Abstract: Literature on the relationship between ethnicity and cooperative, competitive, and individualistic social orientations suggests that Mexican American children's social orientation is related to the socialization of culture. Two hundred Mexican American children between the ages of 9 and 13, and their mothers, participated in a study to assess the socialization of familism values and their relation to social orientation. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) The relation between familism values among mothers and their children is mediated by a socialization process involving mothers' familism values, parenting goals, parenting behavior, children's perception of parental behavior, and familism values; (2) Familism values are positively related to cooperative social orientations. Structural equation models partially supported Hypothesis 1. Parenting goals significantly mediated the relation between familism values and parenting behavior; children's perception of parental behavior predicted familism values; however, parenting behavior did not predict children's perception of parental behavior. Hypothesis 2 was not supported.