Maternal Monitoring Knowledge Change and Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors in Low-Income African American and Latino Families.

Drawing on a sample of 318 African American and 354 Latino urban, low-income families, we identify maternal monitoring knowledge trajectories and examine which trajectory predicts fewer late-adolescent externalizing problems and which family and neighborhood factors predict trajectories with positive implications for late-adolescent externalizing behaviors. The majority of adolescents in both groups perceived long-term high levels of maternal monitoring knowledge throughout adolescence-stably high for the African American sample and high for the Latino sample. Long-term high levels of knowledge predicted fewer general late-adolescent externalizing problems for both groups and fewer late-adolescent delinquent behaviors for the African American sample.

Conflicts and communication between high-achieving Chinese American adolescents and their parents.

Drawing on in-depth interview data collected on 18 high-achieving Chinese American students, the authors examine domains of acculturation-based conflicts, parent and child internal conflicts, and conflict resolution in their families. Their analyses show that well-established negative communication patterns in educational expectations, divergent attitudes toward other races and country of origin, and cultural and language barriers contributed to parent-child conflicts. Their findings also illustrate important internal conflicts both adolescents and parents had along the cultural tightrope of autonomy and relatedness.

Parent-child relations and psychological adjustment among high-achieving Chinese and European American adolescents.

Chinese American students are often perceived as problem-free high achievers. Recent research, however, suggests that high-achieving Chinese American students can experience elevated levels of stress, especially comparing to their peers from other ethnic groups. In this paper, we examine how family dynamics may influence psychological adjustment among a group of high-achieving adolescents.

The "model minority" and their discontent: examining peer discrimination and harassment of Chinese American immigrant youth.

Using an ecological framework, the authors explore the reasons for peer discrimination and harassment reported by many Chinese American youth. They draw on longitudinal data collected on 120 first- and second-generation Chinese American students from two studies conducted in Boston and New York. Our analyses suggested that reasons for these experiences of harassment lay with the beliefs about academic ability, the students' immigrant status and language barriers, within-group conflicts, and their physical appearance that made them different from other ethnic minority or majority students.