Acculturation, Familism and Mother–Daughter Relations Among Suicidal and Non-Suicidal Adolescent Latinas

We examined the role of acculturation, familism and Latina mother–daughter relations in suicide attempts by comparing 65 adolescents with recent suicide attempts and their mothers to 75 teens without any attempts and their mothers. Attempters and non-attempters were similar in acculturation and familistic attitudes but attempters report significantly less mutuality and communication with their mothers than non-attempters. Mothers of attempters reported lower mutuality and communication with their daughters than mothers of non-attempters. Small increments in mutuality decreased the probability of a suicide attempt by 57%. Acculturation and familism do not appear to play major roles in suicide attempts but relational factors may. Instituting school-based psychoeducational groups for young Latinas, particularly in middle school, and their parents, separately and jointly, and focusing on raising effective communication and mutuality between parents and adolescent daughters are important primary prevention strategies

Abstracts from the Nineteenth Annual Conference National Association for Ethnic Studies. Inc. Ethnic Studies for the Twenty-first Century

With the leadership of James H. Williams, Tengemana Thumbutu, and the staff of the College of Arts at California State Polytechnic University, NAES had one of its best-attended conferences ever. Participants enjoyed the sunny and smog-free skies of spring in California and the amenities of the Kellogg West Conference Center while renewing their commitment to the need to study and implement current research in ethnic studies

Attitudes and Behaviors Related to Filial Responsibility in Latino Youth: Variations by Birth Order, Gender, and Immigration Age

Filial responsibility and familism were examined among a sample of Latino youth through a number of diverse methods that included variable centered and person centered analyses. Effects of gender, birth order, and immigration age were examined. An exploratory principal components analysis of the Adolescent Filial Responsibility Questionnaire-Revised revealed that the most interpretable solution included five factors: fairness, chores, culture brokering, emotional tasks, and overburden. ANOVA analyses found significant main effects of birth order on culture brokering and chores, of gender on emotional tasks, and of immigration age on culture brokering. Cluster analysis identified five groups based on adolescents’ responses: traditional overburden, traditional balanced, non-traditional culturebrokers, traditional low, and non-traditional overburden. Chi-square analyses found significant birth order and gender differences within the traditional low cluster and immigration age differences within the traditional overburden, non-traditional culturebrokers, traditional low, and traditional balanced clusters

Master of Science

thesisIn American society, adolescence is typically a time when individuals develop identities and increase their involvement with peers. Transitioning to adulthood becomes more challenging when teenagers are expecting a baby and taking on new roles and responsibilities. While research supports the notion that strong family relationships are protective against negative outcomes and can help to ease the transition into parenthood, less empirical research exists about the cross-cultural manifestations of these family relationships. Familismo, the Latino cultural value emphasizing the importance of family, is often assumed to mean that Latino families are more family-centered than Anglos. However, empirical evidence in support of this assumption is often inconsistent. For example, studies comparing Latino and Anglo families rarely include information about the quality of relationships within the family. This study aimed to better understand the quality of the constellation of family relationships surrounding teenagers expecting a baby by examining reported perceptions of quality of relationships with adolescents' own parents as well as with their partner's parents. To address possible cultural differences, Latino couples were categorized as English-speaking (more acculturated) or Spanish-speaking (less acculturated) and compared with an Anglo population. Results indicated that Spanish-speaking adolescent fathers reported significantly stronger relationships with their own parents and their partner's parents than their Anglo counterparts. Further, Anglo adolescent mothers reported lower perceived quality of relationship with their own mothers than Englishiv speaking Latino couples. Finally, Spanish-speaking couples reported stronger perceived quality of relationships with all four parental figures than their Anglo counterparts. Results provide empirical support for variations of perceptions of quality of relationships based on cultural differences. These differences should be further explored to better understand the protective role these parental relationships may serve for Spanishspeaking adolescents transitioning to parenthood. Additionally, results from this study highlight the importance of including adolescent fathers in research and clinical work related to teenage parenting

Socioeconomic impact of photovoltaic power at Schuchuli, Arizona

The social and economic impact of photovoltaic power on a small, remote native American village is studied. Village history, group life, energy use in general, and the use of photovoltaic-powered appliances are discussed. No significant impacts due to the photovoltaic power system were observed

Language Brokering in Latino Families: Direct Observations of Brokering Patterns, Parent-Child Interactions, and Relationship Quality

With the growing percentage of immigrant families in the USA, language transition is a common immigrant experience and can occur rapidly from generation to generation within a family. Child language brokering appears to occur within minority language families as one way of negotiating language and cultural differences; however, the phenomenon of children translating or mediating language interactions for parents has previously been hypothesized to contribute to negative outcomes for children, such as role-reversals and parentification, emotional distancing and lack of communication, increased parent-child conflict, and increased internalizing/externalizing disorders. The current study used direct observations of 60 Spanish-speaking parent-child dyads (30 mother-child and 30 father-child) as they worked on a joint academic task in English to explore: (1) child language brokering patterns, (2) parent-child interactions, and (3) the quality of the parent-child relationship. Children included in the study were between the ages of 4 and 10 years. Instruments used included demographic questionnaires, the ARSMA-II, and coding of videotaped interactions for language brokering patterns (frequency and prevalence of both child translations and parental prompts), parent-child relationship quality, parental engagement strategies, and the situational power dynamic between parent and child. Observations, descriptive statistics, correlations, and a hierarchical regression were used to analyze data. Results demonstrated that language brokering occurred at a higher prevalence among the youngest age group than prior studies have suggested, parents actively contribute to child brokering behaviors through parental prompts, and mothers and fathers use different engagement strategies. Findings also demonstrated that child language brokering significantly contributed to the prediction of parent-child relationship quality, with more frequent brokering associated with more positive parent-child relationships. There was no significant correlation with child language brokering frequency and the parent-child power dynamic. Results may have limited generalizability due to the exploratory nature of statistics used, the emotional safety of the observed parent-child joint task situation, and the small sample size and specificity of the sample (primarily rural Mexican two-parent immigrant families with children born in the USA). Implications for practice include: normalization of language brokering as a part of bicultural development, facilitation of insight into changing family roles and maintenance of adaptive power dynamics within a context of change, and the enhancement of parent and child communication strategies

Are Our Racial Concepts Necessarily Essentialist Due to Our Cognitive Nature?

Mallon and Kelly claim that hybrid constructionism predicts, at least, that (1) racial representations are stable over time and (2) that racial representations should vary more in mixed-race cultures than in cultures where there is less racial mixing. I argue that hybrid constructionism’s predictions do not obtain and thus hybrid constructionism requires further evidence. I argue that the historical record is inconsistent with hybrid constructionism, and I suggest that humans may not be innately disposed to categorize people by race even though we are likely disposed to categorize people into in and out groups. So, in this paper, I show that there is an evidence set that is inconsistent with hybrid constructionism