How do mothers manage their privacy with adolescents? Exploring mother–adolescent communication in Mexican immigrant families

People inevitably disclose and share private information while engaging in communication with others. Managing one’s privacy is not an easy task and involves complicated decision-making processes. Communication privacy management (CPM) theory explicates a complex nature of revealing private information, creating co-ownership, rules and regulation, and privacy violations and consequences (Petronio, 2002, 2010, 2013). To date, CPM theory has been widely applied to various contexts including family communication (Afifi, 2003; Afifi, McManus, Hutchinson, & Baker, 2007; Serewicz & Canary, 2008), health communication (Bute, Brann, & Hernandez, 2019; Bute, Petronio, & Torke, 2017; Petronio & Sargent, 2011), and social media (Child & Agyeman-Budu, 2010; Child, Haridakis, & Petronio, 2012; Child & Westermann, 2013). While a majority of past studies have focused on the main stream culture and phenomena in the U.S., less attention has been given to underrepresented minorities such as immigrants.

The rapidly growing population of immigrant families in the U.S. face their own, unique set of challenges, because they often came from countries whose primary language is not English and do not share U.S. norms for communication and relationships (Shen, Kim, Wang, & Chao, 2014; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Qin-Hilliard, 2005). Immigrant children tend to become bilingual faster than their parents (Kam & Lazarevic, 2014a, 2014b). Attending school and establishing relationships in a host country propels the need to learn the country’s language. Thus, children are often the ablest family member to help other members with overcoming language barriers. While becoming skilled in the host language, Mexican immigrant children, for example, can find themselves in uneasy situations within their family structure. Given the influx of Latinos into the U.S. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013), these children from immigrant families are especially vulnerable to a range of needs their parents depend on. One of the trickier situations concerns possible role reversals where the children not only serves as a language interpreter for the parents, but also may find themselves in circumstances where they provide social and psychological support because the parent, primarily the mother, no longer has access to adult family members for help (Kam, Basinger, & Guntzviller, 2017; Orellana, 2003).

Emotional parentification is a concept that refers to the process by which children find themselves in situations where they are serving in an adult capacity and taking on adult responsibilities within their family (Chase, 1999). Emotional parentification takes place when there is a role reversal between parent and child, which requires the child to be responsible for providing emotional support, problem-solving, and decision-making for their parents (Kam, 2011; Shin & Hecht, 2013). The complications in these cases often mean that children and parents are ensnared in trying to determine privacy management tools to deal with disclosures that may be difficult for the child to understand. In many cases, mothers tend to be most in need because they no longer have relatives to talk to, feel more isolated, yet likely have more time with their children than fathers (García, Ramírez, & Jariego, 2002; Vega, Kolody, Valle, & Weir, 1991).

The present study seeks to gain a better understanding of how emotional parentification emerges and interfaces with privacy issues from Mexican immigrant mothers’ perspective. Guided by CPM theory, the current study aims to explore how Mexican mothers manage their private information with their adolescent children. Considering that a majority of Latino immigrants (63%) originally came from Mexico (Ennis, Rois-Vargas, & Albert, 2011), yet the parentification research has mainly focused on families of European and African American backgrounds (McMahon & Luthar, 2007; Mickelson & Demmings, 2009), Mexican immigrant families are chosen for this formative research.

Parentification and family communication in immigrant families

Family scholars have traditionally focused on parentifiction in relation to dysfunctional families such as parents with depression, alcoholism, chronic illness, and disability (Champion, Jaser, Reeslund, Simmons, & Potts, 2009; Hooper, Doehler, Jankowski, & Tomek, 2012; Stein, Rotheram-Borus, & Lester, 2007). Recent studies have extended the context of parentificaition to army families (Harrison, Albanese, & Berman, 2014; Milburn & Lightfoot, 2013) and immigrant families (Kuperminc, Wilkins, Jurkovic, & Perilla, 2013; Oznobishin & Kurman, 2016). To date, a majority of previous research have investigated the effects of parentification on the development of adolescent children who are given premature responsibility for their parents and other family members. Consequently, empirical studies reveal that parentification is detrimental for adolescent children’s psychological and behavioral health outcomes (Champion et al., 2009; Kuperminc et al., 2013; Peris, Goeke-Morey, Cummings, & Emery, 2008). Other scholars, however, counter-argue the claim and point out the evidence that parentification may not necessarily cause harmful consequences, but lead to positive developmental outcomes for adolescent children (Shen et al., 2014; Shin & Hecht, 2013; Telzer & Fuligni, 2009). While most efforts have been predominantly made to test a causal relationship between parentificantion and its effects, less attention is given to understand the communicative processes of parentification in immigrant families.

In the context of immigrant families, culture plays a key role to delve into interaction and communication between immigrant parents and parentified children (Jurkovic et al., 2004; Love & Buriel, 2007; Shin & Hecht, 2013). Family values and practices vary depending on culture of family origin and different cultural perspectives should be taken into account when conducting research on immigrant families (Hooper, 2007; Shen et al., 2014). Immigrant families are a unique entity that is substantively different from other types of family context due to multifaceted, lifelong changes in their environmental, social, and cultural aspects (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2005). Immigrant Latino parents, for example, tend to rely on their children to adjust to the new culture due to numerous challenges, including families’ socioeconomic position, racial discrimination, language barriers, neighborhood factors, and a lack of community resources during the process of settlement in the U.S. (Kam, 2011; Orellana, 2003; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2005). The notion of familismo serves as one of the most important core cultural value that emphasize a strong sense of loyalty and solidarity within family (Gloria & Peregoy, 1996; Marin & Marin, 1991). Due to their cultural value highlighting family closeness, it is plausible to assume that such family value may reinforce parents’ reliance on children.

Recent research suggests that the process of enculturation has the potential to be problematic for the health and well-being of Latino immigrant adolescents (Kam, Guntzviller, & Pines, 2017; Kam & Lazarevic, 2014b). In particular, adolescent children tend to be interpreters for their parents both in terms of the language and cultural expectations and as a result, parents often rely on their children to navigate for their parents (Guntzviller, Jensen, & Carreno, 2017; Kam, Basinger, et al., 2017; Kam & Lazarevic, 2014a). In other words, children of immigrants prematurely need to take on adult responsibilities, playing adult roles in their family. For instance, parents demand their adolescent children to provide emotional support to parents, solve family problems, and make decisions to meet family and parental needs (Kam, 2011; Shin & Hecht, 2013). As a consequence, adolescent children are challenged to make psychological and emotional efforts beyond typical expectations for their age.

Most of parentification research, to date, has been conducted from the perspective of family counseling psychology and therapy (Champion et al., 2009; Hooper et al., 2012; Kuperminc et al., 2013) while very few communication studies investigated language brokering as a type of parentification (Guntzviller et al., 2017; Kam, Basinger, et al., 2017; Kam, Guntzviller, et al., 2017). Yet, previous findings indicate that parent–adolescent communication plays a key role during the process of emotional parentification (Kuperminc, Jurkovic, & Casey, 2009; Shin & Hecht, 2013; Telzer & Fuligni, 2009), less is known about how parents, particularly Mexican immigrant mothers, manage their private information with their children during the process of emotional parentification. It turns to discuss the review of CPM theory and application to the context of immigrant families.

CPM and immigrant families

CPM theory argues that culture plays a role in the way people not only construct privacy rules that manage information, but also influences the way that those rules are utilized (Durham, 2008; Mohamed, 2010). In addition, families develop orientations toward how privacy is managed among their members (Petronio, 2004, 2010). While these privacy regulation practices guide many choices that members make, there are situations where the expectations that are part of everyday privacy management within families can change dependent on incidents or circumstances that trigger the need for recalibrating privacy management. When parents and children engage in role reversal, the upside down relationship creates challenges for both parent and child. For example, when an immigrant parent who is not fluent in English is in need of medical care, bilingual children often are asked to take over the role of language broker (Guntzviller et al., 2017).

While this role reversal often seems to be the best option between immigrant parents and their children, in reality, parents put their children in a position of a “reluctant confidant” (see Petronio, 2002, p. 108) which may be a significant burden for a younger child to navigate. A reluctant confidant refers to a person who becomes an unintended, involuntary recipient of private information (Petronio, 2002). Past studies that applied CPM theory uncovered cases where nurses enacted a role of a reluctant confidant while providing medical health care to their patients (Petronio & Sargent, 2011) and families served as a reluctant confidant to other family members (Petronio & Jones, 2006; Petronio, Jones, & Morr, 2003). In the context of immigrant families, children play a role of a reluctant confidant when they are unwillingly, unexpectedly given private information from their parents’ disclosure. Furthermore, CPM theory explicates that a “deliberate confidant” role (see Petronio, 2002, p. 108) can be activated when a recipient of private information actively engages in soliciting information from a person who owns private information. Children of immigrants who take a deliberate confidant role are more inclined to solicit private information from their parents.

Doing so compromises both parental privacy boundaries, those of the child, as well as the “family privacy orientation” (see Petronio, 2002, p. 156) that have been established between parent and child leading to a number of ways privacy become turbulence. According to CPM theory, family privacy orientation is formed and practiced based on rules associated with the permeability of privacy management boundaries (e.g., who gets what information and how much of information can be shared). For example, newly married couples undergo privacy rule negotiation because they hold different expectations of family privacy orientation prior to marriage. By doing so, couples reestablish a new set of rules with each other (Serewicz & Canary, 2008). In addition, motivation for revealing and concealing in CPM theory is identified in family communication (Afifi et al., 2007; Durham, 2008), interpersonal relationships (Thompson, Petronio, & Braithwaite, 2012) as well as social media (Child et al., 2012; Child & Westermann, 2013). CPM theory has been widely used to explore how individuals coordinate privacy orientation and negotiate privacy rules in various communicative contexts, yet little is known about how immigrant families manage private information with other family members.

To better understand communication processes of immigrant families, the present study proposes to identify privacy management issues that take place with Mexican immigrant mothers and their adolescent children. Specifically, this study focuses on Mexican immigrant mothers’ perspective on their privacy management with adolescent children. Thus, the following research question is posited.

RQ1: How do Mexican immigrant mothers manage their private information with adolescent children?

Methods

Recruitment

Due to the nature of the study purpose, Mexican immigrant mothers who were a first generation of the immigrant families and their children with the age ranged from 12 years to 18 years were recruited for this study. After the approval of the Institutional Review Board for the procedure and protocol of the present study, recruitment flyers were distributed to local community organizations involved with Mexican-heritage immigrant families and local grocery stores. A snowball sampling technique (Lindlof & Taylor, 2012) was also utilized by encouraging the interviewees to share the information about the interview participation with friends, coworkers, and neighbors who met the requirement for the recruitment.

Data collection

This study was derived from the perspective of ethnomethodology (EM). “EM seeks to understand how the taken-for-granted character of everyday life is actually accomplished…The question that inspires most EM research is, how do they do it?” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2012, p. 37). Specifically, the present study fell into a category of “the CPM Qualitative Methodology” (Petronio, 2013, p. 12). As part of the qualitative research, 16 dyads of mothers and adolescent children (N = 32) were recruited for 1-hr individual interview. To address the research question, mothers’ interviews (N = 16) were used for the current study.

For the individual interviews, the participants were given the choice of a location they preferred either in a private conference room on the campus or at the participants’ house. Overall, the participants preferred to meet with the interviewer at their homes. The participating mothers and adolescents were offered to choose their language preference for their interviews. All of the mothers chose Spanish, whereas all of the adolescents chose English for audio-recorded interviews with a digital recording device. All of the interviews were conducted by a trained graduate research assistant fluent in English and Spanish. The trained interviewer herself was a child of an immigrant family from Peru.

At the beginning of the interview, the interviewees were given a written consent form that describes goals and objectives of the proposed study. The interviewer also verbally explained the consent form to help the participants understand the purpose of the research. Next, the interviewees were asked to complete a brief demographic questionnaire including age, occupation, years in the U.S. since immigration.

After the participants’ completion of the consent form and demographic questionnaire, the interviewer conducted a semi-structured in-depth interview with the participants. The interviewer questioned the participants according to the interview protocol and facilitated discussion. Specifically, the participating mothers were instructed to talk about the child who was also recruited for the research. The interview protocol included questions to identify communicative contexts of disclosure and concealment between mother and adolescent. Participants were also asked to provide explanations of motivational factors to reveal their private information and/or reasons to hide certain information from each other. However, the semi-structured interview allowed the interviewer the flexibility to delve into participants’ particular narratives rather than following a strict interview protocol. At the end of the individual interviews, the compensation was given to the participating mothers (US$50) and adolescents (US$20). Mothers’ interviews ranged from 23 min to 65 min and adolescents’ interviews lasted from 9 min to 58 min. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. For the Spanish-speaking interviews, a professional Spanish translator was hired to translate and transcribe the interviews in English and the interviewer checked the transcripts for the accuracy against the original interview recordings. All identifying information about the participants was removed from the transcripts and names were replaced by pseudonyms.

The mean age of participating mothers was 39 years (ranged from 30 years to 51 years, SD = 5.77) and the average residency in the U.S. was 14 years (ranged from 6 years to 23 years, SD = 4.60). Ten mothers self-reported as housewives and six mothers were full-time employees. The mean age of their adolescent children was 14 years (ranged from 12 years to 18 years, SD = 1.84) and identified as 13 daughters and 3 sons. Ten adolescents were born in the U.S. and six adolescents were brought to the U.S. when they were 5-year-old (ranged from 1 years to 10 years, SD = 3.04).

Data analysis

Interview data were analyzed using an iterative and systematic process (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Based on an inductive analytic strategy (Thomas, 2006), the author conducted two phases of data analysis using NVivo qualitative data analysis software (QSR International Pty Ltd., Version 10) (Richards, 2005). During the preliminary phase, the researcher read 16 transcripts of mothers’ individual interviews, which were approximately 330 single space pages long to gain a holistic view of data and identified emergent concepts related to CPM between mother and adolescent as the transcripts were open-coded. The open-coding is an analytic process when a researcher performs coding without having clear ideas of what final categories will be like (Lindlof & Taylor, 2012). The author categorized various communicative contexts (e.g., health issue, family problem, work conflict, financial hardship) throughout the open-coding and this process continued until it reached to saturation, at which point no new findings were gained (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Next, during the substantive phase, the author identified major themes, guided by CPM theory. The themes were refined to specify mothers’ perspective of adolescent children’s role-taking when they disclosed private information and further explore mothers’ perspective of confidant privacy rule strategies used by adolescent children. After the author’s thematic analysis, a coder who is an expert of CPM theory was invited to examine the transcripts and conducted the substantive phase of data analysis independently. Next, the author and coder had a series of discussion to revisit the entire themes to reach the consensus for the final reports, which took approximately 20 hr of research meetings in total.

Results

Based on 16 semi-structured individual interviews with Mexican immigrant mothers, the present study explores how mothers managed private information with adolescent children during the process of emotional parentification. Guided by CPM theory, immerging themes capture the way adolescent children are called to serve as a recipient of private information disclosed by a parent when parents are in need of having someone to talk to about situations causing them emotional strain. For these mothers immigrated to the U.S. from their homeland of Mexico, the move created a loss of emotional support they received from their family members. As a consequence, these mothers tended to turn to their children when they needed support both implicitly and explicitly.

From mothers’ perspective, the current study uncovers mothers’ accounts of situations where their adolescent children enacted role reversals and took on the role of confidant and co-owner of their private information. The themes highlight the mothers’ observation of privacy rules that were triggered by the adolescent children’s reaction to their mothers’ disclosures. These three themes include (1) mothers’ unsolicited disclosures that triggered adolescent children to adopt a reluctant confidant role; (2) adolescent children soliciting information that activated themselves to assume a deliberate confidant role; and (3) three types of confidant privacy rule strategies adolescent children enacted with their mothers.

First theme: Adolescent children in reluctant confidant role

Unsolicited disclosure often surprises recipients and puts them into an uncomfortable situation (Petronio, 2002). Adolescent children who were unexpectedly exposed to their parents’ disclosure may have been surprised; however, they also registered a sense of obligation to their parents (Jurkovic et al., 2004). That sense of obligation, in these cases, presents as the need to help their mothers be able to cope with the difficulties they are facing. Children often become worried or scared when their parents are facing issues that make them feel vulnerable. In this study, one of the ways these adolescent children enact the obligation to help is by providing consoling responses to their parents’ concerns.

The adolescent children’s consoling response focused on the mothers’ need to disclose their worries and concerns but did not have other adults to listen. These mothers missed their family members, especially their adult relatives who had provided support and companionship. They felt unsettled living in the U.S. because they did not have a ready source of close friends or family members they could depend on to share both happy and sad times as well as the ability to help them cope with their new surroundings.

Because the adjustments were often difficult, these mothers turned to their adolescent children to express their feelings of uncertainty and difficulty adjusting to the demands of a new home. These were typically unsolicited disclosures that likely encumbered the adolescent children to serve as co-owners of the information and take on the responsibility of comforting their parent. However, it is likely that the mothers did not perceive the disclosures as encumbering their children. For example, Maria (15 years in the U.S. with a 13-year-old daughter) described how she relied on her adolescent daughter to air the concerns she had about her father who was ill and living so far away in Mexico.

A while back my dad got sick and it was very serious…my daughter found me crying because…I worry a lot and when you are away from your family you think a lot of things. You don’t know what is going to happen because my dad got really sick and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to see him again, do you understand? I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t want to but she knows how I am but when she sees me [crying] she asks me.

In circumstances like this example, mothers in this study did not overtly try to burden their children. Yet, many immigrant parents lead an isolated life in terms of building relationships with other adults in ways that they can feel comfortable talking about feeling of isolation, worry, and vulnerability. In these situations, the parents necessarily turned to their children with disclosures because the information is perceived as “safe” within the family’s privacy boundary and allowing the mothers the ability to temper their emotional reactions. The mother’s feeling of uncertainty contributed to her sense of emotional vulnerability. The daughter in the abovementioned response caught the mother in an emotionally exposed state that served as the trigger for making this particular disclosure to the daughter.

Most of mothers in this study expressed that they shared concerns about financial hardship with their adolescent children. While communicating with adolescent children, mothers discussed the need to save money for family so that they can pay for monthly bills, buy a house, pay for college, or go on vacation in the future. For example, Juana (17 years in the U.S. with a 16-year-old daughter) explained to her children why they had to live under a tight budget.

They [my children] know about money since we don’t have plenty and they wish for things because there is materialism. They want many things but we [my husband and I] tell them we only have enough for our needs…I tell them what we have and what we are going to do with it…I think they see I’m stressed.

As described in the example, mothers in this study tended to speak frankly about financial hardship when their adolescent children asked them to buy things that they wanted. The difficult financial condition triggered mothers’ disclosure why they were not able to fulfill their adolescent children’s needs. In addition, Margarita (16 years in the U.S. with a 15-year-old daughter) shared a story when she accidently revealed the cause of the financial issues; that is, due to overwhelmingly expensive medical bills for one of her other children.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s impossible to hide. As I said, we had the problem with

[one of] my child[ren]; he had to be hospitalized for almost a month…I’m grateful he’s fine but at that time there were some desperate moments when probably my daughter wanted to do something and the answer was that there was no money…[Daughter asked] “Why there isn’t any money?” [Mother answered] “You have to understand that your brother was sick”…As I said, sometimes you want to hide it but due to the frustration or because of what’s happening, you end up revealing it.

As demonstrated earlier, adolescent children were unexpectedly given private information by their mothers, which placed them into a position of a reluctant confidant. Aforementioned examples explained that it was mothers’ decision to reveal unsolicited, private information. Other observations of mothers in this study identified cases in which adolescent children were more actively and explicitly soliciting information from their mothers’ disclosure. It now moves to the discussion of the second theme, a deliberate confidant role that adolescent children enacted when their mothers disclosed private information.

Second theme: Adolescent children in deliberate confidant role

In this study, there were several occasions when adolescent children actively initiated conversations encouraging their mothers’ disclosure. These incidents reflect the move from a reluctant confidant role to a more deliberate intent to know the mothers’ reasons for the emotions these adolescents witness. Some of these adolescents were good at sensing if their mothers looked distressed. They offered to provide emotional support to their mothers who worried about family sickness. For example, Maria (15 years in the U.S. with a 13-year-old daughter) recalled a moment when her daughter approached her and said, “Mom, you look very sad.” This mother then responded to her daughter, “We need to pray and ask God for help so your grandmother gets better.” Similarly, Elizabeth (9 years in the U.S. with a 12-year-old son) explained when her son tried to be understanding of her, she said:

My mother got sick in Mexico, I mean, that makes me feel stress because I can’t be by her side, I can’t take care of her as I want to, I can’t and I feel desperate…they [my children] are always there ready to support me…he [the adolescent son] wants to read my mind but he observes me, I put some music and I’m singing and I do that while I’m working, and then he says, “Mom, what is going on? What is going on with you? What are you thinking?” and I say to him, “Son, I miss my mother, I miss my father, I wish I could be there but they don’t want to leave the country, they don’t want to live here” and he says, “No, Mom, things are bad right there.”

Another example of adolescent children soliciting their mothers’ private information to provide support illustrates the way these adolescent children take on the role of adult rather than child. In addition, these children begin to “own” this information in ways that instigate feeling of responsibility for their mothers’ well-being. Veronica (21 years in the U.S. with a 12-year-old daughter) explains her conversation:

My father has a heart condition and I have told to my mother, they are in Mexico and sometimes my daughter sees me sad and she says, “What happened mom?” And I tell her, “Your grandfather is sick, he was hospitalized” and she says, “Oh, mom, don’t worry,” she hugs me and she always, like I say, we are…she knows everything about us…She knows everything, we don’t really hide anything from her and I thank her because she is always giving me a word of comfort, she tells me, “Don’t worry, let see what we can do.”

With relatively less social and emotional support available for immigrant mothers, these mothers began to heavily depend on their adolescent children to share their family concerns (García et al., 2002). Mothers’ reliance on adolescent children tended to reinforce the communicative action the adolescent children perform as a deliberate confidant. Advice and assurance from adolescent children helped relieve the mothers’ stress and made them feel better about conflicts. Perhaps unfortunately, doing so may have increased the dependence on their children to function as a support system. Alejandra (17 years in the U.S. with a 15-year-old son) talked about the conversation she had with her son, who actively solicited her private feelings. She explained:

[Son said] “Mother, you don’t have to keep silent, you have to talk to us”…I mean, it is impossible to hide things from them, telling them, [Mother said] “Everything is perfect”…[Son said] “I’m very glad that you are now like that and you changed, before you had a lot of problems with our father, you were really submissive, you let our father yell at you and you were quite, we could see that, even if we were younger, we could see but we couldn’t say anything, we just got off our heads and now things are different”. [Mother said] “When he yells I yell, I don’t let him treat me like that” and he says he really likes the way I am now, “I’m pretty proud of this mother that God gave me, I really do, and I will always be thankful to you.”

Similar cases were also found when adolescent children instigated their mothers’ disclosure to unpack the basis for conflict they were witnessing. For example, Martha (17 years in the U.S. with a 17-year-old son) shared a conversation with her son.

[Son said] “Mom, you are stressed about everything. Why are you stressing out?” I tell him, “Ah son,” I tell him, “I am stressed about your father”…[Son asked] “Why are you like that?” [Mother said] “Ah son, well, I don’t want to tell you” [Son said] “But I’m sorry. Tell me mom, tell me.” [Mother said] “Ah my son, well, okay, I’m going to tell you”…I tell him, “It’s that I don’t like how your father is and he doesn’t like how I am so we there are problems”…After a while, it passes…he [son] even tells me, “Now you aren’t fighting?”

The adolescent children mentioned by their mothers during mothers’ individual interviews appeared to have acquired an intense sensitivity toward recognizing when their mothers were in need of help. The ownership they take on results in active monitoring of their mothers’ moods and assessing their mothers’ needs. Now that this study identified two different confidant roles (i.e., a reluctant and deliberate confidant) that adolescent children enacted as the recipients of private information from mothers’ perspective, it turns to the discussion of the third theme that highlights the confidant privacy rule strategies that adolescent children used in reaction to their mothers’ disclosure.

Third theme: Confidant privacy rule strategies adolescent children used

This research also identifies three types of privacy rule strategies adolescent children enacted when mothers confided private information. Their adolescent children used: comforting, mediating, and protecting.

Comforting strategy

From mothers’ perspective, adolescent children often became a “friend figure” for their mothers when their mothers were going through difficult times. One of the most salient reactions of adolescent children as confidants was functioning as a comforter for their mothers. Some mothers specifically remembered the occasions when they found themselves emotionally comforted by their adolescent children. Gabriela (16 years in the U.S. with a 14-year-old daughter) explained how helpful her daughter was to her when she broke up with her boyfriend.

When my previous boyfriend was deported I was very sad during the time while he was in jail, before being deported, and she saw I was sad and she tried to comfort me saying, “Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine. Then, he will come back.” She provided emotional support.

Similarly, Alicia (6 years in the U.S. with a 15-year-old daughter) discussed her experience with comforting messages from her daughter as “She [my daughter] notices that it is emotionally affecting me, she tries to see in what way she can comfort me.” Overall, these responses indicate that mothers who received emotional support in the form of comforting from adolescent children tended to express gratitude to their children. They appreciated the fact that their children paid attention to them and offered ways to cope with challenging situations.

Mediating strategy

Mothers in this study also reflected moments where adolescent children interceded in their martial relationships. These mothers felt that their adolescent children were sensitive to their marital relationship attempting to identify the issues and solve problems for them as a mediator. Veronica (21 years in the U.S. with a 12-year-old daughter) pointed out:

I appreciate the fact that she [my daughter] has the confidence to express herself and feel comfortable about telling me that, if she would be another type of person, she would remain silent and she wouldn’t say, “Mom, my father shouldn’t speak to you like that, that’s not fine, and you shouldn’t speak in that way to him or to each other.” So I like that, I like that because we can share and we can handle the situation in a much easier way and we can fix it also, with my husband, with her with me also and we can say, you know what? Sometimes even giving her thanks for that, for that reprimand that she is giving to us…that is so surprising to me because I think, that’s the example that she is giving to us instead of us giving a good example to her.

Rosa (6 years in the U.S. with a 12-year-old daughter) also illustrated a similar story about her daughter who insisted her to talk about the conflict she had with her husband.

She [my daughter] has asked me “why my dad [and] you haven’t talked during the whole day?” [Mother said] “Because I’m mad with him.” [Daughter asked] “Why did you get mad with him?” [Mother said] “Daughter, those are adult stuff.” [Daughter said] “But tell me, for example.” [Mother said] “Well, he did this, he didn’t tell me he was going to do this. I got mad because he didn’t ask for my opinion.” [Daughter said] “But mom, forgive him, he’s good.”

In circumstances like these examples, these adolescent children adopted a consulting role with their mothers when marital conflict erupted and help their mothers to resolve the conflicts.

Protecting strategy

Moreover, mothers in this study recognized instances where their adolescent children worked to be on guard using a protection rule strategy to care for their mothers. For example, Teresa (13 years in the U.S. with a 14-year-old daughter) said:

They [my children] do ask a lot, a lot. And they are very perceptive. They are sensitive to anything. For example, if for some reason I’m upset with their father they’ll ask, “What did dad do now?” or “Why are you upset with dad?” or “Did you want to go and he didn’t take you?” They will ask me. They will notice what’s going on at home right away.

Mothers in this study also recalled moments when their adolescent children offered advice to deal with work conflict as well as making an important choice. For instance, Margarita (16 years in the U.S. with a 15-year-old daughter) described a situation when she deferred to her adolescent daughter’s decision on her job choice.

I did ask her advice when I had those two job opportunities. Maybe it was not a problem but—sometimes as a mother the more you earn the better, and I remember asking her, “What do you think I should do?”…It was a problem because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, but in that case I did get her involved because the decision was a difficult one. The other position was full time, I had benefits but she made me see that I would lose the nice things we have as a family. I think I can see the results of how we have educated them, in the sense of the importance that the family has.

In these cases, the adolescent children step in between the parents and work to safeguard the mother. These children tended to watch for signs of their mothers’ emotional distress. As these examples describe, mothers observed their adolescent children using specific types of confidant rule strategies which reflect these children’s efforts to take responsibility in monitoring and mediating their mothers’ needs. Shifting from being cared for by parents to caring for parents is likely a significant burden for the children (Chase, 1999). For example, Champion, Jaser, Reeslund, Simmons, and Potts (2009) revealed that adolescent children who provided emotional support to their mothers with a history of depression reported higher levels of anxiety and depression. This shift appears to make adolescent children more perceptive because they closely monitor their parents’ actions. Nevertheless, the adolescent children may be more likely to feel a considerable level of uncertainty even though they work to “normalize” their family relationships.

Discussion

First of all, the findings discovered that mothers in this study relied on their adolescent children for seeking emotional support and asking for advice on various issues. Mothers’ unsolicited disclosure triggered their adolescent children to become a reluctant confidant. As noted in the “Results” section, the mothers expressed their feelings of uncertainty and emotional vulnerability during their settlement in the U.S. and, as a result, tended to depend on their adolescent children to be reliable co-owners of the mothers’ private information. From mothers’ perspective, these children recognized that, although they were members of the family’s privacy boundary, by the mother confiding in them about emotional distress due to family health issues or financial hardship, an inner privacy cell was erected. As a consequence, some of the adolescent children were unexpectedly called on to take responsibility helping their mothers cope with their situation.

Moreover, mothers in this study reported that some of their adolescent children served as a deliberate confidant. These mothers perceived that their adolescent children intentionally sought disclosures from their mothers and encouraged them to reveal their troubles. Mothers’ observation of their adolescent children clearly demonstrated that these adolescent children assumed co-ownership of their mothers’ information and proactively provided advice and emotional support to their mothers. Adolescent children assumed a deliberate confidant role by actively monitoring their mothers’ moods and assessing their mothers’ needs.

In addition, this study specifically identified three types of confidant privacy rule strategies that adolescent children used in reaction to their mothers’ disclosure: that is, comforting, mediating, and protecting. From this research, it seems clear that the immigrant mothers were aware of the different ways their adolescent children coped to help their mothers in this time of need. Adolescent children often became a “friend figure” and emotionally cared for their mothers who shared “adult” personal concerns and worries with them. These mothers expressed gratitude toward their adolescent children for helping them in a time of need. Adolescent children also intervened on their parents’ relationships and attempted to solve problems as a mediator. At times, these children also provided a shield for the mothers, protecting them from problems caused by the fathers or an outside source.

Interestingly, it was found that some of the communicative contexts identified in this study were similar to the previous literature on mother to daughter disclosure after divorce (Koerner, Jacobs, & Raymond, 2000; Koerner, Wallace, Lehman, & Raymond, 2002). For example, mothers’ complaints and negative emotions toward their ex-husband as well as personal concerns associated with sad events were the common themes discovered in divorced families and immigrant families. Although the life experience of divorce and immigration is substantively different, parents who confront the challenges are opt to rely on their children and talk about difficulties.

The present study is the first research that qualitatively explored CPM between Mexican immigrant mother and adolescent children in the context of emotional parentification. Although past literature on immigrant families well documents the mixed findings of emotional parentification, suggesting a role reversal between mother and child is beneficial (Guntzviller et al., 2017; Shin & Hecht, 2013) and/or detrimental to adolescent development (Champion et al., 2009; Peris et al., 2008), the evidence is limited in that emotional parentification is mostly measured by either the absence/presence of behavioral indicator (e.g., did you provide emotional support?) or the likelihood of behavioral performance (e.g., how true is it for you to solve problems for family?). In this regard, the communicative contexts of emotional parentification and privacy management between Mexican immigrant mother and adolescent contributes to an understanding of how mothers manage their private information with adolescent children, specifically focusing on adolescent children’s confidant roles in response to mothers’ disclosure and confidant privacy rule strategies.

Limitations and future directions

Although the present study offers insights of CPM in the immigrant family context by identifying adolescent children’s confidant roles and confidant privacy rule strategies during the process of emotional parentification, the findings are limited in that they only focused on mothers’ perspective and their observations of adolescent children as a recipient of private information. Future research should further delve into interpreting theoretical application of CPM theory to immigrant families by addressing core elements of CPM theory including private information ownership, private information control, privacy breakdown and coordination, and boundary turbulence (Petronio, 2010). For example, Afifi and colleagues (2007) examined influential factors for inappropriate parental divorce disclosures to their children and found that parents’ lack of control was a significant predictor for their inappropriate disclosures. The same study also revealed significant effects of adolescents’ perceptions of parental disclosures on adolescents’ well-being. It is highly recommended that researchers collect more dyadic data that capture perspectives from both parent and child. Given that the present study only used individual interviews from mothers and the findings were limited to mothers’ experience of privacy management with adolescent children, future researchers should extend the line of research on immigrant families and CPM by collecting more data from adolescent children and test if their reports on CPM are similar or different from their parents.

The findings also lack the generalizability due to the nature of the qualitative research. This study only sheds light on Mexican immigrant mothers’ experiences with their adolescent children yet the overall findings may not be able to make a generalization to other populations or, given the small sample, even to all Mexican immigrant families. A longitudinal survey design based on these findings would lend greater confidence to their application for Mexican immigrants as well as comparisons to other Hispanic and non-Hispanic immigrant groups.

Finally, despite the fact that mothers in this study were a first generation of immigrants, their experience of settling down and adjusting to the host culture may differ due to a wide range of time spent in the U.S. It is commonly known that the first generation of immigrants are more likely to face social barriers and cultural challenges than later generations (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2005), future research should take account of the length of time spent in the U.S. as another inclusion criterion for the formative research.

The present study explores Mexican immigrant mothers’ privacy management with adolescent children during the process of emotional parentification. These mothers as the first generation of immigrants encounter many life challenges with a lack of social support, which made them heavily dependent on adolescent children. This study identifies that these adolescent children serve different roles such as a reluctant confidant and a deliberate confidant when a role reversal occurs between mother and adolescent. It also discovers that the adolescent children employ confidant privacy rule strategies including comforting, mediating, and protecting. Future research should further delve into immigrant family communication research by disentangling the sophisticated processes of CPM and inviting children’s voice on the formative research.