We document how the families in our study deal with family-work conflict,  family formation, and family functioning. We also build on conceptualizations of  transnationalism and difficult decisions that Mexican-American families have to make about jobs, children,  and geography. We fill gaps in the family literature that continue to neglect minority families or fail to adequately compare across families of different races/ethnicities in the same text. We show how race simultaneously compounds normal family problems and at the same time provides important insight about how families bond together throughout the life course to provide important sources of social support. We find that some family members act as "role connoisseurs" whose influence promotes the success and social mobility patterns of other members of the family.