title: Filling Gaps in the Acculturation Gap-Distress Model: Heritage Cultural Maintenance and Adjustment in Mexican-American Families.
abstract: The acculturation gap-distress model purports that immigrant children acculturate faster than do their parents, resulting in an acculturation gap that leads to family and youth maladjustment. However, empirical support for the acculturation gap-distress model has been inconclusive. In the current study, 428 Mexican-American adolescents (50.2 % female) and their primary caregivers independently completed questionnaires assessing their levels of American and Mexican cultural orientation, family functioning, and youth adjustment. Contrary to the acculturation gap-distress model, acculturation gaps were not associated with poorer family or youth functioning. Rather, adolescents with higher levels of Mexican cultural orientations showed positive outcomes, regardless of their parents' orientations to either American or Mexican cultures. Findings suggest that youths' heritage cultural maintenance may be most important for their adjustment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. ehtelzer@illinois.edu.|Beckman Institute for Science and Technology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA. ehtelzer@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Eva H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Telzer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Cynthia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yuen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gonzales
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.|Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Fuligni
mesh_terms: D000069:Acculturation; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000523:psychology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009949:Orientation; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012933:Social Identification; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Acculturation gap; Adolescence; Culture; Family; Immigrants