It also will be important to examine how messages from peers regarding ethnicity interact with messages from the family to inform adolescents' ethnic identity.…”

Mother-daughter conflict and adjustment in Mexican-origin families: Exploring the role of family and sociocultural context

“…The association was signifi cant, but weaker, in families where mothers and adolescents described similar levels of Mexican orientations, and signifi cant but weakest, in families where mothers were more Mexican-oriented than adolescents. One interpretation is that families characterized by adolescents who have stronger Mexican orientations than their mothers are nonnormative (i.e., less common) in this cultural context (Updegraff et al, 2006), and thus, have more limited social support for handling the stressors in their relationships, strengthening the association between mother-daughter confl ict and adolescent adjustment problems. Predictions about normative patterns of cultural adaptation lead to the expectation that parents will retain stronger ties to Mexican culture than their offspring (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001;Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1980, suggesting that families characterized by more Mexican-oriented mothers than daughters may be normative.…”

“…Much less is known about mismatches that are thought to be less common, and thus nonnormative, such as when parents have stronger ties to U.S. culture than youth or when youth maintain stronger ties to Mexican culture than their parents. Some evidence suggests that youths' high levels of involvement in Mexican culture in combination with parents' strong ties to mainstream culture, place youth at risk for adjustment problems (e.g., Updegraff, McHale, Whiteman, Thayer, & Crouter, 2006). In this study, we investigated whether intergenerational discrepancies in Mexican and Anglo cultural orientations exacerbated negative associations between confl ict and adjustment.…”

“…In this study, we investigated whether intergenerational discrepancies in Mexican and Anglo cultural orientations exacerbated negative associations between confl ict and adjustment. From a person-environment fi t perspective, discrepancies that are nonnormative in a particular cultural context (e.g., when mothers are more Anglo-oriented than adolescents or when adolescents are more Mexican-oriented than mothers) may pose more problems for individual adjustment than discrepancies that are normative (Updegraff et al, 2006). Thus, we explored whether cultural discrepancies moderated confl ictadjustment linkages in these two different family contexts (i.e., families experiencing the transition to adolescent motherhood versus not).…”