US immigration reports on good family relationships

June 05 2009 by Robbie Ragless

Family of immigrants who moved to the USA

Good parenting helps US visa holders

The importance of strong family relationships and good parenting when emigrating to another country, particularly from the East and Africa, to Western countries, has been highlighted in a series of new reports.

The studies are due to be published in the June issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, which is published in the US by the American Psychological Association.

The articles examine the experiences of several different immigrant families and groups moving to Canada, the US and Europe at a time when immigration is booming. More than 30% of the American child population will be immigrants by the year 2015.

One study found that teenagers who were protected from an immigrant family’s financial problems were happier and more likely to settle in their new home.

Chinese mothers holding a US visa with pre-school-aged children were found to engage in high levels of authoritative parenting, which also helped their children to settle in the US.

Chinese parents were found to be more consistent than white American parents when it came to the messages they were giving their children. Immigrants from China also instilled higher expectations in their children, which strengthened their offspring's ability to deal with the process of immigration and assimilation into the new culture.

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