Parental Roles and Relationships in Immigrant Families by Susan S. Chuang & Catherine L. Costigan

Author:Susan S. Chuang & Catherine L. Costigan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Individual Differences in the Effects of Acculturative Stressors

Although acculturative stressors tend to be associated with negative individual outcomes, the effects of acculturative stressors vary dramatically across individuals. Whereas some people experience negative effects of acculturative stressors, some may be less affected by acculturative stressors, and others may even build strength and resilience from stressful experiences (Xia et al., 2013; Xu, Xie, Liu, Xia, & Liu, 2007; Yeh, Kim, Pituc, & Atkins, 2008). Studies that investigate moderators of the relationship between acculturative stressors and Asian Americans’ adjustment can shed light on such individual differences. In this section, we review initial findings on three types of moderators (demographic variables, personal attributes, and social resources; path C).

Demographic variables . The effect of acculturative stressors on individual adjustment can vary across age, gender, immigration status (immigrant vs. US born), and socioeconomic status. For the moderating role of age, it seems that acculturative stressors may be most likely to affect the adjustment of adolescents (Benner & Kim, 2009; Niwa, Way, & Hughes, 2014). Compared to children, adolescents are more mature in the social and cognitive abilities that are required to understand the meaning of their ethnicity (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014) and to perceive acculturative stressors such as discrimination (Brown & Bigler, 2005). Compared to adults, adolescents have lower levels of coping skills and fewer experiences in dealing with stress. Age can also interact with immigration status and other moderators to influence the relationship between acculturative stressors and individual adjustment. For example, Yip et al. (2008) found that immigration status and age influence the moderating role of ethnic identity on the association between discrimination and mental health. Specifically, for US-born individuals 41–50 years of age, the link between discrimination and mental health was weaker for those who felt closer to members of their ethnic group, whereas for US-born individuals 31–40 years of age and 51–75 years of age, the negative effects of discrimination on mental health were stronger for those who felt closer to members of their ethnic group.

For the moderating role of gender, prior studies have presented inconsistent findings. For example, Galliher et al. (2011) demonstrated that female (versus male) Asian American adolescents exhibited a weaker association between discrimination and psychological functioning. However, Hahm et al. (2010) found that women had a lower threshold for the influence of discrimination, such that, for women, the association between mental health and discrimination was significant when levels of discrimination were medium or high, whereas for men, the association was significant only when levels of discrimination were high. As for the moderating role of socioeconomic status, individuals with higher socioeconomic status (e.g., higher income) may be less vulnerable to the deleterious effects of acculturative stressors because they have greater access to resources (e.g., psychotherapy and social support) that could help them cope with psychologically distressing events (Ford, Hurd, Jagers, & Sellers, 2013; Ponnet, 2014).

Personal attributes . Ethnic identity and coping strategies are two personal attributes that are often considered as moderators for the link between acculturative stressors and individual adjustment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.