The Changing Face of U.S. Families - from Immigration to Family Structure

By Lauren Moore on March 25, 2011 4:24 PM | 1 Comment

On March 15, 2011, Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, and an author of theFuture of Children's latest volume, Immigrant Children, revealed that Hispanics will account for 58% of U.S. population growth this decade in the 33 states for which data has been released by the Census Bureau. In ten states, whites comprise less than half of the child population. The increasing racial diversity among U.S. children underscores a shift that is likely to make whites a minority in the early 2040s, reported the Wall Street Journal on March 25th.

Immigrant youth - defined as children under age eighteen who are either foreign-born or U.S.-born to immigrant parents - are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population today, with Hispanic children the fastest increasing among them. As William Frey, Brookings Institution demographer, commented in the Wall Street Journal, "That can tell you as much as anything how important Hispanics are for the future of children in the United States."

As noted in The Future of Children volume, immigrant children are more likely to experience poverty and face significant gaps in school readiness. To address these challenges, the Future of Children recommends three policy reforms - increased attendance in quality preschool, improved instruction in English, and increased attendance in postsecondary education - that would improve the school achievement of immigrant youth, lift their economic well-being as adults, and increase their economic and social contributions to American society.

Immigrant children are also more likely to live in households headed by two married parents than children of natives in their respective ethnic groups. Yet, these positive family arrangements are often complicated by stories like that of Emily Ruiz, a 4-year old girl born in New York who was detained by immigration officials and then sent back to Guatemala, separating her from her parents, after she and her grandfather were stopped by customs officials earlier this month.

As Nancy Landale writes in the Future of Children's Immigrant Children volume, "despite the wide diversity of the challenges that face immigrants and their families because of their unique patterns of immigration and integration, it is possible to identify some ways to alter U.S. immigration and integration policies to help sustain the pre-existing strengths of a broad range of immigrant families." See the volume for detailed explanations of these policy suggestions.

Differences in the living arrangements of children of immigrants by generational status suggest that as immigrant families spend more time in the United States, their family patterns progressively mirror those of the general population. In contrast to families with immigrant children, the changing landscape of American family structure includes a dramatic rise in non marital child births  and divorces over the last fifty years, as our recent volume on Fragile Families cites, and as was mentioned in a Times article on divorce in rural America. Compared with two-parent families, single-parent families face greater risks in terms of both family stability and economic security--risks that can imperil child well-being.

These demographic trends are important because they tell us who United States children are, the contexts in which they live, and the unique challenges they face.

Most recommendations in these volumes, and other Future of Children volumes, suggest prioritizing and investing in children now - regardless of their circumstances and often ahead of other interests. This is simply because investments in child well-being are the smartest ones we can make. The benefits both in terms of future productivity and the prevention of delinquent behaviors in adulthood, far outweigh the initial costs. Particularly when one considers that our children are coming of age in an aging society that will require unprecedented social expenditures for health and retirement benefits for seniors, the case for investing in children, our future workforce, seems to be an easy one.

And yet, without purchasing, voting, or lobbying power, the well-being of children can easily get lost in the debates, which is why knowledge and advocacy on the behalf of children is so critical. For more information, please visit our website for our newest volume on Immigrant Children and our previous volume on Fragile Families.