Parental Stress, Acculturation, and Parenting Behaviors Among Asian Immigrants in New York City
The growth of the Asian immigrant population in the US has been phenomenal in the past years. There was a notable increase of 103% from 1980 to 1990, 75% from 1990 to 2000, and another 45% from 2000 to 2007. However, the needs of this rapidly growing group have not been well understood and services for them are seriously lacking. The goal of this study is to investigate the possible effects of parental stress and acculturation on parenting behaviors among Asian immigrant parents. This study also examines the possible mediating role of social support on these effects.
Methods:
This study uses a sample of 572 immigrant Asian American parents from the Survey of Asian American Families (SAAF) in NYC conducted in 2011-2012. The SAAF study is a cross-sectional survey study using a purposive quota sampling method by reaching out to several social service agencies mainly serving Asian Americans across the various NYC boroughs. Parenting behaviors include positive parenting practice, parent-child conflict, and use of harsh discipline. Parental stress is captured by the level of parental stress and individual and family stressors. Acculturation is measured by the number of years a parent has been in the US, a scale on English proficiency, and a scale on cultural preferences for friends, foods, and TV programs. Social support is measured by a scale on informal social support from family, friends, or a significant other. All measures adopted in this study have proven to have high reliability and validity in the literature and have been used among Asian immigrants. Multiple regression methods and One-Way ANOVA analysis are used to help tease out the possible relationships pathways between parental stress, acculturation, and social support, with a rich array of control variables included in all models among various Asian subgroups.
Results:
Multivariate analysis results reveal that greater level of parental stress and the presence of more stressors such as unemployment, low income, and low education are predictive more parent-child conflict and use of harsh discipline as well as fewer parenting behaviors. Higher levels of acculturation for the parents are associated with more positive parenting practice and fewer parent-child conflicts. Social support functions as a mediator in the relationships between parental stress, acculturation, and positive parenting practice, but not on the effects on negative parenting behaviors. There are significant ethnic differences in the level of parental stress, acculturation, social support, and parenting behaviors.
Implications:
Findings from this study have direct implications for providing culturally sensitive and competent services for the rapidly growing yet underserved Asian immigrant population in NYC and beyond. More attention should be paid to these parents’ stress from socioeconomic hardships as well emotional distress and their acculturation challenges. Providing greater support through both informal and formal channels may help foster positive parenting practice among these parents. Analyses using the full SAAF data could provide new evidence among the various subgroups for new Asian American immigrants regarding their parenting, cultural values, parental stress, acculturation, social support, and parenting practices.