2001 Annual Meeting Plenary:
Transnational Families: The Impact of Separation Between Parents and Children*

By Larry Dyche

It would be difficult for AFTA to conduct a conference on Pan-American affairs without giving careful attention to immigration, arguably the defining issue of our inter­continental community. This was done with great eloquence in the presidential plenary session, "Transnational Families: The Impact of Separations between Parents and Children." Three scholars, themselves transnational women, two of whom were guests of AFTA, presented research and clinical work that explored the multi-layered phenomenon of immigration. Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo discussed the global economic forces that foster the separation of parents and children. Carola Suarez-Orozco presented a longitudinal study of recently immigrated children, and Eliana Korin showed videotapes of clinical work that brought forth the voices of immigrant mothers who had to leave their children behind.

After introductions by Marcelo Pakman, Dr. Hondagneu-Sotelo, from the department of Sociology at the University of Southern California, presented her paper, "Families on the Frontier: From Braceros to Braceras in the Home." In the post-industrial U.S. economy, she explained, labor demand, immigration restrictions, and cultural transformations have encouraged the emergence of new transnational family forms among Central American and Mexican immigrant women. This labor demand, which only a few decades ago was primarily for male workers, is now for occupations most often held by women: nursing and paid domestic work. These women, in the context of very limited options, leave their families and children behind to seek employment in the United States. They work in one nation state—often caring for another's children—while supporting their own children in the home and country they left behind.

She pointed out that the exponential growth of paid domestic work is due, in large part, to the increased employment of married women with children, as well as to the underdeveloped

nature of child care in this country. Actually, this is a global phenomenon, resulting from the inequality of nations; most wealthy countries recruit domestic labor from nearby developing countries whose stress on family structures is similar to their own. Some countries, however, have structured programs for importing domestic workers that provide a semblance of protection that is absent in the United States.

The very nature of live-in domestic work virtually mandates a woman's separation from her family. The immigrant women who occupy these jobs find that they must be "on-call" during all waking hours and often through the night. There is no clear line between work and non-working hours, no boundary between job space and private space. The South and Central American women immigrate with the understanding that the separation from family is a temporary solution, but circumstances may cause it to endure for long and sometimes, undetermined periods of time.

Bringing children to the United States poses its own set of problems. In the late 1990s, there was a militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border through border control programs that made it a zone of danger, death, and violence. Children of undocumented immigrant parents must enter the country surreptitiously, often only in the company of strangers who are paid to smuggle them. Many immigrant parents also view the United States as a highly undesirable place to raise children. They fear the dangers of gangs, violence, drugs and second rate schools to which their children are likely to be exposed in poor, inner-city neighborhoods. They are also appalled by the contestations to generational authority which often occur with immigration.

Dr. Hondagneu-Sotelo concluded with the caveat: The continued privatization of domestic labor among American professional and managerial classes has broad repercussions for the social relations among new Latina immigrants and their families. Who will continue to pick up the cost of raising the next generation? Surely we can hope for a society where Latina immigrant women and children are not first in bearing the costs.

The next presentation was made by Carola Suarez-Orozco from the Harvard School of Education and was titled, "The Transnationalization of Families: Immigrant Separations and Reunifications." Dr. Suarez-Orozco presented data derived from a longitudinal study of the educational adaptations made by immigrant children. The purpose of the study was to define the prevalence of families experiencing parent-child separation during the immigration process and describe its form, duration and outcome. Because much of the existing data is drawn from clinical populations, it tends to focus on families and youth that are not successful in managing these separations without clinical intervention.

Four hundred and seven recently arrived children from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico between ages nine and fourteen were recruited from seven school districts in Boston and San Francisco. The findings emerged from parent and child interviews designed to elicit background information about the participants and a follow-up child interview focusing on the separation and reunification process. The study protocol included a psychological symptom scale designed to be developmentally and cross-culturally relevant.

The study found that separations between family members during immigration occurred in 85% of the sample. The vast majority of children had been separated from one or both parents during the immigration process. The examination of psychological sequela indicated that children arriving in the US with their parents were less likely to report depressive symptoms than children whose families had separated during the migratory process. However, no differences were found on other sub-scales which included anxiety, cognitive functioning, inter-personal sensitivity and hostility.

Dr. Suarez-Orozco indicated that our ability to understand the impact of immigration and separation on families is confounded by the fact that a demise in marital relationships often occurs in tandem with migration. The anticipation of migration may cause relationships to rupture prior to leaving, while a marital separation may itself propel a parent to journey abroad in search of a stable income. Sometimes, following a protracted separation, the links in the marital dyad may be so weakened that the relationships come apart in the new context. These events can precipitate a family process that negatively impacts the children apart from the immigration related separations themselves.

She identified several processes that buffer the stress of separation on the children and attenuate the period of adjustment. When the child is left behind, the quality of relationships between the child and the caretaker and between the mother and the caretaker take on great significance. If the caretaker is grieving the loss of the parent who immigrated, the children may be reluctant to discuss their own feelings. Maintaining consistent contact during the separation is also linked to better outcomes since inconsistent or minimal contact may be interpreted by children as abandonment.

Dr. Suarez-Orozco's study gives us a more acute lens on the processes of immigration and its impact on families, and it challenges us to tailor our clinical interventions with greater precision.

The final presentation was made by Eliana Korin, an AFTA member familiar to a great number of the conference attendees. While each of the prior presentations included qualitative data, it was Eliana's role to bring the voices of the immigrants to us. She began her presentation, "Intergenerational Impasses: Conflict and Reconciliation among immigrant Mothers, their Children and their Families," with a personal story. She once told a Nicaraguan baby-sitter how hard it was to leave her 10 month old to return to work only to learn that the woman herself was grieving children left behind in her quest to provide for them. "Such a poignant reminder of my own privilege," Eliana acknowledged.

Eliana's material, presented with videotaped, translated interviews, was drawn from her own teaching and clinical work with immigrant women and their families in a primary care medical setting in the Bronx. Her clients come from the Caribbean area, and Central and South

America, and are primarily voluntary immigrants. They are unlikely to seek psychotherapy and are inclined, instead to present to a medical clinic with somatic complaints. Eliana's presentation sought to portray immigrant mothers' lifelong feelings of grief, guilt and regret; and the intergenerational conflicts that affect the mother-child relationship.

In a taped segment Eliana titles, "Apple Pie but not Motherhood," she introduced us to a mother who left economic hardship and an abusive marital relationship to seek a new chapter in her life. In doing so, she left her three-year-old son with her family in the Dominican Republic. By working for years as a home health aide, she was able to provide for her family, enable several siblings to immigrate, and, finally, to bring her son to be with her when he was ten.

From the videotape, the mother told us of her preoccupation that her son was not well taken care of. "I used to dream a lot about him. Since he was little, he was very mature. Once I dreamt that he swallowed some scissors... So I told him, 'Please don't touch any scissors,' 'Oh Mom, are you crazy, How would you think I'm going to swallow scissors?' So I missed him.. as a mother."

"My great regret is my son," she continued, "Because he was left there when he was less than three. . . . Now I understand that it is very hard. I suffered. I would call him every day, I would send him all the toys I could get. But that is not what really counts, what is important is to be there when he needs you. This is what is important: that you give him a kiss. This love is missed, motherly love. My brothers love him and my father adored him. But the love of a mother, he missed a lot, not to have had that love at that age." In bringing the voice of this mother and of other family members who struggled with the hardships of immigration, Eliana brought depth and emotion to what we often hear only as statistics.

The session concluded with a vigorous round of questions, and I heard many observe that the integration of geo-political perspectives with quantitative and qualitative information made for a particularly stimulating, and sometimes troubling, exploration of the boundaries between the Americas.

Larry Dyche ACSW, is a member of the behavioral science faculty in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York City. He also maintains a family-oriented practice in Long Island.

* Editor's note: Due to editorial problems this important plenary was not covered in AFTA Newsletter #83 that covered the Annual Meeting 2001. Thanks to Eliana Korin for her help in correction the editorial error.