Describe unique challenges immigrant families may experience.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Immigrant families face a number of challenges. If they come from a non-English-speaking country, the language barrier will be a serious impediment to becoming comfortable in the new country. They will be unable to read street signs, job announcements and applications, food labels, and communications from the children's schools, unless they live where language translations are commonly used. Because children learn new languages more easily than adults, parent and child roles often are reversed as children become the language and cultural brokers. Children also learn the new cultural norms more quickly than parents, and this may cause intergenerational tension about the appropriate level of acculturation, how much of the old to maintain and how much of the new to adopt. Parents may not understand the new culture's norms about child rearing and find themselves at odds with the school system and perhaps with the child protective system. Immigrant wives often come from cultures with traditional gender roles but need to engage in paid work in the United States to keep the family afloat. This often results in more independence and status for wives than they were accustomed to in their home countries and can cause marital conflict if men want to hold on to the traditional gender hierarchy.