Disadvantaged Position of Adolescents with Immigrant Background? Intersecting Impacts of Generational Status, Gender, Ancestry and Parenting on Anxiety and School Grades

Family is an important context for immigrant adolescents’ development and adjustment. Close family relations and high aspirations have been seen as important factors behind the so called immigrant paradox, i.e., that immigrant adolescents are often healthier and gain better grades at school than their native peers when adolescents’ socio-economic background is acknowledged. On the other hand, immigrant adolescents and their families face difficulties in a new country due to various aspects, such as language barries, low levels of parental employment, and racialization.

Although the important role of supportive parenting in adolescents’ psychological well-being and school attainment is often emphasized, intersectional analyses on how adolescents’ social categories influence simultaneously to these interrelations, are scarce. In this study, I examine how parenting affects adolescents’ levels of anxiety and school grades in Finland, when adolescents’ intersectional position (concerning generational status, gender, and ancestry) and family context (i.e., parents’ education, employment status, and single parent households) are acknowledged.

The analysis bases on the nationally representative School Health Promotion data (N=91819). The School Health Promotion study is carried out every second year in Finland, and involves pupils filling in the survey anonymously under the supervision of a teacher. Respondents include pupils in their 8th and 9th year of comprehensive school (aged 13 to 18). The study shows how the buffering effect of parenting is quite similar for adolescents’ regardless of their intersectional position and family background in the cases of good parenting. However, poor parenting affects differently on anxiety and school grades in different groups.