Cultural stressors, internalizing symptoms, and parent-child alienation among Mexican-origin adolescents.

Abstract

The current study investigated the relation of various cultural stressors, parent-child alienation, and Mexican-origin adolescents' internalizing symptoms at both between- and within-person levels across the course of adolescence. Positive parent-child relationships can be a critical buffer against cultural stressors for Mexican-origin adolescents. However, it is unclear whether low levels of parent-child alienation (a) buffer the negative effects of different types of cultural stressors on internalizing symptoms and (b) function at the individual level more generally or during specific periods when adolescents experience high cultural stressors. The current study used a three-wave longitudinal dataset of 604 Mexican-origin adolescents (Wave 1: Mage = 12.41, SD = 0.97, 54% female, 75% born in the United States) and conducted multilevel regression analysis. At the between-person level, overall low parent-child alienation buffered the adverse effects of ethnic discrimination on anxiety and cultural misfit on depressive symptoms. There were no significant within-person-level interactions of parent-child alienation and cultural stressors on adolescent internalizing symptoms. The findings suggest that interventions should aim to reduce parent-child alienation throughout the course of adolescence to alleviate the impact of cultural stressors on internalizing symptoms among Mexican-origin adolescents.