Alcohol Use among Latina/o Adolescents: The Role of Family and Peer Stressors

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Project Summary/Abstract Individuals in Latina/o families who are new to the United States face major health disparities, including physical and mental health problems specifically linked to alcohol use or abuse. This is particularly true for second-generation adolescents and young adults who were born in the United States but have at least one foreign-born parent. One out of every four individuals in the United States is a member of a newcomer family, and Latinos are the largest immigrant group in the United States. Research suggests that Latina/o adolescents and young adults in newcomer families face unique stressors such as family conflicts linked to acculturation. However, research in this area is limited and scholars have highlighted a need for further investigation. In addition to family stressors, peer risk factors, such as peer substance use, have also been connected to alcohol use among adolescents and young adults. The proposed research aims to enhance our understanding of unique family and peer stressors that may contribute to alcohol use and abuse among Latina/o adolescents and young adults, particularly those in newcomer families. Given the importance of family as a source of social support for family members in collectivistic cultures (e.g., Latino), family discord may be especially stressful for youth in these newcomer families. The proposed study will examine family conflict with specific attention to the content of the conflict (i.e., general, cultural) and whether conflict relates to adolescents’ alcohol use or abuse. For example, families often immigrate with the explicit intention of creating better lives for children. This project proposes to examine family cultural conflicts that go beyond acculturation. One illustration might be parent-child conflict in newcomer families due to perceived child’s lack of respect for parental immigration sacrifices. New scales will be developed and tested to measure such family cultural conflicts. Moreover, although families have a central socialization role in adolescents’ lives, the peer context is of heightened importance during adolescence. Yet there is a gap in the literature regarding how peer risk factors may exacerbate the effects of family stressors on alcohol use and abuse; this gap will be addressed in this project, which will make use of large national panel data (Monitoring The Future) combined with longitudinal survey data from a community-based sample. Thus, the proposed research findings have the potential to inform more effective prevention and intervention efforts aimed at decreasing the risk for alcohol use and abuse among Latina/o adolescents and young adults, in particular the significant population of Latina/o families who have newly arrived in the United States.