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This research was supported, in part, by NIMH Grant MH68920 (Culture, Context, and Mexican American Mental Health). The authors are thankful for the support of Mark W. Roosa, Marisela Torres, Leticia Gelhard, Jaimee Virgo, our Community Advisory Board and interviewers, and the families who participated in the study.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Nancy A. Gonzales, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, 950 S McAllister Ave, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104 ; E-mail: [email protected].The acculturation gap-distress hypothesis, based in the theory of bicultural family functioning (Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993), purports that when youth in immigrant families acculturate (i.e., become more connected to the host culture), they experience a loss of connection to aspects of their heritage culture that remain extremely important to their parents. Resulting intergenerational differences, variously termed cultural gaps (Lau et al., 2005), cultural discrepancies (Wang, Kim, Anderson, Chen, & Yan, 2012), and cultural dissonance (Weaver & Kim, 2008), may disrupt family and youth psychological functioning. Although parent–youth cultural gaps are assumed to be prevalent and erosive within immigrant and other bicultural families, decades of research testing this hypothesis have produced mixed evidence. Studies have found the nature of cultural gaps to be more varied than originally portrayed; it is not the case that all parents remain more connected to their heritage culture and less connected to the host culture over time than their children (Telzer, 2010). As well, the impact of cultural gaps on youth emotional and behavioral outcomes vary depending on the cultural dimensions on which they are based and the statistical methods used to identify and model them within and across time (Bámaca-Colbert & Gayles, 2010; Cano et al., 2016; Telzer, 2010). Findings are difficult to reconcile because studies often test very different questions that are not well aligned with the original theory (Lim, Yeh, Liang, & McCabe, 2008).
Consistent with the theme of the Special Issue focused on cultural development and psychopathology, and guided by theory as to why and how cultural gaps increase risk for family and youth maladjustment, this study identified profiles of mother–adolescent and father–adolescent discrepancies on heritage cultural values in a diverse sample of Mexican heritage families. Specifically, growth mixture modeling of adolescents’ and parents’ heritage cultural values were used to identify mother–adolescent and father–adolescent...