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Ethnic Differences in the Developmental Significance of Parentification
Author(s) -
Khafi Tamar Y.,
Yates Tuppett M.,
Luthar Suniya S.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
family process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.011
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1545-5300
pISSN - 0014-7370
DOI - 10.1111/famp.12072
Subject(s) - psychology , ethnic group , developmental psychology , psychopathology , context (archaeology) , african american , longitudinal study , clinical psychology , medicine , paleontology , history , ethnology , pathology , sociology , anthropology , biology
Using an ecological framework, this 2‐wave longitudinal study examined the effects of parentification on youth adjustment across the transition to adolescence in a high‐risk, low‐income sample of A frican A merican (58%) and E uropean A merican (42%) mother–child dyads (T1 M age = 10.17 years, T2 M age = 14.89 years; 52.4% female). Children's provision of family caregiving was moderately stable from early to late adolescence. Emotional and instrumental parentification evidenced distinct long‐term effects on adolescents' psychopathology and the quality of the parent–child relationship. Ethnicity moderated these relations. Emotional and instrumental parentification behaviors were associated with predominantly negative outcomes among E uropean A merican youth in the form of increased externalizing behavior problems and decreased parent–child relationship quality, whereas emotional parentification was associated with positive outcomes among African American youth in the form of increased parent–child relationship quality, and instrumental parentification was neutral. These findings support a multidimensional view of parentification as a set of culturally embedded phenomena whose effects can only be understood in consideration of the context in which they occur.