Acculturation, parent-child relationships, and mental health of adolescents in Chinese and Mexican immigrant families

Acculturation influences parenting behaviors, the ways cultural values are expressed, the adaptations parents make in response to their host culture environments, and the ways in which they transmit their heritage culture while socializing their children to function in the host culture. Varying levels of acculturation among family members in immigrant families can result in an acculturation gap between parents and children that influences children’s mental health outcomes in both positive and negative ways. Linguistic acculturation differences between immigrant parents and children can also result in adolescents functioning as translators (language brokers) for their English-limited parents, with subjective appraisals of the language-brokering experience providing more consistent evidence for its effects on adolescent outcomes. We present evidence for the conditions under which parenting behaviors, acculturation gap, and language brokering may represent sources of risk or protection for adolescent mental health in Latinx and Asian immigrant families by using examples from research on Chinese and Mexican immigrant families.