A Developmental, Culturally Integrative, and Family Systems Approach to Parent-Child Relationships Among Latinx Families in the U.S.

Latinxs are one of the largest ethnic-racial minoritized groups in the U.S., with children and youth serving as the driving force of the population’s growth. Latinx children and youth living in the U.S. navigate their development within sociocultural contexts that present unique stressors (e.g., discrimination) and assets (e.g., biculturalism) that shape their development. Thus, when studying Latinx youth and families, it is critical to consider important individual, developmental, and contextual factors that enhance Latinx youth development. This includes studying culture-specific family processes (e.g., familism) as well as more universal general parent-child processes that are developmentally salient (e.g., parent-child conflict regarding everyday issues). Therefore, my two-study dissertation focuses on the integration of cultural and developmentally relevant factors in studying parent-child relationships among Latinx families. In Study 1, I use longitudinal data from 246 Mexican-origin families to examine developmental trajectories of parent-child conflict regarding everyday issues across 12 to 22 years of age. In charting parent-youth conflict trajectories, I examine how youth and parent familism values may serve as important cultural factors that are associated with variation in parent-youth conflict. In Study 2, I use a person-centered approach to examine constellations of parental warmth, parent-child conflict, and parental ethnic socialization among Latinx families with children in middle childhood and explore how different patterns of parent-child relationships emerge and how these patterns relate to child adjustment (i.e., academic competence, peer competence, and depressive symptoms). Guided by a family systems theory, both studies consider important nuance in parent-child dyads by examining gender dynamics in mother-child and father-child relationships. Together, the studies make an important contribution to the understanding of culturally and developmentally salient processes of parent-child relationships in Latinx families and provide research and practice implications for enhancing the lives of Latinx youth and families.