In 2012, there were nearly 41 million immigrants living in the United States, a historic high for the country. The upsurge in immigration that led to this high number has sparked both academic and political interest in immigrants and their offspring, with scholars and policymakers trying to both understand and manage this heterogeneous group.
While the US media typically focus on the economic controversies associated with immigration, a number of non-economic issues arise in the immigrant population, including significant challenges related to immigrants’ and their children’s mental health.
Led by Nancy Landale (Liberal Arts Research Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State), a team of Population Research Institute (PRI) researchers, including Jessica Halliday Hardie (PRI Research Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York), R. S. Oropesa (Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State), and Marianne Hillemeier (Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Demography at Penn State), is examining such issues in more detail. Through a Program Project funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the team recently explored the effects of parental nativity and legal status on the mental health of Mexican-origin children, and their findings are being published in this month’s issue of Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JHSB) as well as in a policy brief for JHSB.
Mexican-Origin Children in the United States
Mexicans currently represent the largest minority group in the United States, and 41% of the children of immigrants were of Mexican origin as of 2012. Prior research has shown that compared to their non-Latino counterparts, Mexican-origin children generally have higher levels of anxiety, mood disorders, and behavior problems. However, the picture is more complicated: research has also revealed that there is variation in the mental health outcomes of Mexican-origin children in the United States based on where their parents were born. A natural follow-up question to this research—a question Landale's team wants to answer—is what role immigrant parents' legal status plays in this variation.
Nearly 50% of all Mexican immigrants in the United States are undocumented, and 70% of children with unauthorized immigrant parents are of Mexican origin. These numbers are particularly salient because ethnographic research has suggested that undocumented migrants and their families face a number of challenges (e.g., the threat of deportation, exploitation by employers, limited resources, marginalization, a new culture, etc.) that frequently lead to stress as well as physical and mental health problems. In addition, children with undocumented parents may face added difficulties due to disrupted parenting practices and family routines as a result of their parents’ legal status, leading to additional physiological distress among this group.
“These children are a permanent part of US society,” Landale explained, “and like all children in this country, they will become tomorrow's adults. If their mental or physical health is impaired, they will be less able to become productive and well-integrated members of society in the future.”
The First Systematic Research of Its Kind
Landale went on to state that a major challenge in understanding the health of immigrants’ children is a lack of systematic research attention on the legal status of their parents in almost all large-scale surveys. To address this research gap, Landale and her team used data collected from the parents of 2,535 children as part of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LA FANS)—one of the few representative surveys that asks direct questions about immigrants’ legal status—to examine the impact of parental nativity and legal status on Mexican-origin children’s behavior.
The team analyzed variation in the internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depression, low self-worth, social withdrawal, excessive need for attention) and externalizing (e.g., rule breaking, aggression, irritability) behavior problems of Mexican youth with undocumented mothers, documented/naturalized citizen mothers, and US-born mothers. They also contrasted these children’s experiences with those of other ethno-racial groups. They examined whether family and neighborhood processes (i.e., socioeconomic background, family structure, maternal mental health, and neighborhood collective efficacy) explained the relationships between parental legal status and Mexican-origin children’s behavior.
Findings
The team found that Mexican-origin children with undocumented mothers have higher levels of both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems than children with naturalized/documented immigrant mothers and US-born mothers. However, this relatively poor behavioral functioning is not due to poverty, maternal distress, disrupted family routines, or living in neighborhoods that lack cohesion or social control, suggesting that these issues arise due to other challenges associated with having an undocumented parent that are not yet fully understood. In addition to these more adverse findings, the team found that undocumented parents are able to at least partially offset their lack of material assets with other types of resources, including better-than-expected maternal mental health and positive family routines.
Implications for Immigration Policy
The team’s findings have several important implications for mental health programs aimed at helping immigrants in the United States, particularly undocumented immigrants and their children. While the majority of children who have undocumented parents are actually native-born US citizens, these youth are generally not receiving mental health services. Factors like family poverty; lack of health insurance; socio-cultural barriers; parents’ limited awareness of outside resources; and undocumented parents’ fear of detection, apprehension, and deportation limit these children’s ability to obtain help.
As Landale emphasized, “Barriers to treatment must be reduced through policies that promote comprehensive community-based services in settings in which youth and their undocumented parents are embedded.” She explained that schools and public health clinics are prime places to screen children for mental health problems early on as well as for educating immigrant parents about available mental health resources in their communities. In addition, Landale mentioned the importance of pairing this screening and education with culturally sensitive programs and services geared toward both immigrant parents and their children.
Next Steps
While this work has already contributed new insights into the health and wellbeing of immigrants’ children, Landale, Hardie, Oropesa, and Hillemeier have only just begun. The team is currently conducting research using longitudinal data from the LA FANS to determine whether the ethnic and legal status differences in internalizing and externalizing behavior problems they observed in this study are associated with later drug and alcohol abuse. In addition, the researchers are conducting a series of studies on the role of legal status in other outcomes among Mexican-origin children, including health care access and utilization, cognitive development, and physical health problems.