Children of immigrants who do translations and who interpret for others using their heritage language and English are known
as language brokers. Although prior research suggests that children of immigrants’ perceptions of the language brokering experience
vary greatly—from feeling a sense of efficacy to feeling a sense of burden—what remains unanswered in the literature is identification
of the antecedents and processes that help to explain the varying psychological experience of language brokers. Using data
from a two-wave prospective longitudinal study of 256 Chinese American adolescents, the present study tested potential mechanisms
that may be responsible for adolescents’ perceptions of the language brokering experience as a sense or burden or sense of
efficacy. The results demonstrate that adolescents’ Chinese orientation sets in motion a family process that is linked to
variations in the perceptions of adolescents’ language brokering experience. Adolescents who are more Chinese oriented have
a stronger sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to perceive that they matter to their parents.
Adolescents’ perceived sense of mattering to parents, in turn, is associated positively with a sense efficacy, and negatively
with a sense of burden as language brokers. Those adolescents who are less Chinese oriented have a weaker sense of familial
obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to feel a sense of alienation from their parents. Adolescents’ sense of
perceived alienation from parents, in turn, is associated with a sense of burden as language brokers. Implications for developing
interventions for children who act as language brokers for their parents are discussed.
There is strong evidence that chronic, systemic inflammation hastens onset of the diseases of old age that ultimately lead to death. Importantly, several studies suggest that childhood adversity predicts chronic inflammation. Unfortunately, this research has been plagued by retrospective reports of childhood adversity, an absence of controls for adult stressors, and a failure to investigate various competing models of the link between childhood adversity and chronic inflammation. The present study was designed to address these limitations. Using 18 years of data collected from 413 African Americans (58% female) included in the Family and Community Health Study, hierarchical regression analyses provided support for a nuanced early life sensitivity explanation for the link between early adversity and adult chronic inflammation. Controlling for health risk behaviors and adult SES, late childhood (ages 10–12) adversity amplified the association between adult adversity (age 29) and chronic inflammation. This interaction operated in a domain-specific fashion. Harsh parenting amplified the relation between intimate partner hostility and inflammation, whereas early discrimination amplified the relation between adult discrimination and inflammation. These findings suggest that individuals may be primed to respond physiologically to adverse adult circumstances that resemble those experienced earlier in life.
Many surveys show that China’s political regime, under the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rules, enjoys a high level of public support. However, it is still uncertain whether China’s emerging middle class will become the “agent of democratization” as suggested by modernization theory. Using the data of Asian Barometer Survey conducted in China in 2011, this article demonstrates that the relationship between class identity and preference for liberal democracy in China may be inverted U-shaped. The Chinese middle class shows a higher preference to features of liberal democratic regimes than its counterparts of the lower- and upper-class. Members of the Chinese middle class also tend to regard democracy as the best form of government. Thus, the middle class has the potential to initiate democratization in China if the Chinese government fails to keep satisfying the middle class’ quest for economic well-being and protection of property rights. 相似文献