From Generation to Generation The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families (1998) / Chapter Skim
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1 Children in Immigrant Families
1 Children in Immigrant Families
Pages 17-39
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From page 17... ...
The physical and mental health of children in immigrant families is consequential for their civic participation, labor force productivity, and quality of parenting in the coming years and decades. Whether they experience healthy development and successful adaptation to life in 21st-century America will profoundly affect their roles as future citizens, workers, and parents.
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From page 18... ...
This report does not address many important issues of immigration processes and policies that are not directly linked to the health and adjustment of children in immigrant families, nor does it explore in detail the processes influencing the physical and mental health of children and adolescents generally. For example, the report does not assess the economic, demographic, or fiscal effects of immigration (see National Research Council, 1997~.
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From page 19... ...
Although the movement of people across national borders, not only through migration but also through tourism and international commerce, is inevitably associated with transfers of health risks, such as infectious diseases, contaminated foods, terrorism, and legal or banned toxic substances, the primary focus of this report on children precludes discussion of these issues. A recent report by the Institute of Medicine (1997)
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From page 20... ...
Population projections for ethnic groups are not necessarily accurate predictions of the future population, but are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made. For a discussion of the limitations of standard projection procedures, including the issues of intermarriage and the attribution of race and ethnicity to persons with multiple ancestries, as well as an alternative procedure and projections, see National Research Council (1997~.
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From page 21... ...
Three less populous states also had comparatively high proportions (higher than the national average) of children in immigrant families: Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Nevada.
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From page 22... ...
As discussed in Chapter 4, the law's impact on children in immigrant families derives in large part from new restrictions on a wide range of benefits, including income assistance, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) , the Food Stamp Program, and noncash services.
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From page 23... ...
Research on children in immigrant families has the potential to bring theory and research on assimilation and development into closer alignment and thereby enhance research on immigrants of all ages. Historically, study of the assimilation of immigrants to the United States involved the study of European ethnic groups in American society.
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From page 24... ...
The new immigration is characterized by enormous variation in ethnic and socioeconomic background, neighborhood contexts, and the opportunities for work experience and education. At the turn of the century, most jobs required low levels of skill, but the expanding urban-industrial economy provided opportunities for upward economic mobility, and high levels of intergenerational assimilation may have been related to the subsequent low levels of immigration.
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From page 25... ...
Immigrant parents who experience economic assimilation are more able to provide the material, social, and cultural resources that facilitate the successful adaptation of their children. However, in the absence of economic assimilation, the harsher material circumstances and sociocultural isolation of immigrants locked into lowpaying jobs may impede successful adaptation by their children.
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From page 26... ...
The processes through which race and ethnicity affect the assimilation of today's immigrants are poorly understood. Research has been based largely on models developed for U.S.-born minority populations, which focus on understanding the lingering effects of the "failed assimilation" of Africans brought to the United States through practices of slave trading or immigrating voluntarily but becoming absorbed into the category of "black American." This literature has focused on the role of discrimination, residential segregation, and racial differences in educational at
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From page 27... ...
These experiences may involve exposure to discrimination and, in turn, shape children's understanding of their racial and ethnic identity and its implications for self-appraisals over the life course (Garcia Coll et al., 1996; Rumbaut, 1994b; 1997a, 1997b; Spencer and Markstrom-Adams, 1990~. The work of Rumbaut and his colleagues has called attention to the complexity of identity development among immigrant children and youth (Rumbaut,1994b,1998b)
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From page 28... ...
This literature similarly faces the triple challenge of distinguishing developmental mechanisms that are unique or more prominent for racial and ethnic minority children from those that characterize development for all children, understanding diversity within minority populations, and disentangling the consequences of minority status from those of its strong association with poverty. Research on minority children also provides a compelling illustration of the importance of understanding the factors that contribute to widely varying outcomes within groups (McLoyd, 1990; McLoyd and Randolph, 1984~.
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From page 29... ...
These literatures have highlighted the critical importance of studying children as they develop over years or decades and across the changing social contexts of families, neighborhoods, local institutions, government policies, and social, economic, and cultural systems. They have also identified the need to pay special attention to the order and timing of events and social roles as they are experienced over the course of individual and intergenerational development, and to focus on transitional events and periods as windows for gaining insights into successful or unsuccessful responses to changing life circumstances.
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From page 30... ...
By linking societal and historical changes to individual lives and providing conceptual models and strategies for studying these links as they shape family dynamics, social roles, and child development over time, contemporary theories of development bear directly on the lives of children in immigrant families. Their lives are inextricably tied to particular historical and political events in both their countries of origin and in the United States; to immigration and resettlement transitions experienced by them, their parents, or their grandparents; and to the context of their receiving communities and the roles they assume within these communities.
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From page 31... ...
Each of these issues, in turn, requires a developmental approach that considers how the role and importance of various factors involved in the processes of migration and adaptation are mediated and differentiated by the age of the child (Garcia Coll and Magnuson, 1997; Hirschman, 1994; Laosa, 1989; de Leon Siantz, 1997~. Risk and Protection in Child Development Many studies have identified a wide range of conditions that can compromise or impair children's development, including poverty, low levels of parental education, living in a one-parent family or in large families with many siblings, exposure to racial or ethnic discrimination, residential mobility, and depleted neighborhood resources (Bradley and Whiteside-Mansell, 1997; BrooksGunn et al., 1997; Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Huston et al.,
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From page 32... ...
family characteristics, such as cohesion, shared values, warmth and acceptance, absence of conflict, consistent rules and responsibilities, financial security, appropriate monitoring, high parental expectations and support for learning, and religiosity; and (3) features of the communities in which the child and family live, such as availability of external supports, access to constructive out-of-school activities, strong schools with supportive teachers, positive role models in the community, housing quality, and residential stability.
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From page 33... ...
Potentially protective conditions have also been identified, such as health-promoting behavior during pregnancy, close family ties, religiosity, and high parental expectations and supports for achievement. But critical questions remain largely unexplored: Do risk factors, which have been identified as sources of vulnerability for U.S.-born children in U.S.-born families, affect children in immigrant families similarly?
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From page 34... ...
The early studies of children in immigrant families reviewed above suggest that many of them experience unusual circumstances and special challenges and benefit from some culturespecific strengths that must be incorporated into a theory of development of children in immigrant families. The closest analog is developmental research on minority children, but evidence of within-group and contextual variations suggests caution before generalizing from prior theory and research.
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From page 35... ...
Indeed, their development incorporates the physical transition from one context to another, and perhaps to multiple places of settlement in the United States. Children born in the United States to immigrant parents also straddle the contexts of sending and receiving communities, albeit more indirectly, through cross-national social networks, family traditions and expectations, and connections to ethnic communities and resources within the United States.
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From page 36... ...
The committee was struck by the paucity of research on each of the issues identified and, accordingly, keenly aware of the great extent to which our capacity to draw conclusions about the health and adjustment of children in immigrant families was constrained. Accordingly, we sought to summarize and supplement, through research expressly conducted for this study, what is known about the circumstances and characteristics of children in immigrant families, noting both strengths and potential risk factors; to understand their adaptation over time, albeit in the absence of longitudinal research and research that incorporates information about their countries of origin or about the migration process itself; to remain sensitive to the vast diversity that characterizes them; and to inform the next phase of research on the differing contexts and outcomes of assimilation that characterize children in immigrant families.
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From page 37... ...
citizens et birth but may become citizens through the process of naturalization.2 First-generation immigrant chilciren are also referred to in this report as immigrant children and foreign-born children of immigrant parents. SeconcI-generation children, because they were born in the United States, are citizens, regarcIless of their parents' citizenship or immigrant status.
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From page 38... ...
In this context, the committee was keenly aware throughout its deliberations that children who live in poverty many of them U.S.-born minorities often experience restricted access to many of the resources, programs, and benefits that are discussed in this report specifically with respect to children in immigrant families. U.S.-born black children, in particular, whose historical legacy arises from one of this nation's most profound immigration policies and from the abiding significance of race in American culture, face life chances that are all too often characterized by the risks and foreclosed opportunities that are considered in this report.
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From page 39... ...
CHILDREN IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES 39 we begin to understand fully the forces that shape successful adaptation. ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT This committee's review and analysis begins with Chapter 2, which portrays socioeconomic and demographic risk factors experienced by children in immigrant families from many countries of origin.
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