NCJ Number
223246
Journal
Journal of Adolescent Research Volume: 23 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2008 Pages: 411-437
Date Published
July 2008
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This study examined the parenting practices of Hmong-American families to understand parenting practices from the adolescents point of view.
Abstract
The study found two emergent themes: adolescents' views regarding their fathers as hard-working but absent, and adolescents' understanding that parents were preparing them for "the good life." Hmong-American adolescents' perceptions of their parents were examined using the parenting styles and family ecologies models. Individual interviews of Hmong-American teenagers resulted in open-ended and fixed-choice responses. In the open-ended responses, adolescents emphasized themes of parental involvement and dependence on the family for support. The theme of "depending on the family" was more commonly used to describe mothers, whereas "respectful relationships" was used more frequently to describe fathers. Using fixed-choice warmth and behavioral control scores, 40 percent of mothers and 27.5 percent of fathers were identified as authoritative. The remaining parents showed authoritarian, permissive, or neglectful parenting styles. The older adolescents described relationships with parents that were less close than the relationship descriptions provided by younger adolescents. This study suggests that future research using culturally sensitive models could be used to examine how acculturation into mainstream culture might affect parenting styles. Data were collected from a sample which consisted of 40 Hmong-American teenagers 11- to 18-years-old who were recruited from 2 community organizations in Milwaukee, WI. The gender distribution was predominantly male (57 percent), and the majority of youth resided with both parents (82 percent). Tables, appendix A-B, references