Parent-child interactions among low-income Mexican American parents and preschoolers: do clinic-referred families differ from nonreferred families?
This study compared low-income Mexican American parents of young children referred for behavior problems to their nonreferred counterparts on an observational measure of parent-child interactions. Referred Mexican American parents demonstrated more negative behaviors than their nonreferred counterparts in both nondirective and highly directive situations. However, no differences were found at moderate levels of directiveness. The most and least directive situations in the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System best differentiated referred from nonreferred Mexican American families, and families differed more in their negative behaviors than positive behaviors. Many of the parenting behaviors that have been found to differ between referred and nonreferred Caucasian families were also observed to differ between their Mexican American counterparts.
McCabe
Kristen
K
University of San Diego, Rady Children's Hospital and Health Center, University of California-San Diego, and San Diego State University, CA, USA. kmccabe@casrc.org
Yeh
May
M
Lau
Anna
A
Argote
Carolina Bertely
CB
Liang
June
J
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003156:Community Mental Health Services; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000523:psychology*; D008800:Mexico / Q000208:ethnology; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D011203:Poverty; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D014481:United States