ABSTRACT
RUBÉN RUMBAUT'S wide-ranging chapter provides a number of well-supported findings worth stressing again. I concentrate on the three that I believe to be most important. First, there is no singular immigrant family experience. Rather, families differ in the amount of human, political, and social capital they bring with them and create in the United States. Second, an “immigrant ethos” of strong family ties, high aspirations among children, hard work among children (measured in terms of number of hours spent on homework), and achievement (measured in terms of GPA) all tend to erode with time in the United States and with increasing exposure to native norms. Third, even when a large number of background characteristics are controlled, ethnicity has a strong effect on the outcomes and experiences of immigrant families. Because I agree wholeheartedly with these points and believe that Rumbaut surveyed a great deal of the freshest and most well-done research on this topic to arrive at these conclusions, I do not rehash them here. Instead I outline some new research questions arising from the conclusions. I address a few of the questions using findings from my own ethnographic work with West Indian immigrant families.
