Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
J Youth Adolesc. 2012 Jul;41(7):907-19. doi: 10.1007/s10964-011-9705-z. Epub 2011 Aug 11.
Parent-child acculturation discrepancy has been considered a risk factor for child maladjustment. The current study examined parent-child acculturation discrepancy as an ongoing risk factor for delinquency, through the mediating pathway of parental knowledge of the child's daily experiences relating to contact with deviant peers. Participants were drawn from a longitudinal project with 4 years between data collection waves: 201 Chinese immigrant families participated at Wave 1 (123 girls and 78 boys) and 183 families (110 girls and 73 boys) participated at Wave 2. Based on the absolute difference in acculturation levels (tested separately for Chinese and American orientations) between adolescents and parents, one parent in each family was assigned to the "more discrepant" group of parent-child dyads, and the other parent was assigned to the "less discrepant" group of parent-child dyads. To explore possible within-family variations, the mediating pathways were tested separately among the more and less discrepant groups. Structural equation modeling showed that the proposed mediating pathways were significant only among the more discrepant parent-adolescent dyads in American orientation. Among these dyads, a high level of parent-child acculturation discrepancy is related to adolescent perceptions of less parental knowledge, which is related to adolescents having more contact with deviant peers, which in turn leads to more adolescent delinquency. This mediating pathway is significant concurrently, within early and middle adolescence, and longitudinally, from early to middle adolescence. These findings illuminate some of the dynamics in the more culturally discrepant parent-child dyad in a family and highlight the importance of examining parent-child acculturation discrepancy within family systems.
亲子文化差异被认为是儿童适应不良的一个风险因素。本研究通过父母对孩子与偏差同伴接触的日常经历的了解这一中介途径，考察了亲子文化差异作为一个持续的风险因素对犯罪行为的影响。参与者来自一个具有 4 年数据收集间隔的纵向项目：在第 1 波（123 名女孩和 78 名男孩）中，有 201 个中国移民家庭参与，在第 2 波（110 名女孩和 73 名男孩）中有 183 个家庭参与。根据青少年和父母之间（分别针对中国和美国取向进行测试）的文化差异水平的绝对差异，每个家庭中的一位家长被分配到亲子对的“差异更大”组，另一位家长被分配到亲子对的“差异更小”组。为了探索家庭内可能存在的变化，分别在差异较大和差异较小的亲子组中测试了中介途径。结构方程模型表明，只有在差异较大的美国家庭中，所提出的中介途径才具有显著意义。在这些亲子对中，高水平的亲子文化差异与青少年对父母了解较少的看法有关，而父母了解较少的看法与青少年与偏差同伴的接触较多有关，而这又导致青少年犯罪行为增加。这种中介途径在早期和中期青少年时期是同时存在的，并且在从早期到中期青少年时期是纵向存在的。这些发现阐明了家庭中文化差异较大的亲子对的一些动态，并强调了在家庭系统中检查亲子文化差异的重要性。
