ABSTRACT
Latino families represent the third largest, but the fastest growing, demographic segment of the U.S. population. If current rates of legal and illegal immigration as well as natural domestic population growth continue, Latino or Hispanic-American families will overtake Black or African American families as the second largest group by early in the next century. This fact alone suggests the Latino families merit more attention from sociologists and developmental psychologists than they have been accorded in the past. As we attempt to show in this chapter, such an examination would reveal that Latino families face some unique challenges and have several strengths and characteristics that distinguish them from the mainstream Euro-American culture whose practices and characteristics are typically (and often unthinkingly) viewed as traditional. Further examination would also reveal that Latinos constitute a remarkably heterogeneous group, united by their ancestral language (Spanish), origins in Central and South America, and a variety of general characteristics, the best understood of which define some important differences between Latino families and their Euro-American counterparts. The former are the focus of the present chapter.
