Adolescent Executive Function as a Resilience Factor in the Family Stress Model among Mexican-Origin Families

Mexican-origin families often face economic hardship due to systemic oppression, increasing the likelihood of adolescent marijuana use. While the family stress model provides insight into the mechanism of the association between family economic hardship and adolescent marijuana use, resilience factors are relatively unknown. The present study uses a three-wave longitudinal data set of Mexican immigrant families in the United States (Wave 1—adolescents: Mage = 12.29, SD = 0.93; mothers: Mage = 38.57, SD = 5.71) to investigate the mechanism underlying the association between family income and adolescents’ likelihood of marijuana use, guided by the family stress model. The protective role of adolescent executive function (shifting task performance and working memory), which has been widely linked to adolescent marijuana use in prior research, was tested as a key resilience factor supporting behavioral regulation and adaptive coping in negative family environments. The results revealed the long-term detrimental influence of early adolescents’ family income on the likelihood of using marijuana in late adolescence through family economic pressure, maternal internalizing symptoms, maternal hostility toward partner, and maternal hostility toward adolescent. The downstream link is buffered by adolescents’ longer reaction times in shifting tasks and longer digit span by attenuating the influence of maternal hostility toward adolescent on the likelihood of adolescent marijuana use. Revealing the mechanism and identifying resilience factors for the association between family economic hardship and adolescent’s marijuana use in Mexican-origin families shed light on the targets of interventions to help adolescents thrive and overcome economic disadvantage in Mexican-origin communities.