Examines the psychosocial adaptation of children of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Study participants were 5,264 middle school students, half United States-born children of immigrant parents and half foreign-born youth. Among the key findings were that: (1) parent-child conflict was the strongest predictor of lower self-esteem and higher depression; (2) parent-child conflict was exacerbated in situations where youth felt embarrassed by their parents or could not rely on them for help with school work; (3) having been discriminated against or anticipating discrimination elevated depressive symptoms; (4) only Black self-identity was positively associated with positive self-esteem; and (5) the Vietnamese and Filipinos were the only nationalities significantly associated with lower self-esteem, indicating problems in psychosocial adaptation for both parents and children in these groups. The data reveal that children took different and sometimes multiple paths to arrive at ethnic self-identification and resolve that identity with participation in American culture: for example, girls were more likely to choose additive or hyphenated identities, children who experienced being discriminated against were less likely to identify as American, and children who felt embarrassed by their parents were significantly more likely to identify as un-hyphenated Americans.
