Latinos represent the largest and fastest growing minority population in the history of the United States. More than one-third of U.S. Latinos are 18 years of age or younger, a proportion that is predicted to grow exponentially over the next several decades. Unfortunately, U.S. Latino youth have become connected to a host of negative adjustment outcomes including internalizing symptomatology (i.e., depression, anxiety, somatization). An increasing body of research has identified individual, family, and external risk and protective factors to be predictive of internalizing symptomatology in this population. A review of this literature yielded that family-related variables appear to be most essential in conferring risk and protection against internalizing symptoms in Latino youth. However, in order to understand and eventually prevent internalizing symptomatology in U.S. Latino youth, researchers need to explore potential experiences in addition to factors that account for their higher susceptibility. One widespread but understudied family activity performed by U.S. Latino and other ethnic-minority youth is language brokering – readily interpreting and translating between linguistically and culturally different parties without formal training.

The purpose of the current investigation was to examine relationships between language brokering, family-related variables, and internalizing symptomatology in U.S. Latino youth. Twenty-four Latino seventh-grade students from an inner-city public school in New Haven, Connecticut were administered a demographic questionnaire, the Language Brokering Scale (LBS; Buriel et al., 1998; Tse, 1995a), and the internalizing behavior scale of the Child Behavior Checklist-Youth Self-Report (CBCL-YSR; Achenbach, 1991). A family subscale was developed and incorporated into the LBS, which permitted a more acute analysis of the study relationships. Findings did not yield relationships between language brokering and internalizing symptomatology, but did reveal significant correlations between different brokering domains, brokering and family-related variables, father-participant closeness and internalizing levels, and certain participant demographic characteristics and internalizing levels. The results demonstrate the importance of examining family and demographic variables in language brokering and/or internalizing behavior research with U.S. Latino youth, and suggest that brokering may provide these youth and their parents a unique opportunity to strengthen their relationship. Implications and recommendations for future research, academic and clinical professionals, and program development are discussed.