by Jeff Wright of The Register-Guard
It’s no secret that one of the keys to good parenting is keeping close tabs on your kids, their friends and their whereabouts.
But what if you’re a parent who speaks only Spanish, with bilingual kids who hang out with English-speaking friends? How do you stay alert to drug or other problems then?
Those are the kinds of questions that researchers at the Oregon Social Learning Center hope to answer in a potentially ground-breaking study involving 72 Latino families.
The Latino Youth and Family Empowerment Project, funded with a $375,000, three-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will offer specialized parent training to families with children identified as being at risk for drug use and related problems.
Despite the reputation of Latino families as close-knit, they have rarely if ever benefited from parent training programs customized to their cultural needs and understanding, said Charles Martinez, the project’s lead researcher. The disorientation that comes with living in a new society, meanwhile, can leave Latinos feeling powerless in many ways, including as parents.
“In the most fundamental way, what we’re doing is reinforcing the idea that parents have a massive influence on their kids’ development,” Martinez said. “What we’re trying to do is build them up, remind them of the critical role they play.”
To measure the project’s effectiveness, only half of the families will receive the parent training. The study will be divided between families with foreign-born children and families with U.S.-born children. The study also will focus on families with kids at risk for drug use.
Latino youths are no more likely than other kids to use drugs, but they may be at greater risk of other consequences tied to drug use, such as school failure, incarceration or poor health, Martinez said.
About 11 percent of Latino youths between ages 12 and 17 reported using illicit drugs in the previous 30 days, according to a 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. That parallels the percentage found among white youth in a 2000 study.
Ironically, immigrant Latino youths are more susceptible to drug use in the United States than in their country of origin, Martinez said.
“Many (Latino) kids don’t even know what many of these substances are,” he said. “But the more exposure they get to their host society, the more they take on the risks of living in that society. Substance use is an epidemic in the United States, not in Mexico.”
Recruitment of families for the study has just begun. It can be a tricky process, asking Latinos to fill out lengthy questionnaires or agree to have family interactions videotaped – social research tools that are new to many of them.
In an effort to build trust, researchers have made home visits to prospective families. “That’s not typical of research study, but it’s important they get to know us,” Martinez said.
Betsy Ruth, the project’s coordinator, said the initial response has been positive.
“Most of the people we’ve talked to are pretty excited to contribute because they recognize there are a lot of things in society not set up for the betterment of Latino families,” she said. “It won’t be hard to get people interested in this project.”
Ruth said her bigger concern is finding families who will be here for the duration of the study – a daunting task with such a migratory population.
Carmen Urbina, executive director of Centro Latino- Americano, said the social service agency is thrilled about the study.
“We have so many clients craving to know how to raise their children in a cultural limbo,” she said.
“They’re wanting answers, like any parent: ’How do I talk to my children about drugs, about sex, about HIV? How do I raise children without an extended family of grandparents like we did in Mexico?’”
The learning center has initiated several related studies since founding its Latino Research Team in 1999. “They’ve created a think tank for Latino issues,” Urbina said. “It’s the best-kept secret of Eugene.”
William Vega, a renowned researcher on Latino issues who works at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, said the study could have a profound effect in a country where the Latino population is growing four times as fast as the population generally.
(In lane County, Martinez and other advocates place the Latino population at 30,000 – approximately double what the 2000 census estimates.)
“We have a very large number of families with children from Mexico and other countries filtering in all over the country,” Vega said. “South Carolina, Nebraska, you name it – they’re immediately putting children into the system that’s not ready for them.”
Vega, a consultant to the project, said the study could unleash hard-to-get research dollars for similar projects across the country.
“There’s a lot riding on this, there really is,” he said.
“What they’re doing will be a national model if they can pull it off.”
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2002, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.