The relationship between mother and father racial-ethnic socialization profiles and family cohesion and sociopolitical values among Asian American adolescents

Abstract

Introduction: Although research on racial-ethnic socialization with Asian American families examines academic and psychological outcomes, less is known about whether messages from mothers and fathers are related to their adolescent's Asian American sociopolitical values and family cohesion.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 308 Asian American adolescents, ages 14-18, in the United States in 2021 (M_age = 16.83; standard deviation = 1.15).

Results: Using latent profile analysis, we found that there were three socialization profiles for mothers (integration socialization, moderate separation socialization, and high separation socialization) and two for fathers (integration socialization and high separation socialization). The integration socialization reported more maintenance of heritage culture and becoming American messages, with the lowest reports of awareness of discrimination and avoidance of outgroups. The high separation profile had the highest amount of maintenance of heritage culture messages, awareness of discrimination, and avoidance of outgroups but lowest amount of becoming American messages. Looking at profiles for youths' perceptions of mothers, the moderate separation profile had slightly lower scores on maintenance of heritage culture messages, moderate scores on avoidance of outgroups, and higher reports of becoming American and awareness of discrimination compared to the high separation profile. Adolescents with mothers in the integration profile had the greatest mother-child cohesion and highest level of sociopolitical values. With fathers, Asian American adolescents reported greater father-child cohesion in the integration profile, but there were no differences between socialization profiles and youth's Asian American sociopolitical values.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of parental messages on both identity outcomes (i.e., sociopolitical values) and family processes (i.e., family cohesion).

Keywords: Asian American; cohesion; family; latent profile analysis; racial-ethnic socialization.