Objective: Interdependence with family is considered a core element of collectivistic cultures, and it is routinely endorsed by people of ethnic/racial minority backgrounds in the United States. In contrast, a preference for independence from family is characteristic of individualistic cultures, and of European Americans, who are considered prototypical of cultural individualism. Scholars have also theorized that socioeconomic factors play a role in shaping these patterns. We hypothesized and tested the possibility of a more nuanced and interactive pattern. Drawing from long-standing research on U.S. ethnic–minority cultures and recent research on social class, we expected that lower income would be least associated with family interdependence in foreign-born Latino/a Americans and most strongly associated with higher family interdependence in European Americans.
Method and Results: In a prospective community study of a diverse sample of U.S. adults (N = 2,466), income interacted with ethnic/racial group to predict interdependence with family. In line with our predictions, income was not associated with family interdependence for foreign-born Latino/a Americans or African Americans, but lower income was significantly associated with higher interdependence with family in European Americans and, to a lesser extent, in U.S.-born Latino/a Americans.
Conclusions: These findings provide novel evidence for the relevance of both ethnicity/race and social class—two aspects of culture—for family interdependence. They highlight the centrality of interdependence with family among foreign-born Latino/a Americans while showing that European Americans, a group considered most representative of cultural individualism, can also highly value interdependence with family. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Impact Statement:
Family is universally important, but we found that ethnicity/race and income, which are aspects of one’s cultural context, were linked to how people in the United States think family relationships should be. Foreign-born Latino/a Americans, African Americans, lower income European Americans, and lower income U.S.-born Latino/a Americans reported that family members should be close and mutually obligated to one another and that people should include extended family in important decisions. These results show that cultural context shapes how people think family relationships should be. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Hooker, Emily D., Karina Corona, Christine M. Guardino, Christine Dunkel Schetter, and Belinda Campos. What Predicts Interdependence With Family? The Relative Contributions of Ethnicity/Race and Social Class. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology (2023) Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000593

Christine Guardino is a professor of Psychology at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit APA PsycNet's Website. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-76849-001

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