Mother-Child Adjustment in Arab Immigrants and Refugees

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescence is a difficult developmental transition for foreign-born mothers and their children. The typical identity issues and peer pressure associated with this developmental transition for adolescents of foreign parentage are complicated by living in two cultures with conflicting norms and values. Yet, little is known about their adjustment. Even less is known about the parenting of foreign-born mothers or the effects of their stress on parenting during adolescence. These issues are even greater for Arab Muslim immigrants because their culture is markedly different from dominant US values. This longitudinal study of Arab Muslim immigrant and refugee mothers and their children will investigate stress, coping, social support, and parent-child relationship from the dual perspective of mothers and youth. The pathways in a causal model of how maternal, family, and child variables affect child psychosocial adjustment will be examined during transition into early and late adolescence. Study aims are to: 1) determine the baseline relationships in a causal model of maternal and child stress, coping, and social support; socio-demographic risk; maternal adjustment; parent-child relationships; and child psychosocial adjustment for pre- and early adolescent Arab youth, and 2) determine the stability of the pathways of the above variables for explaining the adjustment of Arab youth, 18 and 36 months later during transitions into early and late adolescence. Data about maternal, family, and child variables will be collected from 608 mother-child dyads at baseline when the child is a pre- or early adolescent and at 18 and 36 months later to capture transition into later stages of adolescence. Structural equation modeling will be used to develop a model of the baseline relationships among the latent variables and examine the model's ability to predict adjustment outcomes at 18 and 36 months. Model stability will be evaluated by assessing systematic change in the latent variables over time, determining the reliability of the change, and obtaining empirical Bayes (EB) estimates of individual true score change. A change score model, incorporating EB estimates, will determine how changes in the latent variables are related to the 18- and 36-month child adjustment outcomes. Information from the proposed study is needed to develop service delivery programs for this vulnerable population of women and children, particularly to determine the relative value of interventions focused on inter/intrapersonal dynamics versus contextual/environmental features.