Parent-child acculturation profiles and adolescent language brokering experiences in Mexican immigrant families

Language brokering is a special form of interpersonal communication that is affected by the cultural and relational settings in which it occurs. Taking a dyadic perspective of acculturation allows us to see how parent-adolescent acculturation is contextually situated. The current study aims to explore whether the joint acculturation status of parent-adolescent dyads may be one of the precursors that affects objective and subjective experiences of adolescent language brokering. Using data from a two-wave longitudinal study of Mexican American adolescent language brokering families (N = 604 at Wave 1; N = 483 at Wave 2; M [subscript wave1.age] = 12,91; 54.3% female), I conducted latent profile analyses and found four mother-adolescent acculturation profiles and three father-adolescent profiles: adolescent integrated–mother separated, adolescent moderately assimilated–mother moderately separated, adolescent moderately integrated–mother moderately separated, and adolescent moderately integrated–mother separated; adolescent integrated–father moderately separated, adolescent moderately assimilated–father moderately separated, and adolescent moderately integrated–father moderately separated. The adolescent integrated–parent (moderately) separated profiles emerged as the most adaptive, as they related to more positive language brokering experiences compared with other profiles.