Abstract
Stress from daily school problems may accumulate and eventually lead to mental health issues in both youth and their parents. With a strong cultural emphasis on school performance, Chinese American families may be particularly vulnerable to such stress. In the current research, Chinese American adolescents (N = 95; Mean age = 13.7 years; 51% girls) and their parents completed daily diary reports of school problems and emotional well-being for 14 continuous days. Adolescents also provided four saliva samples per day for 4 consecutive days. Multilevel modeling analyses showed that youth’s daily school problems predicted their lower happiness, higher distress, and higher total cortisol output above and beyond their emotional well-being and cortisol output the prior day. Moreover, there was a spillover effect such that youth’s school problems also negatively predicted their parents’ emotional well-being. Notably, the negative influence from school problems was moderated by children’s cultural orientation, such that youth who were more oriented toward Chinese (vs. American) culture were more vulnerable to the school problems. Taken together, our results highlight the costs on biopsychological adjustment accompanying the academic focus in Chinese American youth and their parents.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Cynthia X. Yuen for her vital contribution to this study. We also appreciate the constructive comments on an earlier version of this article provided by members of Culture and Adolescent Development Lab at Northwestern University.
Authors’ Contributions
Y.Q. was involved in developing the hypotheses motivating the data analyses, performed the statistical analyses, interpreted the results, and drafted the manuscript; B.Y. was involved in analyses of the data, interpretation of the results, and drafted the manuscript; E.H.T. participated in the study design, oversaw the data collection, was involved in the interpretation of the results, and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This research was supported by an Immigrant Health Transitions Initiative Seed Grant, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, the National Institutes of Health (R01DA039923), and the National Science Foundation (BCS 1539651).
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Qu, Y., Yang, B. & Telzer, E.H. The Cost of Academic Focus: Daily School Problems and Biopsychological Adjustment in Chinese American Families. J Youth Adolescence 49, 1631–1644 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01255-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01255-5