Trajectories of Familísmo, Respéto, Traditional Gender Attitudes, and Parenting Practices Among Mexican‐Origin Families

Objective To investigate the trajectories of culturally specific predictors of parenting practices in Latinx families: familism ( familísmo ), respect ( respéto ), traditional gender role attitudes ( machísmo and marianísmo ), and the degree to which these parental cultural values predict changes in parenting practices. Background Cultural values have been suggested to predict Latinx parenting practices, but there is a paucity of direct evidence. The current study fills the gap by testing such associations using corresponding measures. Method We followed 549 Mexican‐origin families from when the adolescents (52% female) were in the fifth to eleventh grade. Parental authoritativeness, monitoring, and hostility were reported by multiple informants. Growth curve modeling was used. Results Most trajectories of these parental cultural values showed small but significant declines during offspring adolescence, particularly when adolescent use of Spanish or parent–adolescent conflict was high. Parental cultural values predicted changes in parenting practices in four of 36 models, wherein initial paternal familísmo predicted decrease in paternal authoritativeness toward daughters, initial maternal traditional gender values predicted decrease in maternal hostility toward daughters, and initial parental traditional gender values predicted decrease in parental monitoring of sons. Conclusion Although parental cultural values do not consistently predict changes in parenting practices, parental cultural values decrease with specific groups during specific times (i.e., during adolescence, especially in families with high parent–adolescent conflict or wherein the adolescent uses Spanish frequently). Implications More attention to measured constructs in research on Latinx families and validity of parenting is required. Research on nuanced or lower order components of acculturation is needed.