Parental Acculturation and Intergenerational Relationships in Asian American Families

Background and Purpose: Although Asian Americans have been one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S. in past decades, it has been understudied how their acculturation experiences may affect parenting and parent-child relationships, especially using quantitative data from the East Coast regions of the U.S. This study uses data from a sample of Asian American parents in New York City to investigate whether parental acculturation is associated with intergenerational relationships. Further analyses also examine whether parental nurturance is a significant mediator in the associations between parental acculturation and parent-child conflict, and whether the ethnicity of Asian Americans plays a significant moderating role in these associations.

Methods: This study uses the data recently collected from a sample of 572 Asian American parents (94% were first-generation immigrants) using a purposive convenience sampling method in New York City, including 11 ethnic groups of Asian Americans. The outcome measures of intergenerational relationships include parental nurturance, measured by the Nurturance Scale from Block's Child Rearing Practices Report, and parent-child conflict, measured by the Asian American Family Conflicts Scale. The level of parental acculturation is assessed by two sets of measures: cultural values using the Multiphasic Assessment of Cultural Constructs-Short Form, and cultural preferences using items based on the Korean Acculturation Scale. The control variables include social-demographic variables of parents, children, and household that may confound the associations between acculturation and intergenerational relationships (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, immigration status, marital status, education, employment, income, and the number of children and adults in household). Multiple imputation is used to address the issue of missing data of covariates. A bootstrapping method is used in the mediation analysis.

Results: The findings show that higher levels of parental acculturation to the host culture are associated with higher levels of parental nurturance and lower levels of parent-child conflict. Furthermore, parental nurturance plays a mediating role to buffer the effects of low-level parental acculturation on the increase of parent-child conflict (accounting for 18% and 28% of the total effects of cultural values and cultural preferences, respectively). Evidence also suggests that the ethnicity of Asian American subgroups moderates the associations of parental acculturation with parental nurturance and parent-child conflict (e.g., stronger negative effect of traditional cultural values on parental nurturance in Korean, Japanese, and Indian Americans than in Chinese Americans).

Conclusions and Implications: This study provides updated evidence from a sample Asian American families in New York City that parental acculturation to the host culture is positively associated with parental nurturance and negatively associated with parent-child conflict. The study also shows the mediating effects of parental nurturance buffering the impact of low-level parental acculturation on parent-child conflict as well as the moderating roles of ethnicity in the associations of parental acculturation with intergenerational relationships among Asian Americans. These findings may provide implications for culturally competent practices and interventions to improve parent-child relationships among Asian Americans, especially new immigrant families, and help them adapt to the life in the U.S.