Language Brokering and Depressive Symptoms in Mexican-American Adolescents: Parent-Child Alienation and Resilience as Moderators

This study aimed to untangle the mixed effects of language brokering by examining a contextual factor (i. e., parent-child alienation) and a personal attribute (i. e., resilience) that may relate to adolescents' feelings during translating (i. e., sense of burden and efficacy) and that may moderate the association between such feelings and adolescent depressive symptoms. Participants included 557 adolescent language brokers (M-age = 12.96) in Mexican-American families. Results showed that adolescents with a strong sense of alienation from parents or low resilience (a) experienced more burden or less efficacy in translating and (b) were more susceptible to the detrimental effects of feeling a sense of burden and the beneficial effects of experiencing a sense of efficacy, as measured by depressive symptoms.