Understanding Mexican-Origin Families: Dr. Su Yeong Kim on the Impact of Discrimination and Family Support on Well-Being

 Dr. Su Yeong Kim and colleagues examine how experiences of discrimination and practices of ethnoracial socialization affect mental health in Mexican-origin adolescents and their parents.

Every day, many families of Mexican origin in the U.S. face not only economic hardship but also the persistent challenges of racial–ethnic discrimination. These strains do more than simply weigh on individuals; they ripple across family members, leaving impacts that can last for years and shape entire family systems.

But how do daily experiences of discrimination influence mental health? And how might the ways parents talk with their children about race and coping serve either as a buffer or, unexpectedly, as a source of further stress?

A new, in-depth study led by Jun Wang and Dr. Su Yeong Kim, with colleagues Jinjin Yan, Xin Li, and Yishan Shen, offers fresh insights into the transactional nature of discrimination, depression, and ethnoracial socialization in Mexican-origin families experiencing economic disadvantage.

This post is based on the peer-reviewed article:

“Transactional Experiences of Discrimination, Depressive Symptoms, and Ethnoracial Socialization in Mexican-Origin Families” by Jun Wang, Jinjin Yan, Xin Li, Yishan Shen, and Su Yeong Kim, published in Developmental Psychology (2025).

Moving Beyond the Individual: Discrimination as a Family Affair

In their longitudinal study of over 600 families, including mothers, fathers, and adolescent children, the research team explored not just how discrimination impacts one person, but how these effects reverberate across family members over time.

Their findings highlight two key ideas:

  1. Discrimination’s Impact Is Both Personal and Shared
    The direct link between discrimination and increased depressive symptoms was evident for mothers, fathers, and youth, confirming years of research that discrimination is a consistent risk factor for mental health struggles in Latinx communities. Importantly, these associations were not confined to single time points. For mothers and adolescents, experiences of discrimination predicted higher depressive symptoms years later, underscoring the lingering effects of discrimination in everyday life.

  2. The Family Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts
    The study revealed that one family member’s experience can affect another. For example, a mother’s experience of discrimination predicted greater depressive symptoms in fathers later on, an effect that goes beyond individual coping and speaks to the deep interconnectedness characteristic of Mexican-origin families.

Yet, the study also found that in some cases, higher discrimination reported by parents was associated with lower depressive symptoms in adolescents at later waves: a surprising, counterintuitive pattern that invites further investigation: might some families, under certain circumstances, turn adversity into resilience?

Ethnoracial Socialization: When Family Support Helps and When It Hurts

Central to the research is the role of ethnoracial socialization: the ways parents prepare their children to face a racialized society through messages and guidance around culture, prejudice, and coping.

The study identified three main types of parental ethnoracial socialization, each playing a distinct role:

  • Cultural Socialization: Teaching children about their heritage and fostering cultural pride.

  • Bias Awareness Socialization: Alerting children to the reality that they may be treated unfairly.

  • Bias Coping Socialization: Equipping children with strategies to handle discriminatory encounters.

What did the researchers discover?

  • Cultural Socialization generally supported positive development, echoing previous findings that cultural pride and knowledge help fortify youth against discrimination.

  • Bias Coping Socialization showed potential benefits. When parents taught children practical coping strategies, this sometimes coincided with lower depressive symptoms, especially for parents themselves.

  • Bias Awareness Socialization, however, was a double-edged sword:

  • For mothers, simply informing children about the likelihood of facing bias, without equipping them with coping tools, predicted higher depressive symptoms over time.

  • This suggests that while awareness is important, without support and coping strategies, exposure to conversations about bias can add to stress, particularly for mothers.

Why This Research Matters Now

For practitioners, educators, and policymakers, these findings have clear implications:

  • See the Family as a System. Mental health supports should not only focus on individual youth, but also consider how discrimination and coping strategies play out across generations and family roles.

  • Support Personalized, Strengths-Based Coping. Programs that help parents move beyond raising awareness of bias to actively coaching children in problem-solving and resilience may buffer depressive symptoms for both youth and parents.

  • Honor Parental Strengths and Address Parental Vulnerabilities. Supporting parents, especially mothers, in processing their own discrimination experiences can also benefit the entire family’s mental health.

  • Go Beyond “One-Size-Fits-All” Approaches. The impact of family conversations around race varies by time, family role, and parenting style. Effective interventions must be culturally and contextually nuanced.

Centering Mexican-Origin Families’ Lived Realities

Mexican-origin families bring deep cultural strengths, tight intergenerational bonds, and collective resilience. But they also face chronic inequities that demand not just individual grit, but systemic change and nuanced, family-centered support.

It’s time to recognize discrimination as a family and community issue, and to design supports that honor the strengths and needs of all family members as they navigate, counter, and transform the challenges of a racialized society.


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