Bridging the Gap: An Immigrant Family Strengthening Workshop

Abstract

Immigrant families benefit from a wide variety of resources to help in their transition to life in the United States. One area that needs to be more robustly addressed is assistance in preventing harmful intergenerational cultural conflict that can emerge as the children of immigrants grow up in a different cultural context than their parents. In prior research and qualitative interviews, intergenerational cultural conflict has been found to be harmful to family relationships and youth outcomes. While many parenting programs already exist, immigrant families need specialized resources and culturally relevant information beyond what typical American interventions offer. This proposed intervention consists of an 8-week adaptable workshop series for immigrant parents and their children ages 13-17, in order to learn the communication and emotional regulation skills needed to effectively navigate cultural differences and prevent intergenerational cultural conflict from emerging. Participating families will be split into parent and teen groups for 90 minutes to discuss a weekly topic, practice skills, and obtain social support from peers. The workshop is designed to help families determine their own solutions that are holistically informed by cultural knowledge, ideas from their peers, and the workshop curriculum. Participating families will be assessed on their relationship quality and use of communication skills.