Diversity within: a parenting measure for immigrant Mexican American mothers

Abstract

Using cultural change and social information processing (SIP) as frameworks, the present study constructed a self-report parenting instrument for use with immigrant Mexican American mothers of children ages 6-10. The 14-item measure was based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with immigrant Mexican mothers, was refined by a focus group of mothers from a similar generation and cultural background, and consisted of items that pertained to one of three general parenting constructs: Warmth, Monitoring, and Discipline. Using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and respecification procedures, the three models were found to be a good fit with the data. Subscales consisted of moderate levels of internal consistency and predicted several children's behaviors. Future research should continue to focus on constructing culturally-sensitive parenting measures in order to further knowledge on Latino parent-child relation.