Long-Term Parent-Child Separation through Serial Migration: Effects of a Post-Reunion Intervention

The goal of this project was to reduce parent–child conflict and promote intergenerational harmony among Central American families who had experienced long-term parent–child separations in the immigration process. Through combining intensive case study of six families with experimental design, we show how a series of four workshops for immigrant parents and their recently immigrated adolescent children could reduce parent–child conflict and emotional distance by scaffolding intergenerational communication. Families were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) both parents and adolescent children attended workshops (full experimental group); (2) only adolescent children attended workshops (partial experimental group); and (3) no-treatment control group. The full experimental group achieved the greatest changes in communication patterns: In the posttest, parents and children in this group were more able to express negative aspects of separation and reunion; they also showed more understanding of each other’s perspective.