Intergenerational Mechanisms of Resilience Promoting Child Biobehavioral Health in Low-Income, Mexican-Origin Families

Elevated rates of exposure to multi-level chronic stressors (e.g., poverty, discrimination, acculturative stress) place low-income, Mexican-origin individuals in the United States at elevated risk for adverse psychological and physical health across the lifespan. Despite exposure to contextual risk factors, many individuals maintain positive biobehavioral health. In particular, despite greater exposure to sociodemographic risk factors, more recently immigrated Mexican-origin individuals in the U.S. may demonstrate more positive biobehavioral health, warranting consideration of specific cultural values and practices that confer and maintain positive health across generations. Parental cultural socialization is an understudied mechanism in promotive pathways of parent-child processes and child biobehavioral health. Across three generations of Mexican-origin families in the United States – maternal grandmothers, mothers, children – the current study (1) identified a multidimensional measure of child biobehavioral health across psychological and biological indicators, (2) evaluated the intergenerational transmission of grandmother-mother cultural socialization, (3) evaluated the effect of maternal cultural socialization on child-perceived parenting and child biobehavioral health, and (4) evaluated child cultural orientation as a moderator of the effect of maternal cultural socialization on child-perceived parenting and child biobehavioral health. Findings highlight the complex and nuanced relations among parental cultural socialization, individual cultural orientation, child perceptions of parenting, and child biobehavioral health among low-income, Mexican-origin families in the United States.