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The purpose of the research reported in this book was to study intergenerational processes in immigrant Puerto Rican families. Such processes involve continuity-discontinuity, similarities-differences, family development, and intergenerational integration. They reflect two generations of Puerto Rican immigrants' life experiences and the impact of such experiences in the transmission of sociocultural characteristics.
The study found that intergenerational differences were “remarkably pervasive and strong.” In general, “the married child generation had substantially outdistanced their parents in terms of socioeconomic attributes.” From the point of view of ethnic identity, such intergenerational change was variable, however, and it took a laborious process to find the threads that would elucidate such seeming lack of continuity. The major changes occurred in socio-economic status followed by language used, changes in values, and, finally, in “the subjective elements describing self-concept and bi-cultural preferences,” the area where the least change took place.
Upon initial scrutiny, two conditions emerged which shed partial light into the inner logic of this group's ethnic identity: age at arrival to this country—which largely influenced language and ethnic self-identification—and level of education which had an intricate influence on language and also regarding values such as familism, fatalism, and modernism.
Subsequently, “what was taken first as an attribute of persons, age at arrival in New York City, in the explanation of ethnic identity, was recast in broader terms as a joint attribute of the parents and their children.” It thus became a shared early socialization context. In the same fashion, level of education was reconceptualized as similarity of educational level.
This methodological step did finally illuminate the initial puzzling picture of almost complete lack of continuity between the two generations. It became clear that when parents and children were ra