Maternal Involvement in Education, Bicultural Acceptance, and School Adjustment: An Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling Study among Adolescents from Multicultural Families

Abstract

This study examined the associations between maternal involvement in education and bicultural acceptance and school adjustment during the first year of middle school among adolescents from Korean multicultural families as well as the reciprocal relationships between bicultural acceptance and school adjustment during the three years of middle school. The present study used three-wave longitudinal data of 1185 dyads of adolescents (50.8% girls; mean age = 12.96 ± 0.35 years at the first wave) and their immigrant mothers (mean age = 43.54 ± 5.19 years at the first wave), who participated in the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study. An autoregressive cross-lagged modeling analysis revealed that maternal involvement in education was significantly and positively associated with adolescents' bicultural acceptance and school adjustment in the first year of middle school. Individual levels of bicultural acceptance and school adjustment among adolescents remained moderately stable over the three years. Whereas the positive effects of school adjustment on bicultural acceptance were significant over time, the effects of bicultural acceptance on school adjustment were not. Finally, this study highlights the roles of intervention programs (e.g., parent and multicultural education) in facilitating maternal involvement in education and school adjustment as well as in increasing bicultural acceptance among minority youths.

Keywords: autoregressive cross-lagged modeling; bicultural acceptance; maternal involvement in education; multicultural families; school adjustment.

Figure 1

Research model. Note. a = equality constraints on all factor loadings of bicultural acceptance; b1, b2 = equality constraints on all factor loadings of school adjustment; A = constraints on all autoregressive coefficients of bicultural acceptance; B = constraints on all autoregressive coefficients of school adjustment; C = equality constraints on all cross-lagged coefficients of bicultural acceptance on school adjustment; D = equality constraints on all cross-lagged coefficients of school adjustment on bicultural acceptance; E = equality constraints on all covariances of residual errors in bicultural acceptance and school adjustment.

Figure 2

Longitudinal relationships among maternal involvement in education, adolescents’ school adjustment, and bicultural acceptance (N = 1185). Note: The numbers shown above the paths are standardized regression coefficients. *** p < 0.001.