Cultural, Social, and Family Processes Towards Adolescents’ Academic Development in Chinese American Families

Academic success is a key developmental competency that is strongly emphasized within Chinese American families, stressing the need to understand the cultural, social, and family processes that influence its development among Chinese American youth. The current study took an ecological and family systems approach in investigating the development of Chinese American adolescents’ high school grade point averages (GPA) from early to middle adolescence. Participants included fathers, mothers, and adolescents (54% female, 46% male) from Waves 1 (W1; early adolescence) and 2 (W2; middle adolescence) of a study on 444 Chinese American families from a northern urban area on the west coast of the United States (US). Adolescents were 12 to 15 years old at W1 (data collection in 2002), with W2 data collection occurring approximately four years later (2006). Structural equation modeling examined simultaneous paths from fathers’ and mothers’ cultural orientations to adolescents’ GPAs four years later, through fathers’ and mothers’ acculturative stress, fathers’ and mothers’ supportive parenting behaviors, and combined parent-adolescent alienation. Cultural orientation, stress, parenting, and alienation were assessed through parent-report and adolescent-report measures, whereas GPA was taken from school transcripts. Wald’s tests examined differences between mother-adolescent and father-adolescent processes. Mothers’ bicultural and more US cultural orientations (compared to more Chinese) indirectly predicted greater increases in adolescents’ GPAs, through lower mothers’ acculturative stress, greater mothers' supportive parenting behaviors, and lower alienation. Parallel father indirect effects were not significant. Results demonstrate how Chinese American adolescents’ academic achievement is influenced by their families’ experiences across cultural, social, and family systems, with fathers and mothers playing significantly different roles. Further investigations of the ways parents influence their child’s academic development, especially those specifically relevant to Chinese American fathers, are needed.