Journal of Youth and Adolescence最新文献

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.

Parent‒child perceptual discrepancies can shape children's development, yet their real-time effects and long-term implications remain unclear. Examining 88 Chinese parent-child dyads (M_{age_child} = 8.07, SD = 1.16, 57.95% boys), this study investigated how (in)congruence in perceived closeness relates to real-time dyadic affects, child parasympathetic regulation, assessed between July to October 2021 (T1), and concurrent (T1) and prospective internalizing/externalizing problems, measured one year later (T2). Polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed that when children perceived greater closeness than their parents did, they exhibited and shared more positive affect with their parents. Incongruence was linked to poorer parasympathetic regulation but lower long-term externalizing problems. Congruence in low closeness was associated with more internalizing/externalizing problems. Findings highlight the immediate physiological costs of incongruence and its potential benefits for children's long-term behavioral adaptation.

Although reciprocal relationships among the educational expectations of fathers, mothers, and adolescents have been theoretically proposed, the dynamic, gender differential, and asymmetric nature of these reciprocal relationships within family systems across adolescence remains unclear. In the current study, a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) was used to examine the reciprocal relationships among the educational expectations of fathers, mothers, and adolescents from 4th grade to 9th grade and the moderating effect of adolescents' gender was considered. A total of 3403 Chinese students (1628 girls; initial M_age = 9.85 years, SD_age = 0.37) and their fathers and mothers were followed from 4th to 9th grade across six waves at one-year intervals. The results indicated significant longitudinal reciprocal relationships among the educational expectations of fathers, mothers, and adolescents. The results of dynamic analysis indicated that father-to-adolescent and mother-to-father effects increased over time. In terms of asymmetries in parent-adolescent reciprocal effects, the results revealed that during the transition from 4th grade to 5th grade, adolescents' predictive effect on their fathers' educational expectations was significantly stronger than fathers' predictive effect on adolescents' educational expectations. The results of differences in parental-gender revealed that the predictive effect of mothers on adolescents' educational expectations was significantly stronger than the predictive effect of fathers during the transition from 4th grade to 5th grade. In addition, an adolescent-gender difference was observed in the adolescent-to-parent effects from 4th grade to 9th grade, with daughters having a stronger predictive effect on their parents' expectations than sons. This study reveals that within family systems, the educational expectations of fathers, mothers, and adolescents represent a dynamic process of mutual interaction, adaptation, and adjustment across different academic stages.

Previous studies have demonstrated the independent effects of parental autonomy support and need for cognition on creativity. However, it remains unclear how these factors jointly drive the development of creativity among adolescents, or how creativity shapes need for cognition and influences individuals' perceptions and constructions of their environments. Grounded on the framework of developmental cascades, this longitudinal study explored the dynamic relationships among parental autonomy support, need for cognition, and creativity development. Data were collected from 275 first-year middle school students from China (M_age(T1) = 12.730 ± 0.591, N_boys = 150) in three waves with 1-year intervals. The results indicated that parental autonomy support had a diffusion effect on the development of both need for cognition and creativity; bidirectional relationships between need for cognition and creativity, as well as between parental autonomy support and need for cognition. These findings suggest that creativity develops through the cascading changes in parental autonomy support and need for cognition, providing both theoretical and empirical support for the cultivation and development of creativity among Chinese adolescents.