Abstract
The example of the Ramirez family (a predelinquent Americanized daughter and her traditional Chilean father are used as an example here) appears to exemplify the challenges facing many Hispanic families in the United States. Accordingly, the Familias Unidas intervention is designed to help families like the Ramirezes. Although Claudia is not yet abusing drugs or involved in aggressive or delinquent activities, her oppositional behavior and conduct problems are clear evidence that she is at risk for these negative developmental outcomes. As in most Hispanic families with an at-risk adolescent, it is clear that the most effective way to help protect Claudia from becoming involved in substance abuse and delinquent behavior is to increase Juan's involvement in her life. Familias Unidas is a culturally specific prevention intervention for Hispanic families designed to increase three predictor variables for adolescent substance abuse prevention: parental investment, adolescent self-regulation/behavior control, and adolescent school bonding. Familias Unidas is based in ecodevelopmental theory (Szapocznik & Coatsworth, 1999), which postulates that certain factors may place adolescents at risk for substance abuse, including (a) immigrating from a culture whose values are largely incompatible with those of American culture, (b) living in a household in which the parent figures are likely to be unfamiliar with risks facing adolescents (and the corresponding demands placed on parents) in the United States, and (c) residing in a poor community (Pantin, Schwartz, Sullivan, Coatsworth, & Szapocznik, 2003; Szapocznik & Coatsworth, 1999). For this reason, in Familias Unidas, participants are selected on the basis of macrosystemic risk factors (e.g., poverty, neighborhood disorganization, and recent immigrant status) that, if not countered by protective mechanisms, can lead to problems at other levels. The findings and vignettes presented in this chapter provide some evidence that fostering communication, positive parenting, and support skills; facilitating parental connections to the school system; and creating supervisory networks with peers' parents have the potential to promote parental investment in Hispanic families. In turn, this increase in parental investment has the potential to produce gains in important domains of adolescent adjustment, such as self-regulation/behavior control. Although the original version of Familias Unidas (Pantin, Coatsworth, et al., 2003) did not significantly affect school bonding and academic achievement, refinements to the program based on our clinical and empirical results may help the program to affect this outcome. In turn, these protective factors may offset the effects of risks associated with immigration, disadvantage, cultural isolation, and parent-adolescent acculturation differences, and they may help to prevent adolescent substance abuse and delinquency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)