The Relations Among Multiple Risks, Parenting Styles, and Chinese American Children's Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

This study examined the prospective effects of multiple risks on the internalizing and externalizing problems of 258 1st and 2nd generation Chinese American school-aged children, as well as the mediating and moderating roles of parenting styles. When examining the relations between risk domains and children's behavioral adjustment, children's low self-regulation and negative emotionality, single-parent family structure, and gaps in parent-child cultural orientations were found to be unique predictors of adjustment outcomes two years later. The multiple risk index, which represented the joint effects of uniquely predictive risk variables, was related to higher levels of child-reported internalizing and externalizing problems. Similarly, the cumulative risk index, which represented the number of risk factor exposures, was also associated with increased internalizing and externalizing problems as reported by children. Though we did not find support for parenting styles as mediators, results did indicate that authoritarian parenting interacted with the multiple and cumulative risk indexes. High authoritarian parenting had a tendency to strengthen the relation between the multiple risk index and increased teacher-reported internalizing problems, while low authoritarian parenting had a tendency to attenuate the relation between cumulative risk and parent-reported internalizing problems