Complex effects of language brokering among Chinese immigrant families : integrating variable-centered and person-centered approaches

Children and adolescents in linguistic minority families, such as Chinese American families, often serve as language brokers; that is, they are the translators or interpreters for their parents who have limited English proficiency. Despite a growing number of scholarly investigations on language brokering, evidence regarding its developmental outcomes remains mixed. To disentangle the complex effects of language brokering, two separate but complementary studies were conducted. Specifically, Study 1 took a variable-centered approach and examined the mechanisms of the complex effects of language brokering frequency, while Study 2 took a person-centered approach and explored subgroups of language brokers based on language brokering feelings and identified predictors and outcomes of subgroup memberships (including a known subgroup of non-brokers). Participants were Chinese American adolescents (N = 252 for Study 1; N = 394 for Study 2 including non-brokers) residing in Northern California who were surveyed when they were in high school (T1; Mage = 17.0; SD = 0.73; 61% female) and again four years later (T2). In Study 1, it was found that frequent language brokering for mothers was associated with brokering-related maternal dependence, which was in turn simultaneously associated with both brokering-related mother-child mutual regard and mother-child role reversal across language brokers’ adolescence and emerging adulthood. In addition, the positive impact of frequent language brokering diminished when language brokers did not perceive warmth from their mothers’ parenting behaviors. In Study 2, two distinct subgroups of adolescent language brokers were identified using latent profile analyses based on language brokering feelings: efficacious brokers and burdened brokers. A key predictor that distinguished the two language broker groups was bilingual proficiency, such that those who were proficient in both English and Chinese were more likely to be efficacious brokers. Moreover, compared to non-brokers, efficacious brokers were not significantly affected by or even benefitted from translating, while burdened brokers’ parent-child relationships and psychosocial well-being were at risk due to brokering. Finally, the majority of adolescents remained in the same subgroups over time, and those who were burdened at both times and those who later became burdened showed poorer adjustment in emerging adulthood than other subgroups.