"Relations Among Parenting, Culture, and Prosocial Behaviors in U.S. Mexican Youth: An Integrative Socialization Approach"

​Professor Gustavo Carlo is co-author of an article in Child Development examining cultural socialization practices. The title of the article is “Relations Among Parenting, Culture, and Prosocial Behaviors in U.S. Mexican Youth: An Integrative Socialization Approach.”
 
Additional authors are Assistant Professor Cara Streit (University of New Mexico, first author), Emeritus Professor George P. Knight (Arizona State University), Associate Professor Rebecca M.B. White (Arizona State University), and doctoral student Sahitya Maiya (University of Missouri, Columbia).
 
Carlo’s primary research interest focuses on understanding positive social development and health in culturally diverse children and adolescents. Many of his projects focus on U.S. ethnic/racial groups, including Latino/a youth and families. He has published more than 200 books, chapters, and research papers. He currently serves as a member of the Society for Research in Child Development Governing Council, as associate editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, and as co-editor of the upcoming APA Handbook of Adolescent Development. Carlo serves as director of UCI’s Cultural Resilience and Learning Center.

​Abstract
We examined the longitudinal relations among parental socialization practices—including acceptance or harsh parenting and ethnic socialization—ethnic identity, familism, and prosocial behaviors in a sample of U.S. Mexican youth. Participants included 462 U.S. Mexican adolescents (Mage at Wave 1 = 10.4 years old; 48.1% female), their mothers, and fathers at the 5th, 7th, 10th, and 12th grades. Results showed that maternal and paternal ethnic socialization predicted several forms of prosocial behaviors via ethnic identity and familism. Fathers’, but not mothers’, harsh parenting and acceptance had direct links to specific forms of prosocial behaviors. This study suggests the need for culturally informed theories that examine the reciprocal relations between two distinct domains of cultural socialization.