Latino Families in America

Nancy A. Busch-Rossnagel & Maria P. Fracasso

According to the census of 2000, Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, representing about 13% of the country's population, compared with 9% in the 1990 census (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001). Dramatic changes in the composition of the Latino population in the United States present a unique opportunity for applied developmental science to examine and understand cultural differences and related diversity in patterns of behavior. Typically, however, researchers have not been sensitive to the size and diversity of the Latino population. In fact, data prior to 1988 often confused race and ethnicity (e.g., using categories of Black, White, and Hispanic), not realizing that the term Hispanic is a classification of national background and therefore Hispanics can be of any race. In addition to the confusion between race and identity, researchers have not adequately distinguished subgroups and instead have used panethnic labels, such as Research ...

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