Longitudinal relations of cultural orientation and emotional expressivity in Chinese American immigrant parents: Sociocultural influences on emotional development in adulthood

The associations between self-construal, emotional expressivity and acculturation among Arab immigrants

This contribution investigates differences in self-construal and emotional expressivity among Arab immigrants and non-immigrants. Furthermore, it examines the role of acculturation styles and perceived emotional acculturation in predicting these outcomes among Arab immigrants. Using a sample of 1249 self-identified Arabs (629 immigrants in Western Europe and North America; 620 non-immigrant Arabs in the Mashriq and Maghrib regions), we found that collectivist self-construal was significantly lower, and positive emotional expressivity was significantly higher among immigrant, than non-immigrant, Arabs. High home country acculturation (also in combination with high host country acculturation) was the strongest predictor of collectivist self-construal. Immigrants' perception of the positive emotional expressivity of people in their host culture was the strongest predictor of their personal positive emotional expressivity. These results were replicated using the Euclidean distance method to measure acculturation. Hence, the study provides valuable insights into the relationships between self-construal, emotional expressivity and acculturation styles, specifically among Arab immigrants.

Parental expressions of love in Chinese American immigrant families: Implications for children's attachment security

Harlow's seminal work on the nature of attachment focused on the importance of warm, responsive, and loving relationships in children's healthy development. While the need for love and care is arguably universal, the ways in which these emotions are expressed can vary across cultural contexts. We examined how Chinese American parents' expressions of love were associated with children's attachment security. A total of 110 Chinese American immigrant parent-child dyads (children 7-11 years old, 49% girls) participated in 3-min conversations in which parents were instructed to communicate love and care. Proposition-level analyses in speech (total 8825 propositions) identified three types of affection: training (guan and chiao shun); relational affection (qin); and validation (acceptance and encouragement of child's own expression of emotion, thoughts, and behaviors). Higher training was observed in parents with lower American orientation and lower income. Higher relational affection was observed in parents with lower income. Higher validation was observed in parents with higher income. Using path analyses, training and validation were found to be positively associated with children's attachment security beyond parenting styles. Effects of parents' relational affection were moderated by children's American orientation. Results demonstrate how immigrant parents draw on multiple cultural scripts to express love and care. These findings expand traditional concepts of parental love in immigrant families and illustrate how bicultural expressions of love can shape attachment security in middle childhood. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/HqUfIDxkFsE RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Analyses of parent-child discussions identified three parental affection styles (i.e., training, relational affection, and validation) as expressions of love and care in Chinese American immigrant families. Training and validation were positively associated with children's attachment security. Relational affection was associated with lower attachment security for children with higher American cultural orientation, suggesting the effects of parent-child expressions of love are shaped by acculturation.

Maternal supportive responses to adolescents' negative emotions serve as protective factors for adolescents' hostile attribution bias longitudinally

Existing literature has documented that parenting links to children's hostile attribution biases (HAB). However, little is known about the role played by parental emotion socialization in children's HAB. To address this research gap, the present study investigated the role of parental responses to children's negative emotions (PRCNE) in predicting adolescents' HAB using a longitudinal study. Adolescents (N = 203; Mage  = 13.61 years old at Time 1), who were recruited from a city in mainland China, reported on their mothers' PRCNE and their own HAB at two waves over a year. The results showed that mothers' supportive responses (composed of emotion-focused responses and problem-focused responses) significantly predicted adolescents' reduced HAB over time; however, PRCNE including expressive encouragement, minimization, and nonsupportive responses (composed of punitive responses and parental distress) had no significant relation with adolescents' HAB. These findings add to the existing literature investigating antecedents to adolescents' social information processing deficits and biases.

Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners

Migration is a complex process associated with a range of social, economic, and political reasons. In the U.S., almost one-quarter of the total population of parents are immigrant parents of children ages 0-10. Immigrant parents transmit values from their culture of origin as well as their language to their children. Additionally, they may undergo a process of cultural and psychological change known as acculturation. Research has shown that acculturation can be linked to parenting styles and adolescents' psychological well-being and behavioral problems. However, little is known about the associations among immigrant parents' acculturation, their home language and literacy practices, and their bilingual children's language skills. This study explores the relationships among reasons for migration, parental acculturation, home language and literacy practices, and child expressive vocabulary in English and their heritage language (HL). A group of 190 Spanish-English (N = 66) and Chinese-English (N = 124) dual language learners (DLLs) (mean age = 48.98 months) and their Chinese and Mexican parents (mean age of migration = 18.57 and 21.38 years old respectively participated. Frequency counts revealed that Mexican American families migrated to the U.S. mostly for multiple reasons, including joining family members, getting married, and looking for better education or job opportunities, whereas most Chinese American families migrated for family reasons only. Path analysis models showed that, for both cultural groups, language input in Spanish and Chinese mediated the relationship between parents' cultural orientations and DLLs' HL expressive vocabulary. These findings emphasize that despite the heterogeneity of immigrant families and the variability in DLLs' vocabulary skills in preschool, there exist some similarities across immigrant parents and bilingual children. A deeper understanding of acculturation practices and home language use can help educators better support children from diverse backgrounds and promote cultural awareness and sensitivity in the classroom.

Mothers' emotional expressivity in urban and rural societies: Salience and links with young adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity

This research aims to investigate the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its links with adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity in an urban society endorsing more individualism and a rural society ascribing to more collectivism. By comparing Chinese urban (N = 283, M age = 14.13) and rural (N = 247, M age = 14.09) adolescents, this research found that urban mothers' expression of positive-dominant and positive-submissive emotions (PD and PS) were more common while expression of negative-dominant (ND) emotions was less common than rural mothers'. PD and PS had significant links with urban and rural adolescents' increased emotional expressivity and self-esteem, however, only significantly related to urban adolescents' decreased depression but not with rural adolescents'. ND had significant links with both urban and rural adolescents' expression of negative emotions, however, only significantly correlated with urban adolescents' less level of self-esteem and rural adolescents' more expression of positive emotions. No significant difference was found in the salience of urban and rural mothers' expression of negative-submissive (NS) emotions, which positively related to both urban and rural adolescents' depression and emotional expressivity. Moreover, we found that adolescents' emotional wellbeing (i.e., self-esteem and depression) mediated the relationship between mothers' emotional expressivity and adolescents' expressivity in both societies. Overall, the study findings document that the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its relations with adolescents' emotional adjustment differ between urban and rural societies.

Parental Acculturation and Children's Bilingual Abilities: A Study With Chinese American and Mexican American Preschool DLLs

Previous studies support the link of parental acculturation to their children's academic achievement, identity, and family relations. Prior research also suggests that parental language proficiency is associated with children's vocabulary knowledge. However, few studies have examined the links of parental acculturation to young children's oral language abilities. As preschool oral language skills have been shown to predict future academic achievement, it is critical to understand the relations between parental acculturation and bilingual abilities with young immigrant children. Furthermore, few studies have examined the links between parental acculturation and children's bilingual ability among different immigrant groups who live in the same areas to understand possible similarities and differences. To address these gaps, this study examines these relations in two of the largest and fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States, Chinese American and Mexican American families. A total of 119 dual language learners (DLLs; 64 Chinese Americans and 55 Mexican Americans) enrolled in Head Start programs in Northern California were recruited. DLLs were assessed on oral language measures in both their heritage language (HL) and English. Parental interviews were conducted to obtain parental acculturation and language proficiency. Results showed no significant group differences between Chinese American and Mexican American parents on the majority of their acculturation dimensions. Furthermore, there were no significant group differences in the bilingual abilities between Chinese American and Mexican American DLLs. Cluster analysis identified four groups of DLLs based on their bilingual ability: high language ability in both English and HL, low language ability in both, English-dominant, and HL-dominant. Results suggest that parental acculturation levels are more similar than different among the four groups. On average, parents in all four groups had stronger ties to their heritage culture and HL than to the American culture. Results also showed links between parental cultural identities and children's language dominance. Parents of English-dominant children had significantly higher levels of American identity than the parents of children with high ability in both languages. Implications are discussed.

Self-Regulatory Development in Children from Chinese Immigrant Families: Evidence for Commonality and Specificity

A central theme of acculturative specificity is the heterogeneity of the immigrant experience. This study integrated this application of the Specificity Principle with intergenerational transmission models of self-regulation and identified both common and specific pathways in the self-regulatory development of Chinese American children in immigrant families (N = 169, M_age  = 9.2 years). Consistent with intergenerational transmission models, results indicated associations between parents' and children's effortful control, with the mediation of these associations via authoritarian parenting. Parental education, family income, and children's bilingual proficiency were also uniquely associated with children's executive function and effortful control. Together, findings provide new directions for research with ethnic minority immigrant families, and underscore the utility of within-group approaches in advancing research on ethnic minority children's development.

Emotion talk in Chinese American immigrant families and longitudinal links to children's socioemotional competence

Parent emotion talk (ET), a type of emotion-related socialization practice, is theorized to foster children's emotion-related regulation and socioemotional skills. Yet, there has been limited research linking parent ET to children's effortful control, a top-down regulatory process. Despite the observed cultural differences in ET between Chinese and European American families, few researchers tested whether the socioemotional benefits of ET are generalizable to Chinese American families, an immigrant group with contrasting values in their heritage and host cultures. The present study examined Chinese American parents' ET, its associations with sociocultural factors, and prospective relations to school-age children's effortful control, sympathy, and socially appropriate behaviors. In a two-wave (1.5 years apart) longitudinal study of first- and second-generation Chinese American children (N = 258, age = 6-9 years at Wave 1, 52% from low-income families), the content and quality of parent ET (e.g., the overall quality of emotion talk, frequency of emotion explanations, emotion questions, and number of emotion words) was coded from a video-recorded shared book reading task. Children's effortful control, sympathy, and social behaviors were rated by parents, teachers, and children. Results showed that the Chinese American parents from lower socioeconomic status families, families with lower English proficiency, or more recent immigrants displayed lower ET. Parent ET was prospectively related to children's higher effortful control after controlling for stability, and higher effortful control was concurrently associated with children's higher sympathy and more socially appropriate behaviors. The findings provide empirical support for the socioemotional benefits of ET for school-age children in Chinese American immigrant families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).