Mexican American Intergenerational Relationships Essay

Current studies suggest that intergenerational relationships (Umberson, 2002) are gradually becoming more important to Mexican - Americans (Swartz, 2009). Mexicans enjoy the intergenerational growth between first-generation immigrants and their second-generation children (Duncan & Trejo, 2011). Next of kin to their parents, the U.S.-born second generation experiences remarkable increases in English skills, educational accomplishment, and income and prefer to speak English rather than Spanish, and by the third generation most Mexican Americans no longer speak Spanish at all. (Duncan & Trejo, 2011).
A number of factors such as no health insurance, community support, fluency in English, and, and no translators that can force the acculturation development in Mexican Americans. Acculturation

is viewed as the extent to which a minority group adopts the customs, language, behaviors, and values of the majority population ( Yeo, 2009). Those who have family and peer social supports have a tendency to practice less acculturation stress and those who are experiencing high stress tend to experience fewer symptoms of mental distress (Crockett, Iturbide, Torres Stone, 2007; McGinley, Raffaelli, & Carlo, 2007; Hovey, 2000).
Many Mexican American elders have experienced life -long struggles to overcome discrimination and segregation including punishment for speaking Spanish, restaurant segregation, and job discrimination (Furman, Negi, Iwamoto, Rowan, Shukraft, & Gragg, 2009).

Additionally, the Welfare Reform legislation of 1996 brought stressors for numerous Mexican American elderly who had immigrated to the U.S. at early ages and had never applied for residency (Morawetz, 2000). History of this population in the U.S. is characterized by open conflict, social inequality, prejudice, and discrimination and these factors have greatly and dramatically shaped the sociocultural realities of the aging (Ramos & Wright, 2010).
McInnis-Dittrich (2014) states that understanding an Elders spirituality helps to understand the older adult view of the world, subsequent behavior and maintaining a sense of continuity and cohesion in order to face changes that accompany the aging process ( p, ). Many Mexican - American elders who attend church monthly, weekly, and more than weekly tend to exhibit slower rates of cognitive decline than those who do not attend church (Herrera, Lee, Nanyonjo, Laufman, & Torres-Vigil,

2009).
Social workers and mental health providers have a moral and ethical responsibility to provide effective interventions to all clients by accounting for cultural contexts and cultural values (Trimble & Fisher, 2006). Social workers, practioners, and other professionals are becoming more aware of multicultural issues and the need to improve the accessibility value of mental health services (Sue, 1998), and method of payment for individuals who have historically been oppressed and provided in the client's favored language (Griner & Smith, 2006; Sue, 1998). An assessment should be completed by the social worker and is a great way of identifying strengths and resilience Elders to solve their challenges (McInnis & Dittrich, 2014). Action plans and interventions are then developed by a multidisciplinary group. "Applying a strengths perspective to the assessment and intervention means there is a focus on helping Elders discover and employ their own strengths to help solve problems and achieve their identified goals" (McInnis & Dittrich, 2014).
Limitations this writer recognized with this literature review were there was a enormous amount of opinions about what encompasses successful cultural adaptations and some studies were diverse in the cultural composition of the intervention groups while other studies had different results.