One in five children in the U.S. has immigrant parents, and children of immigrant parents are the fastest growing component of the child population. The development of these young children is critical for their life chances and for their long-term social and economic integration into U.S. society. The regional origins of immigrant families are diverse and must be recognized when studying the circumstances and experiences of children of immigrants. Given the high volume of immigration from Latin America, the focus of this volume is Hispanic children in immigrant families. They are themselves a diverse group that is of growing importance because Hispanics constitute the largest ethnic minority group in the nation.
A range of challenges face immigrant children and their families. Negative sentiments toward immigrant families have not been as high as they are now for nearly a century. National immigration policy appears to be in a gridlock, but local policies are changing rapidly. Immigrant destinations have expanded to include both new metropolitan locations and rural areas. These and other changes have altered the social, political, and economic forces in host communities and the broader social contexts in which children develop. Thus, the study of children and youth in immigrant families is timely and important.
The contributions to Growing Up Hispanic are based on papers presented at the 16th Annual Penn State Symposium on Family Issues in October 2008, “Development of Hispanic Children in Immigrant Families: Challenges and Prospects.” This edited volume is the culmination of two days of stimulating presentations and discussions examining four arenas of research and policy that are significant in the development and well-being of children and youth in immigrant Hispanic families: (1) the social ecologies of children and youth in immigrant families, including the range of setting characteristics and the implications of such characteristics for child and youth well-being and development; (2) the role of families in children’s successful adaptation to “host” environments; (3) the implications of the school and community contexts as well as education policies for children’s school experiences and academic achievement; and (4) the roles of health care, social service provision, and health policies in children’s mental health and well-being.
Each of the four sections of the volume includes a chapter by a lead author, followed by shorter chapters by discussants. Care has been taken to bring together perspectives from diverse disciplines in each part. The volume concludes with an integrative commentary.
Growing Up Hispanic begins with a comprehensive description by sociologist Richard Alba from the City University of New York and his colleagues from the University at Albany, State University of New York, of the residential environments in which Hispanic children live. Even though Hispanic children are only moderately segregated from white children, the neighborhoods in which they live have higher levels of poverty, more immigrants, fewer fluent English speakers, and a less-educated adult population. Among the many important themes addressed in this chapter are the implications of the recent residential dispersion of Hispanics for children’s neighborhood environments.
Residential dispersion to new immigrant destination areas is further developed in two additional chapters in part 1. Demographer and policy analyst Randy Capps from the Migration Policy Institute, along with his colleagues, and economist Stephen Trejo from the University of Texas at Austin emphasize that Hispanic children’s neighborhood environments may be better in new-destination areas because migration to such areas is primarily driven by job opportunities and better living conditions. Trejo also comments on the methodological challenges of estimating the causal impacts of residential integration and neighborhood quality on Hispanic children’s outcomes. An additional perspective is provided by psychologist Stephen Quintana of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who elaborates on the microdynamics of intergroup contact in different types of neighborhoods and their influence on youths’ self-concepts.
Part 2 of the volume shifts from the neighborhood context to the family context. Drawing on social ecological and person-oriented approaches, Kimberly Updegraff and Adriana Umaña-Taylor from Arizona State University examine differences across families in within-family patterns of involvement in Mexican and Anglo cultures. They argue that cultural adaptation can best be understood as a family-level phenomenon. Also emphasizing a family perspective on culture and youth development, clinical psychologist Rosalie Corona of Virginia Commonwealth University draws attention to an understudied topic: the roles fathers and siblings play in Latino youth sexual health. Two additional chapters offer insights from a demographic perspective. Donald Hernandez and his colleagues at the University at Albany, SUNY, document the resources and challenges faced by children in immigrant families, and Jennifer Van Hook of Penn State outlines fruitful potential areas of interdisciplinary exchange between demographers and child development scholars.
Beyond the family and the neighborhood, the school is the other major setting in which children live out their everyday lives. Part 3 of Growing Up Hispanic examines in detail the state of education among Hispanics in the United States. The lead chapter by Carola Suárez-Orozco, Francisco Gaytán, and Ha Yeon Kim, scholars of applied psychology at New York University, presents and interprets a variety of indicators of educational performance among Hispanic youth from preschool to college. Extensive recommendations for research, practice, and policy are aimed at improving the currently limited educational prospects of Hispanic youth. Chapters by sociologist Katharine Donato of Vanderbilt University and political scientist Melissa Marschall of Rice University, and by Suet-ling Pong, education policy researcher at Penn State, also outline policies that may improve the bleak educational prospects of Hispanic youth. Importantly, both Donato and Marschall’s chapter and a chapter by developmental psychologist Andrew Fuligni of the University of California, Los Angeles, emphasize the promise of policies that build on the strengths of Hispanic families to improve Hispanic youths’ educational performance.
Part 4 focuses on mental health and the services available to address mental health problems. Clinical psychologist Margarita Alegría and her colleagues at Harvard University address mental health service disparities, noting that availability of such services through schools is critical to access by impoverished populations. Chapters by sociologist and demographer Deborah Roempke Graefe of Penn State and social psychologist and demographer Robert Roberts and community psychologist Catherine R. Roberts of the University of Texas, Houston, augment Alegría’s recommendations for further research. Cheryl Boyce, a clinical psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, expands the focus by framing disparities in mental health and education in terms of its implications for the broader society. Arguing that inequality is a burden that leaves society in debt, she provides recommendations to reduce service disparities.
The concluding chapter is an integrative commentary by Matthew Hall and Anna Soli, Penn State graduate students in the department of sociology and the department of human development and family studies, respectively. These authors provide a thorough summary and integration of the major themes addressed in the volume, with an emphasis on what we know, what we don’t know, and where we should go from here.
