Associations between neighborhood risk and protective factors and parenting styles in Chinese American immigrant families.

Abstract

Despite the rapid increase of the Chinese immigrant population in the United States, there is limited knowledge on how neighborhood context shapes parenting practices in Chinese immigrant families. Using data from a socioeconomically diverse sample of 239 Chinese American children (aged 7-10 years, 51.9% boys) in immigrant families, the present study examined the unique associations between neighborhood risk and protective factors and parenting styles in Chinese American families. Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, coethnic concentration, and ethnic diversity were assessed using the 2010 census tract-level data. Parents rated neighborhood criminal events and reciprocal exchange, and parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and intrusive parenting) were rated by parents and children. Path analyses showed that controlling for covariates, neighborhood reciprocal exchange was positively associated with parent-rated authoritative parenting and negatively associated with child-rated authoritarian and intrusive parenting. In contrast, neighborhood Asian concentration was positively associated with child-reported authoritarian and intrusive parenting. Neighborhood criminal events were positively associated with parent-reported intrusive parenting. The findings suggest that risk and protective factors coexist in neighborhoods and have differential implications for parenting practices in Chinese immigrant families. The results also highlighted parent-child differences in perceptions of parenting styles in immigrant families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).