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Published in final edited form as: Int J Psychol. 2024 Jul 2;59(4):588–597. doi: 10.1002/ijop.13214

Cultural Values, Parenting, and Child Adjustment in the United States

Kaitlyn Breiner 1, Jennifer E Lansford 2, Ann T Skinner 3, Laurence Steinberg 4, Marc H Bornstein 5, Kirby Deater-Deckard 6,7, Kenneth A Dodge 8, W Andrew Rothenberg 9
PMCID: PMC11286003  NIHMSID: NIHMS2003948  PMID: 38952350

Abstract

We examined whether cultural values, conformity, and parenting behaviors were related to child adjustment in middle childhood in the United States. White, Black, and Latino mothers (n = 273), fathers (n = 182), and their children (n = 272) reported on parental individualism and collectivism, conformity values, parental warmth, monitoring, family obligation expectations, and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Mean differences, bivariate correlations, and multiple regression analyses were performed on variables of interest. Collectivism in mothers and fathers was associated with family obligation expectations and parental warmth. Fathers with higher conformity values had higher expectations of children’s family obligations. Child internalizing and externalizing behaviors were greater when Latino families subscribed to individualistic values. These results are discussed in the context of cultural values, protective and promotive factors of behavior, and race/ethnicity in the United States.

Keywords: culture, race, ethnicity, parenting behaviors

Introduction

The lived experience of people in the United States is shaped by their racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds. White people represent the racial/ethnic majority of the population and tend to subscribe to independent values focusing on the self, whereas people from racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States (e.g., Black, Latino) tend to be more interdependent, focusing on the group (Suizzo, 2007), and subscribing to collectivistic values (prioritizing the group over the individual) (Coon & Kemmelmeier, 2001; Vandello & Cohen, 1999), and have parents who encourage cultural socialization goals (Harding et al., 2017). Cultural values may function as protective and promotive factors for racial/ethnic minorities in the United States (Germán et al., 2009; Neblett et al., 2012). By examining attitudes and behaviors of parents in the United States through the lens of race, ethnicity, and culture, we can make more accurate inferences about child behavior.

Cultural Values in the United States

Cultural values relating to race and ethnicity in the United States are often explored in an individualism (prioritization of the individual over the group)/collectivism framework (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1995; Vandello & Cohen, 1999). Individuals belonging to minority communities are more likely to endorse traits that are associated with collectivistic values compared to individualistic values, such as conformity, or feeling pressured to act a certain way to fit in with social norms (Schwartz et al., 2001) and to fulfill expectations of family obligations (Fulligni et al., 1999). Although individualism/collectivism has been viewed as a unidimensional construct, more recent work has examined cultural values relating to race/ethnicity as multidimensional and dynamic. Recent theories have posited that individualistic and collectivistic values can coexist within individuals (see Solís et al., 2017 and Tamis-LaMonda et al., 2008). Kommaraju and Cokley (2008) found that ethnicity moderates the relation between individualism and collectivism, noting that while White and Black U.S. Americans endorse individualistic values, Black U.S. Americans also endorse collectivistic values. A focus on cultural values by race/ethnic group reveals significant within-group variation and masking (or averaging) of group differences (Prevoo & Tamis-LeMonda, 2017), suggesting the importance of examining these variables more closely. Individualism and collectivism are often assessed at the national level, which may lead to assumptions and heuristics of groups and overlook individual heterogeneity.

Parenting in the United States

In the United States and elsewhere, parenting behaviors are tied to value systems (Lansford et al., 2021; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008). Parents with greater individualistic values have more goals geared toward autonomy compared to parents with greater collectivistic values, who hold more relationship-oriented goals. Parenting domains such as knowledge solicitation (a core component of monitoring) and rule setting occur in varying degrees across development as a means of monitoring child behavior (Wang et al., 2011). Although researchers have found more overlap than differences in parental monitoring behaviors between racial/ethnic groups (Laird et al., 2010), recent studies on youth in the United States reveal nuances in parental monitoring. Compared to Latino parents, White and Black parents increase knowledge solicitation between ages 10 and 13 (Rothenberg et al., 2021). People with collectivistic values also endorse conformity (Bond & Smith, 1996), which may function as a protective factor in Latino families (Locke & Newcomb, 2005). This is echoed by Benito-Gomez and colleagues (2020) who suggest conformity to family values and prioritization of the family system in Latino and Black families promotes parental autonomy support (Benito-Gomez et al., 2020). Research on risk factors in minority communities in the United States has demonstrated the importance of family closeness as a resiliency factor in Black children (O’Donnell et al., 2004). To maintain a close family bond, families with collectivistic values emphasize the importance of family obligations (Freeberg & Stein, 1996).

Research on parental warmth in different racial/ethnic groups in the United States has shown that Latino families increase expression of parental warmth linearly from childhood to adolescence, whereas White and Black families increase more gradually by comparison (Rothenberg et al., 2021). Parental warmth in Latino families (Mogro-Wilson, 2008) and Black families (Voisin et al., 2017) functions as a protective factor from problematic behavioral and psychological outcomes. Latino and Black mothers and fathers who demonstrate greater parental control also demonstrate greater warmth than White mothers and fathers (Deater-Deckard et al., 2011). The extent to which parenting attitudes and behaviors are exercised varies based on race/ethnicity along with other contextual factors, such as external stressors.

Child Adjustment in the United States

In the United States, parenting control and warmth predict child aggression (positively and negatively, respectively) in Black, Latino, and White families (Rothenberg et al., 2020). Black, Latino, and White children experiencing violence in the home demonstrate the same increased levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors—suggesting that exposure to violence itself leads to poor outcomes irrespective of race/ethnicity (McFarlane et al., 2003). Internalizing and externalizing behaviors tend to increase in youth when risk factors increase (Loukas & Prelow, 2004), such as economic hardship (Coley et al., 2014). A recent study examining externalizing behaviors in White, Black, and Latino children in the United States revealed greater externalizing behaviors for White and Latino children whose mothers self-reported low maternal warmth (Kang et al., 2023). The authors stress the importance of considering contextual factors such as parenting styles and culture when interpreting these results (2023). Although researchers have examined differences in child adjustment based on ethnicity in the United States, what remains to be known is whether associations between cultural values on an individual level are also associated with child adjustment.

The Present Study

The present study examines whether mothers’ and fathers’ individualism, collectivism, and conformity values are significantly related to parenting behaviors and child adjustment in middle childhood. Considering previous research indicating families holding collectivistic values also hold expectations of family obligations (Fulligni et al., 1999) and social pressures to conform (Bond & Smith, 1996), we hypothesized that mothers and fathers with collectivistic values and conformity values in the United States would have greater expectations of children’s family obligations and endorse greater parental monitoring. Based on results in the U.S. sample from Deater-Deckard et al. (2011), we hypothesized that parental warmth would be greater in families with collectivistic values. As recent research has demonstrated no differences in child adjustment between racial/ethnic groups in the United States (Rothenberg et al., 2020), we did not expect differences in child internalizing/externalizing behaviors based on cultural values.

Methods

Participants

Participants from the United States subsample of the Parenting Across Cultures Study were recruited from Durham, North Carolina through letters sent home from schools. Children (n = 272; 100 White, 92 Black, 80 Latino1; 49% girls) were 11.12 years old, on average, at the time of data collection (SD = .62). Their mothers (n = 273) and fathers (n = 182) also participated. Parents were married (59%) or cohabiting (9%) and were mostly biological parents (93%). Participants were recruited from public and private schools to be socioeconomically representative of Durham, North Carolina.

Procedure

Measures were administered in English or Spanish (following forward- and back-translation from English) and methodologically validated to ensure the conceptual equivalence of the instruments (Erkut, 2010). Data for the present study were collected at a single wave in two-hour interviews after parent consent and child assent in participant-chosen locations. Parents also chose whether to complete measures orally or in writing; children completed interviews orally with an interviewer who read the question aloud, showed the child a visual depiction of the rating scales, and recorded the child’s responses.

Measures

Parent individualism and collectivism.

Mothers and fathers completed a measure of individualism and collectivism adapted from Singelis et al. (1995), Tam et al. (2003), and Triandis (1995). Parents rated the importance of different values related to their autonomy from and belonging to a social group. Parents were asked whether they 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, or 4 = strongly agree with each of 16 statements, 8 reflecting individualism and 8 reflecting collectivism. Examples of individualist items included “I’d rather depend on myself than others” and “My personal identity, independent of others, is very important to me.” Examples of collectivist items included “It is my duty to take care of my family, even when I have to sacrifice what I want” and “To me, pleasure is spending time with others.” Items were averaged to create an individualism scale (αs = .72 and .64 for mothers and fathers, respectively) and a collectivism scale (αs = .68 and .70 for mothers and fathers, respectively).

Parent conformity values.

Mothers and fathers each rated an item developed by Schwartz et al. (2001): “I believe that people should do what they’re told. I think people should follow rules at all times, even when no one is watching.” Parents responded using a 6-point scale (1 = not like me at all to 6 = very much like me).

Parent warmth.

Mothers and fathers completed the Parental Acceptance-Rejection/Control Questionnaire-Short Form, a measure with excellent established reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, and measurement invariance that has been used in over 60 cultures worldwide and has been used successfully with U.S. White, Black, and Latino families by our own and other research teams (Lansford et al., 2018; Rohner, 2005). Children also provided separate ratings about their mothers’ and fathers’ warmth. Eight items captured parental warmth (e.g., “parents say nice things to child”). Behavior frequency was rated on a modified 4-point scale (1 = almost never to 4 = every day). We averaged mothers’ and children’s ratings of mothers’ warmth and averaged fathers’ and children’s ratings of fathers’ warmth to create composite measures of mother warmth (α = .66) and father warmth (α = .78).

Parent rules/limit-setting and knowledge solicitation.

Parent rules/limit-setting and knowledge solicitation were assessed by subscales of the 10-item parental monitoring scale derived from Conger et al. (1994) and Steinberg et al. (1992). This measure has demonstrated adequate psychometric properties in past studies examining both the entire Parenting Across Cultures sample and Chinese families in particular (Lansford et al., 2018). To measure parent rules/limit-setting, children answered 5 questions that captured the frequency with which parents impose limits on their child’s activities on a 0 = never to 3 = always scale. To measure parent knowledge solicitation, children answered 5 questions that examined the extent to which parents tried to find out about their children’s activities and with whom they spend time on a 0 = I do not try, 1 = I try a little, 2 = I try a lot scale. Both parent rules/limit-setting and parent knowledge solicitation were assessed by asking about the same five child activities (e.g., with whom the child spends time, how the child spends his/her free time, how the child spends his/her money, where the child goes right after school, and the type of homework the child receives). Items were averaged to create composite scales for parent rules/limit setting (α = .70) and parent knowledge solicitation (α = .63). Higher scores indicated more parental rules/limit-setting and knowledge solicitation.

Parent family obligation expectations.

Mothers, fathers, and children completed the respect for family and current assistance scales of the family obligations measure developed by Fuligni et al. (1999). The measure includes 7 items assessing views about the importance of respecting the authority of elders in the family, including parents, grandparents, and older siblings (e.g., Please rate how important it is to you that your child treat you with great respect/ Please rate how important it is to your parents that you treat them with great respect; 1 = not important to 5 = very important) and 11 items assessing parents’ expectations and children’s perceptions of their parents’ expectations regarding how often children should help and spend time with the family on a daily basis (e.g., Please rate how often your child is expected to help out around the house/Please rate how often your parents expect you to help out around the house; 1 = almost never to 5 = almost always). These 18 items were averaged to create a composite scale for each reporter (αs= .82, .82, and .85 for child, mother, and father reports, respectively).

Child internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Parents and children, respectively, completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self-Report (YSR; Achenbach, 1991). Parents and children indicated whether each behavior was 0 = not true, 1 = somewhat or sometimes true, or 2 = very true or often true. The Achenbach measures have been translated into at least 100 languages and have been used with at least 100 cultural groups (Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment, 2016). The Internalizing Behavior scale was generated by summing responses from 31 items (for parents) or 29 items (for children) including behaviors and emotions such as loneliness, self-consciousness, nervousness, sadness, feeling worthless, anxiety, withdrawn behavior, and physical problems without medical causes. The Externalizing Behavior scale was created by summing the responses from 33 items (for parents) or 30 items (for children) including behaviors such as lying, truancy, vandalism, bullying, disobedience, tantrums, sudden mood change, and physical violence. We created cross-informant composites by averaging all available reporters’ scores for internalizing (α = .90) and externalizing (α = .91) behaviors.

Covariates.

Child gender and parent education (maximum number of years of education obtained by the mother and father) were included as covariates. Child age was not significantly correlated with any of the study variables.

Analytic Plan

All analyses were conducted in SPSS 28. Analyses proceeded in three steps. First, we tested for mean differences in study variables across racial/ethnic groups. Second, we examined bivariate correlations between the cultural value variables and the parenting and child adjustment variables. Third, we conducted multiple regression analyses predicting each parenting and child adjustment variable from the three cultural value variables (i.e., individualism, collectivism, and conformity) separately for mothers and fathers, controlling for child gender and parent education (mother education in the models with mothers’ cultural values and father education in the models with fathers’ cultural values). In initial regression models, we centered the predictor variables and created interaction terms between each centered predictor and dummy coded race/ethnicity to test whether associations between cultural values and parenting and child adjustment differed across racial/ethnic groups. Except when preliminary regressions showed a significant interaction with race/ethnicity, the regressions reported below reflect findings from the full sample.

Results

Descriptive statistics for all variables are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Tests of Mean Differences across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Black n = 92 White n = 100 Latino n = 80
Study Variable M SD M SD M SD F
Mother Individualism 2.65a .43 2.48b .34 2.80a .53 12.32***
Mother Collectivism 3.36 .34 3.27a .29 3.45b .38 6.84**
Mother Conformity 4.63 1.32 4.60 1.20 4.48 1.32 .31
Father Individualism 2.70 .35 2.61a .35 2.79b .42 3.54*
Father Collectivism 3.39a .32 3.24b .30 3.37 .38 4.01*
Father Conformity 4.90a .99 4.11b 1.25 4.52 1.43 5.94**
Mother Warmth 3.80a .22 3.90b .12 3.76a .27 11.70***
Father Warmth 3.77 .28 3.81 .25 3.71 .32 2.52
Rules/Limit-setting 1.81a .75 1.49b .59 1.59 .73 5.32**
Knowledge Solicitation 1.54 .45 1.56 .36 1.54 .40 .08
Mother Family Obligations 3.86a .48 3.49b .46 4.07c .44 37.80***
Father Family Obligations 3.80a .46 3.47b .46 4.14c .44 35.42***
Child Family Obligations 4.14a .47 3.90b .47 4.08 .56 5.95**
Child Internalizing 7.45a 4.04 9.26b 5.01 9.49b 5.87 4.58*
Child Externalizing 8.33 6.13 7.99 5.55 7.55 5.91 .38
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*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Note. Means in rows with different subscripts differ significantly from one another.

Mean Differences across Racial/Ethnic Groups

As shown in Table 1, F-tests from analyses of variance revealed significant mean differences across racial/ethnic groups on 11 of the 15 variables. Individualism was higher for Black and Latina than White mothers. Collectivism was higher for Latina than White mothers. Individualism was higher for Latino than White fathers. Collectivism and conformity values were higher for Black than White fathers. Warmth was higher for White than Black or Latina mothers. Rules/limit-setting was higher for Black than White parents. Latino mothers and fathers had the highest expectations regarding children’s family obligations, followed by Black mothers and fathers, with White mothers and fathers having the lowest expectations. Black children perceived their parents as having higher expectations regarding their family obligations than did White children. White and Latino children had more internalizing problems than Black children. There were no differences across racial/ethnic groups on mother conformity values, father warmth, parental knowledge solicitation, or child externalizing behavior.

Mothers’ Cultural Values

Bivariate correlations are shown in Table 2. Mothers’ higher individualism was correlated with less maternal warmth, less paternal warmth, higher maternal expectations regarding children’s family obligations, and more child externalizing behaviors. Mothers’ higher collectivism was correlated with mothers’ higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations. Mothers’ higher conformity values were correlated with mothers’ higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations and children’s perceptions of their parents as having higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations.

Table 2.

Bivariate Correlations

Mother Father
Parenting or Child Adjustment Variable Individualism Collectivism Conformity Individualism Collectivism Conformity
Mother Warmth −.14* .10 .04 −.14 .10 .04
Father Warmth −.19** .04 .06 −.17* .29*** .10
Rules/Limit-setting .05 −.03 .08 .01 .04 .07
Knowledge Solicitation .00 −.04 .00 .11 .05 .11
Mother Family Obligations .27*** .39*** .21*** .02 .22** .25***
Father Family Obligations .03 .13 .12 .03 .43*** .27***
Child Family Obligations .06 .06 .13* .03 .14 .03
Child Internalizing .11 −.04 −.05 .16* −.04 −.12
Child Externalizing .14* −.04 .03 .24** −.08 .02
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*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Results from the regression analyses are shown in Table 3. Preliminary regressions revealed only two significant interactions between mothers’ cultural values and race/ethnicity in the association between parenting and child adjustment. These significant interactions are noted in Table 3, but with these exceptions, the tabled results are for models without the interaction terms (Supplemental Tables 1 and 2 provide the full results for models with significant interaction terms). Mothers’ higher individualism was associated with less paternal warmth, lower paternal expectations regarding children’s family obligations, and more child internalizing and externalizing behaviors after accounting for the other cultural values, child gender, and mothers’ education. Mothers’ higher collectivism was associated with more maternal warmth and higher maternal expectations regarding children’s family obligations; a significant Collectivism by Race/ethnicity interaction was associated with children’s perceptions of parents’ expectations regarding children’s family obligations (mothers’ collectivism was associated with children’s perceptions of family obligation expectations in opposite directions in Latino children vs. Black and White children but not significant in either direction). Mothers’ higher conformity values were not significantly associated with any parenting or child adjustment variables after account for the other cultural values, child gender, and mothers’ education, although a significant Conformity x Race/ethnicity interaction was associated with parents’ knowledge solicitation (mothers’ conformity values were significantly associated with more parental knowledge solicitation for Latino children but not for Black or White children). In significant regression models, mothers had lower expectations, but fathers had higher expectations regarding daughters’ than sons’ family obligations. Higher maternal education was associated with more maternal warmth and mothers’, fathers’, and children’s perceptions of lower expectations regarding children’s family obligations.

Table 3.

Regressions Predicting Parenting and Child Adjustment from Parents’ Cultural Values

Parenting or Child Adjustment Outcomes Mother Cultural Values Father Cultural Values
Individualism Collectivism Conformity F Individualism Collectivism Conformity F
Mother Warmth −.13 (.03) .18** (.04) −.01 (.01) 5.17*** −.08 (.05) .13 (.06) .04 (.01) 4.15**
Father Warmth −.19* (.05) .12 (.06) .02 (.02) 3.10** −.19* (.05) .25** (.06) .03 (.02) 4.26***c
Rules/Limit-setting .04 (.11) −.08 (.14) .09 (.04) .93 .01 (.14) .06 (.17) .04 (.04) .38
Knowledge Solicitation .07 (.06) −.07 (.08) .02 (.02) 1.99*a .14 (.08) .06 (.10) .06 (.03) 1.90
Mother Family Obligations .04 (.07) .30*** (.09) .10 (.02) 24.36*** −.11 (.09) .09 (.11) .21** (.03) 17.23***
Father Family Obligations −.15* (.09) .10 (.12) .12 (.03) 8.88*** −.08 (.09) .32*** (.11) .14* (.03) 21.47***
Child Family Obligations −.02 (.08) .00 (.10) .12 (.03) 2.44*b .02 (.10) .18* (.12) −.03 (.03) 2.29*d
Child Internalizing .16* (.76) −.09 (1.02) −.01 (.26) 1.58 .16* (.94) −.01 (1.13) −.12 (.29) 1.34
Child Externalizing .19** (.88) −.11 (1.17) .03 (.30) 2.31* .25** (.93) −.08 (1.12) .08 (.29) 3.35**e
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*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Note. Values presented are standardized betas with standard errors in parentheses. Models control for child gender and parent education.

a

The model included a significant conformity values x Latino vs. Black/white interaction (β = −.19, SE = .03, p < .01).

b

The model included a significant collectivism x Latino vs. Black/white interaction (β = −.17, SE = .04, p < .05).

c

The model included a significant collectivism x Latino vs. Black/white interaction (β = −.20, SE = .02, p < .05).

d

The model included a significant collectivism x Latino vs. Black/white interaction (β = −.20, SE = .04, p < .05).

e

The model included a significant individualism x Latino vs. Black/white interaction (β = .18, SE = .34, p < .05).

Fathers’ Cultural Values

As shown in the correlations presented in Table 2, fathers’ higher individualism was correlated with less paternal warmth and more child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Fathers’ higher collectivism was correlated with more paternal warmth and mothers’ and fathers’ higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations. Fathers’ higher conformity values were correlated with mothers’ and fathers’ higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations.

Preliminary regressions revealed three significant interactions between fathers’ cultural values and race/ethnicity in the association between parenting and child adjustment. These significant interactions are noted in Table 3, but with these exceptions, the tabled results are for models without the interaction terms. As shown in Table 3, fathers’ higher individualism was associated with less paternal warmth and more child internalizing and externalizing behavior even after accounting for collectivism, conformity values, child gender, and fathers’ education. A significant Individualism x Race/ethnicity interaction revealed fathers’ individualism was significantly related to more externalizing behavior for Black and White but not Latino children. Fathers’ higher collectivism was associated with higher paternal warmth (for all three racial/ethnic groups but significantly more for Latino children) and mothers’ and fathers’ higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations; children’s perceptions of parents’ expectations regarding children’s family obligations were more strongly associated with collectivism for Latino than Black or White children but not significantly so for any racial/ethnic group. Fathers’ higher conformity values were associated with more maternal and paternal warmth; mothers’, fathers’, and children’s perceptions of higher expectations regarding children’s family obligations; and more child externalizing behaviors after accounting for the other cultural values, child gender, and fathers’ education. In significant regression models, fathers’ higher education was associated with more maternal and paternal warmth and lower maternal and paternal expectations regarding children’s family obligations.

Discussion

The goal of this study was to determine whether the cultural values of mothers and fathers was associated with parenting behaviors and child adjustment in three racial/ethnic groups in the United States. We hypothesized that warmth, parental expectations of children’s family obligations, and parental monitoring would be greater in families with collectivistic values. We expected that there would be no differences in child internalizing/externalizing behaviors based on cultural values. We found that collectivism is associated with parents’ expectations regarding children’s family obligations, especially for Latino mothers and fathers. The more collectivistic a father is, the greater his and the mother’s expectations of children’s familial obligations. Mothers and fathers with higher conformity values also have higher expectations of children’s family obligations. Collectivism is also associated with parental warmth. Finally, individualistic values in Latino mothers and fathers are associated with child internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Consistent with the literature (Fulligni et al., 1999), we found that collectivistic values are associated with family obligations such that fathers with higher conformity values also have higher expectations regarding their children’s family obligations. We suggest that fathers from collectivistic backgrounds may place a significant emphasis on their own values and extend them to their children to help their children become autonomous (Tamis-LaMonda et al., 2008). Conformity values, child family obligations, and rule setting were more pronounced in Black families compared to White families. We posit that perhaps stressors Black fathers experience in the United States (e.g., racial discrimination) lead them to create greater protections and rules for their children to keep them safe and for family preservation (Cooper et al., 2020; Letiecq & Koblinski, 2004).

Collectivistic values were also associated with parental warmth. Parents sharing cultural values may indirectly influence parental warmth (Gassman-Pines & Skinner, 2018). An unexpected finding that emerged was that White mothers reported greater warmth compared to Black and Latina mothers. This could indicate that this measure (and/or the traits within it) reflect the way White mothers express warmth. While warmth may be expressed equally between mothers of different race/ethnicities, the way it is expressed could differ (Cheah et al., 2015), and should be assessed between cultures in the future.

Individualism was associated with greater child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, particularly in Latino households. We did not expect cultural values would be associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors because people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds in the United States may hold both collectivistic and individualistic ideologies. However, because Latino families tend to subscribe to more collectivistic values, this finding could represent discordant and underlying stressors within families. For example, Latino mothers and fathers who adopt individualistic values may do so as a coping mechanism for the stress they endure to acculturate to European American culture and values (Driscoll & Torres, 2013). Other researchers have suggested this individualism may extend from feeling more connected to some elements of culture (like country of origin) than family (Williams et al., 2017). Additionally, it is possible that mothers and fathers may have shared parenting goals while holding different values to attain those goals, such as having stronger family obligations themselves or having greater expectations that their child has family obligations. The stressors that arise from these circumstances may lead to internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children, suggesting individualistic values alone are not the cause of these child behaviors.

This study highlights relations of mothers’ and fathers’ cultural and conformity values with child behaviors in the United States. We examined these constructs together at an individual level to discern how individual differences contribute to cultural values and child behavior. This study also demonstrated the nuance of subscribing to a value system that typically is not held by a racial/ethnic group—suggesting increased child internalizing and externalizing behaviors may be reflective of an underlying mechanism (e.g., external stressors) whereby that value system is challenged.

Although this study has notable strengths, we recognize its limitations. First, we acknowledge that our sample is not nationally representative. The participants reflect the three largest racial/ethnic groups in the United States, but they were all from the same region. Racial/ethnic populations differ regionally throughout the United States, future studies should consider assessing these constructs by region. Additionally, we are limited in our ability to draw inferences about child adjustment and parenting values from one time point and caution that the findings may not generalize to other age groups. We recommend researchers assess these metrics earlier in childhood and later in adolescence to understand relations among cultural values, parenting, and child adjustment across a broader developmental timescale. Finally, although all of the measures used in the present study are well-established in the literature, the alphas for some of the scales were moderately low in this sample. The number of analyses conducted also increases the risk of Type I error, so findings should be replicated in future research.

Subscribing to collectivistic values as a parent/family belonging to a racial/ethnic minority group in the United States may serve as a protective factor from external stressors and to remain connected to others who hold the same values or beliefs. We suggest it is critical to consider racial/ethnic background, minority status, and value system before interpreting the values held by parents and behaviors demonstrated by children. For example, conformity values may be reflective of parents protecting their children—especially in a collectivistic household. Children exhibiting externalizing or internalizing behaviors may be doing so in response to stressors on the family, such as acculturation.

Parenting styles in the United States are derived in part by cultural values held by the parents. In the United States, mothers and fathers with collectivistic values are more likely to represent a racial/ethnic minority and to have greater expectations of family obligations and conformity, perhaps as a means of protecting the family from external stressors. By comparison, families representing the racial/ethnic majority in the United States tend to hold more individualistic values. Despite these differences, child behavior is largely the same between groups, suggesting that child behavior is driven by factors that contribute to family and cultural values rather than the cultural values themselves.

Supplementary Material

SUP INFO

Funding:

This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805.

Footnotes

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Compliance Section

This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805.

Compliance with Ethical Standards: All procedures performed involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee at Duke University and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual adult participants included in the study; assent was obtained from children.

1

Participants selected the label, “Latino” and for consistency, is the terminology used in this paper (see Borrell & Echeverria, 2022).

Contributor Information

Kaitlyn Breiner, Child Development Department, California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA.

Jennifer E. Lansford, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, USA

Ann T. Skinner, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, USA

Laurence Steinberg, Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, USA & Department of Psychology, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.

Marc H. Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, USA, Institute for Fiscal Studies, United Kingdom, & UNICEF, USA

Kirby Deater-Deckard, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA; Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland.

Kenneth A. Dodge, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, USA

W. Andrew Rothenberg, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, USA.

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