Latino and Latin American Families

In this special issue of The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, we enrich our understanding of the issues that particularly affect Latino/Latin American families in the United States. How do these families face barriers and yet come out with improved lives? The topics of the six intriguing papers in this issue appear on the surface to vary dramatically from one another, but a common thread is woven throughout. We briefly describe how the papers fit into the overall theme here, and provide individual detail on each article below.Throughout time and across societies, it is a fundamental job of parents to keep their children and families safe. All parents face issues such as protecting from physical harm, providing food and safe shelter, and ensuring that children get a good education to assure future opportunities. In the case of many Latino families in the United States, this task may be complicated even further by fear of deportation and/or family separation and potential accompanying loss of parents, economic stresses exacerbated by undocumented or mixed statuses, loss of culture and traditions, and communication gaps caused by dramatic differences in the backgrounds of parents and children. First generation parents bring with them not only the richness of their cultural backgrounds, but also an understanding of the United States as a country with risks in addition to riches. They may fear they have little to offer their children in this new environment, and their experiences in the United States may reinforce that fear. Families that are not new to the United States are not immune from many of the same economic and social inequalities that influence the safety and wellbeing of their families. These issues, coupled with oftentimes unreceptive and unsupportive environments, create challenging situations for many Latino families. The overarching theme that emerges from this set of papers is how parents strive to provide their children and families with safe and nurturing environments in spite of difficult structural barriers and shifting conditions.The first two papers focus on broader structural limitations and how these are realized in families. The first article by Leisy J. Abrego, argues that every family member is affected in Latino families with members who have undocumented or temporarily protected status, and explores how these families experience both tension and solidarity in response to the immigration structure. The second article by Seline Szkupinski Quiroga, Jennifer E. Glick, and Dulce M. Medina, places the wellbeing of Latino families within the context of both an economic downturn and a time of political strain and describes the ways that they handle this structural uncertainty and community hostility.The next two papers focus on intergenerational communications in Latino families, and how moving from one culture to another creates difficulties and problems in communicating safe behavior. Eve Veliz-Moran studies variations in adolescent disclosure among Latino adolescents, helping us understand the conditions that promote open communications. Katie Hartmann, Rocio Rivadeneyra, and Maura I. Toro-Morn also focus on adolescent daughters in the context of first generation immigrant mothers and secondgeneration daughters and explore how daughters and their mothers communicate about sexuality. Both reflect the ways that parents try to protect their children, and what the children believe they need.The final two papers further our understanding of two important social issues affecting families. The first, by Edna A. Viruell- Fuentes and Flavia C. D. Andradade, considers the role of social support in mental health symptoms between immigrant and nonimmigrant Latinos. The final paper by Oscar Jimenez-Castellanos, Alberto M. Ochoa, and Edward M. Olivos provides a model for parental engagement in school communities."Illegality as a Source of Solidarity and Tension in Latino Families"At a time when the National debate has become even more heated over the subject of immigration, Leisy J. …