Understanding immigrant families from around the world: introduction to the special issue.

Investigations of immigrant families enable researchers to trace family processes and children's psychological adjustment in the presence of trenchant sociocultural change, cultural conflict, family dislocation, and the need for readjustment to new social environments. This special issue of 15 articles presents psychosocial research on immigrant families and children residing in Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. The articles focus on the psychosocial adaptation of immigrant families, parenting practices and their implications for child outcomes, and the importance of parent-adolescent relationships for adolescent mental health. Most of the articles are based on quantitative research methodologies. It is concluded that research on immigrant families is well suited to advance knowledge about the mutual dependence of dynamic sociocultural and family processes. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.