Autonomy-Supportive Parenting in Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Youth During Early Adolescence

Abstract

There is a burgeoning literature on autonomy-supportive parenting and positive adaptation in youth across diverse cultures, but little is known about autonomy support in immigrant families. Bolstering autonomy in immigrant youth may be particularly important for their success on both universal and immigrant-specific developmental tasks and yet studies examining autonomy support in immigrant adolescents are rare. In the current study, the first goal was to establish measurement equivalence for a widely-used autonomy support measure in immigrant and non-immigrant youth. Subsequently, we examined how changes in autonomy support during early adolescence varied by immigrant status. The sample included 1252 immigrant and non-immigrant youth (Mage = 12.70 at Wave 1) living in Greece who completed a self-report measure of maternal autonomy support in their schools once per year for three years. Results indicated that the latent construct, factor loadings, and item thresholds of the autonomy support measure were invariant across immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents, as well as over time. Neither group displayed significant growth in autonomy support and, counter to expectation, trajectories of autonomy support did not differ by immigrant status. These findings demonstrate that autonomy support is a meaningful construct in Greek native and immigrant families and also indicate that these behaviors, as perceived by youth, were stable during early to middle adolescence for immigrant and non-immigrant youth living in Greece.