Abstract
Among Latinx families in the United States, experiences of ethnic-racial discrimination frequently predict elevated anxiety symptoms. In response to these experiences, Latinx caregivers employ a variety of ethnic-racial socialization strategies to help their children understand and practice responding to discriminatory treatment. Whether specific socialization strategies are more protective for mental health than others remains unclear. The current study aimed to address this gap through a latent profile analysis of caregiver ethnic-racial socialization, testing potential buffering effects of profile membership on the association between caregiver experiences of ethnic-racial discrimination and both child and caregiver anxiety symptoms in a sample of Latinx families. The primary caregivers of 158 predominantly Mexican-identifying Latina girls (M
age = 10.71, SD = 1.68) reported their ethnic-racial discrimination experiences and ethnic-racial socialization practices, in addition to their own and their daughters’ anxiety symptoms. Latent profile analyses tested two through six-profile solutions of caregiver ethnic-racial socialization strategy use, from which a single dominating profile of ethnic-racial socialization emerged. Post hoc exploratory analyses independently testing the protective effect of each strategy revealed that educating children about issues related to immigration buffered the link between ethnic-racial discrimination and child anxiety symptoms, and normalizing discriminatory experiences buffered the link between ethnic-racial discrimination and caregiver anxiety symptoms. Our findings suggest that the current sample of caregivers utilizes relatively homogeneous patterns of ethnic-racial socialization strategies and that specific strategies may be particularly valuable in protecting against the deleterious effects of ethnic-racial discrimination on the mental health of Latinx families.