Session: The Importance of Parents' Wellbeing, Parenting, and Other Family Practices in the Current Socio-Political Immigration Context (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Immigration significantly impacts families, altering familial structures, cultural identities, and socioeconomic statuses. This symposium addresses the need to understand how these changes influence parents' well-being, parenting practices, and parent-child relationships, offering insights for research and practice. Employing a collaborative approach aligned with the conference theme of Strengthening Social Impact through Collaborative Research, our symposium will present five presentations assessing family relationships, parents' individual well-being and needs as a basis for their parental roles, parenting practices, and relationships in immigrant families.

With recent shifts in immigration policies and societal attitudes, it is imperative to explore how these factors shape immigrant parents' wellness and their parenting experiences. Through qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this symposium provides a comprehensive exploration of immigrant parents' experiences and their children. Presentations will capture nuances within this evolving context, discussing implications for research, policy, and service provision, including culturally tailored interventions to enhance the well-being of immigrant families.

This symposium serves as a platform for interinstitutional dialogue and knowledge exchange, offering insights from studies across the country. By elucidating these dynamics, it contributes to both scholarly discourse and practical interventions, striving towards the empowerment and support of immigrant families amidst the challenges of the immigration journey.

The symposium will begin with a qualitative examination of parent-child relationships after experiences of migration and post-resettlement in the US, followed by another qualitative exploration of the impact of family separation and reunification on Central American parents. The third presentation will describe the results from a quantitative study on the association of immigration stress, family dynamics, and parental stress in a national survey. Next, we will hear results from a qualitative study centering on the voices and lived experiences of immigrant families on the importance of family in light of regional specific socio-political factors. Our symposium will close with a fifth presentation detailing the collaborative methods used in a study exploring the parenting experiences of former Unaccompanied Refugee Minors from Central America.