The impact of acculturation in Mexican American families on the quality of adult grandchild-grandparent relationships

We hypothesize that acculturation of young adult Mexican American grandchildren disrupts their relationships with more culturally traditional grandparents. To test our hypotheses, we use the Study of Three-Generation Mexican American Families, a longitudinal survey of Mexican American adults in linked generations from 375 family lineages. Regression analysis performed on 353 grandchild-grandparent dyads reveals that when adult grandchildren are more acculturated than their grandparents, they report less frequent interaction with them at baseline and declines in affection toward them over time. These patterns are not found when grandparents report their relations with grandchildren. These results provide evidence that differential rates of acculturation across generations in Mexican American families socially and affectually distance grandchildren from their grandparents but not grandparents from their grandchildren. Key Words: acculturation, grandchildren, grandparents, intergenerational, Mexican Americans, solidarity. Successive waves of ethnic groups arriving in the United States over the last century have adapted to the values and behaviors of the dominant culture. In a particular cohort of immigrant families, this process of acculturation typically intensifies as succeeding generations are increasingly exposed to and influenced by mainstream American culture. Indeed, behavior patterns of Mexican Americans are more likely to resemble those of non-Hispanic Whites the longer their generational tenure in the U.S. These behaviors include divorce (Bean, Berg, & Vanhook, 1996), fertility (Stephen & Bean, 1992), alcohol use (Gilbert, 1987), smoking (Marin, Marin, Otero-Sabogal, Sabogal, & PerezStable, 1989), and use of preventive health care (Ruiz, Marks, & Richardson, 1992). Although some have argued that Mexican Americans are the immigrant group that has most successfully retained their culture and language in the U.S. (Holmes & Holmes, 1995), there are fears that when younger Hispanics achieve economic success, they are also more likely to adopt the values of the mainstream culture that clash with the more traditional values of older generations. It is generally assumed that acculturation has the potential to disrupt intergenerational relations in the Mexican American family (Grebler, Moore, & Guzman 1970; Markides & Black, 1996; Pe*alosa, 1967), but this phenomenon has received little attention in the empirical literature. In this article we use data from three generations of Mexican American families to test the proposition that the weakening of traditional culture in successive generations is accompanied by widening emotional and social distance between grandparents and their adult grandchildren. The strength of intergenerational relations within Hispanic families is well documented. Studies consistently show stronger levels of familial obligation, more frequent social interaction, higher volume of support exchange, and greater likelihood of shared living arrangements with elders in Hispanic families than in Anglo families (Holmes & Holmes, 1995; Lubben & Becerra, 1983; Maldonado, 1979; Markides, Martin, & Gomez, 1983; Sotomayor & Randolph, 1988). Hispanic elders also occupy important cultural roles within the family by reinforcing traditional values in younger generations and by staving off the influence of the dominant culture. Indeed, grandparents in Mexican American families have been considered conduits though which common values, beliefs, language, and customs of the culture are communicated to children and grandchildren (Maldonado, 1979). The term "acculturation" has been used to describe the process by which immigrant groups assimilate into a dominant culture. Implicit in most definitions is that the minority ethnic group will incrementally adopt the ways of the majority culture and irreversibly will become more and more like it. …