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The old patriarchal Latino family fulfilled, and still does to a certain extent, a series of positive functions: it stimulates the educative level, social mobility and health of its members, and the development of the communities in which they live. Nevertheless, the traditional Latino family has transformed in the U.S. throughout several generations. Today, its structural flexibility with which one adapts to the new conditions of the welcoming society is accentuated. For example, women’s access to the labor market entails the transformation of masculine/feminine roles. The central importance of the family is due to the acute conscience of difficulty of economic conditions and the impact of these in the creation or exhibition to risk situations. For example, the rate of disorganization and cohabitation of the Puerto Rican families of the second generation to the continent, mainly to socioeconomic factors, has increased. But the transnational and binational family support networks and interaction have been maintained. In any case, the family concept continues being a central value in the different Latino cultures. Its nucleus is a strong affective commitment with the family life that has its expression in a variety of conduct guidelines.

The family’s role in the prevention of sexual risk behavior

Most of the theories underlying preventive intervention programs focus on evolutionary approaches and concepts, such as those of attachment or affective bonds, socialization of gender, parental implication, inter-parental conflicts, parent’s perception of their children’s conduct, intergenerational conflict, auto-concept and self-esteem, etc.

There are other important concepts of the Latino culture used like “favoritism” that demands a personal relation and not merely functional between the educator or therapist and his/her students or patients.  “Favoritism” is associated to the value of “respect,” a strong feeling of one’s own and other people's dignity.

There have been many characteristics of the family life that have demonstrated to be strong predictors of sexual risk behavior, such as the parents’ education level, the presence of one or both parents in the family, the parents’ supervision, parents’ attitudes regarding sexual life, and the communication between mother and daughter regarding the sexual life and birth control, but, without a doubt, the connection between father and child is the most important protective factor for teens and, in particular, for the prevention of drug abuse and sexual risk behavior. Based on the abundant theoretical and empirical works of Patterson, Baumrind, Kumpfer, Dishion, Spoth, Brook, Kandel, and others, Project PCC-BRIDGE of the Californian group of investigation ETR (Lezin et al., 2004) tries to show how this parent-children connection acts as a protective factor and tries to understand the factors that determine or influence this connection with the purpose of identifying those elements that can fortify it and thus the effectiveness of preventive interventions oriented to the family. I will mention, following Lezin et al.. (2004), some of the components or determining elements of the PCC: attachment/affective bonds, affection/care, cohesion, support/affective implication, communication, supervision/control, concession of autonomy, and characteristics of the mother and father.

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Source:  OpenStax, Immigration in the united states and spain: consideration for educational leaders. OpenStax CNX. Dec 20, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11150/1.1
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