Parental Cultural Values, Coparental, and Familial Functioning in Mexican Immigrant Families: Its Impact on Children´s Social Competence

Abstract

In two-parent families, the ability of parents to negotiate their roles as parents, reaching agreement in childrearing, and being cooperative in sharing parenting (i.e. coparenting), leads to positive family climate, which in turn, impacts positively on children´s social competence. Studies have shown these variables to be relevant for European-American parents. The role of parent's cultural values has received scarce attention in predicting coparental and familial functioning. Additionally, couple's similarity has been found to help explain coparental and familial functioning; however further exploration is needed. Using series of hierarchical multiple regressions as an exploratory form of path analysis, this study tested the connections among the cultural values of familism/respeto, and simpatia, with parental agreement in childrearing and cooperative coparenting (i.e. coparental functioning), and family climate (i.e. familial functioning) in explaining children social competence in a sample of Mexican immigrant parents. Analyses found that the cultural values of familism/respeto and simpatia impact positively coparental functioning within this ethnic group; although the impact is different for mothers and fathers. While simpatia predicted cooperative coparenting for mothers; familism/respeto predicted parental agreement for fathers at the trend level. Whereas parental agreement did predict coparenting for mothers, it was not predictive for fathers. Couples' similarity in culture values proved to have a minimal impact over coparental and familial functioning with a small, trend level effect from similarity in simpatia to cooperative coparenting. Regression analysis for mothers, fathers, and couples failed to predict children social competence. Mexican values of familism/respeto and simpatia play a role in explaining coparental functioning with Mexicans, albeit a different role for mothers and fathers. For mothers, endorsement of harmony and avoidance of conflict (i.e. simpatia) influences coparenting, over and above the effect of agreement on coparenting. Mothers' agreement leads to reports of cooperative coparenting. For fathers, it is endorsement of values proscribing to the value of familism/respeto that impacts fathers' parental agreement. But for fathers, reaching agreement does not necessarily lead to cooperative coparenting. These findings suggest interplay between values endorsement and parental roles. There is also evidence that the shared an endorsement of the value of simpatia leads to coparenting.