The role of parent-adolescent relationships in predicting Mexican American adolescents' coping strategies: examining variation across parent and adolescent gender

The primary aim of this paper was to examine associations between supportive-responsive maternal/paternal-adolescent relationships and adolescents' coping strategies and whether associations vary across adolescent gender. It was hypothesized that supportive-responsive parent-adolescent relationships (indicated by high support and knowledge and low psychological control) would predict higher levels of seeking family support, peer support, and seeking spirituality and lowered levels of anger coping and substance-use coping. Gender of parent and adolescent was considered to examine whether associations between supportive-responsive maternal/paternal and adolescent relationships would vary across boys and girls. Participants included 367 Mexican American adolescents (M age = 14.46, SD = .69; 58% female). Structural equation modeling (SEM) involving latent and manifest constructs and multigroup analyses was used to evaluate the study aims. Results generally supported the primary hypothesis in that supportive-responsive parent-adolescent relationships were associated positively with seeking support from family, peer support, and spirituality and associated negatively with anger and substance-use coping. However, some paths varied across adolescent gender indicating that the effect of parenting on adolescent coping strategies was gendered particularly for father-son adolescent relationships. These findings highlight the importance of proximal supportive and responsive relationships with mothers and fathers for boys' and girls' coping in Mexican American families