Mother-daughter conflict and adjustment in Mexican-origin families: Exploring the role of family and sociocultural context

This study examined the role of mother-daughter conflict in both mothers' and daughters' adjustment. Drawing from ecologically oriented and person-environment fit models, the authors investigated how the family context, as defined by the transition to adolescent motherhood, and the sociocultural context, as measured by mother-daughter discrepancies in cultural orientations, shaped the associations between conflict and adjustment in Mexican-origin families. Overall, conflict was positively related to mothers' and adolescents' depressive symptoms and adolescents' risky behaviors. This relation was strongest when daughters were more Mexican-oriented than their mothers, and weakest when mothers were more Mexican-oriented than their daughters.