Conflict, Coping and Reconciliation: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families

Acculturation Discrepancies and Intergenerational Conflict in Chinese American Families

Clearing to a new land may present the need to constitute a career, learn a new language, build a new support system, and adjust to new norms of living. When people immigrate to a new country as adults, their levels of acculturation may differ from their children, who were either brought over at a young age or born in the new country. These differences acculturation (learning the new land'due south culture) and enculturation (learning the family's culture of origin) can have an impact on family unit dynamics and adjustment. Much of the literature on intergenerational conflict has centered on not-immigrant families who come up from the aforementioned culture. In this paper, I will explore the sociocultural context for emotional experience and parenting practices, how intergenerational cultural conflicts impact family dynamics, and clinical implications for working with Chinese American immigrant families.

Photograph by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

The Sociocultural Context

According to Markus & Kitayama (equally cited in Chung, 2006), emotional reality is socially constructed based on the values of the dominant discourse and collectively inherited through meanings assigned to events and behaviors. In American and other individualistic cultures, where there is an independent sense of self, people might feel positive emotions when their unique qualities are recognized and negative emotions when they are disregarded. In Chinese and other collectivist cultures, there is an interdependent sense of self that values connectedness and harmony, where boundaries betwixt self and other are less singled-out, and a person's interests are non considered separate from their family's. Being empathetic and amusing are associated with positive emotions, whereas promoting individual self-interests or causing conflict are associated with negative emotions. These differences are particularly apparent when it comes to the experience of acrimony. In individualistic cultures, anger is an expected response to being violated or harmed. In commonage cultures, anger is suppressed, as information technology is antithetical to maintaining harmony, and aggressiveness is channeled inward in feelings of shame and guilt (Chung, 2006).

There is a universal human need for love and zipper, but the mode that love is expressed and received varies based on the cultural context. Chinese parents traditionally express love through caring for their children in applied ways, while children express love for their parents by fulfilling family obligations. Children growing upwards in the Usa, who often take more exposure to American culture through media and peers than their parents, may learn to express dearest through words of amore rather than obedience and fulfilling obligations. This cultural mismatch in ways of expressing dear brings up feelings of breach, frustration, and guilt in children. As their more Americanized children may exist defiant and fail to fulfill their family unit obligations, Chinese immigrant parents might feel disappointed and that their children are non deserving of care and honey (Chung, 2006).

These cultural differences are reflected in differences in American and Chinese parenting styles, as parenting is an important way of transmitting cultural values down to future generations. In general, Chinese parenting styles are more "controlling and restrictive" than parenting styles in American households (Kim, Chen, Wang, Shen, & Orozco-Lapray, 2012). Chinese parents often expect their children to excel academically because it was adaptive in traditional Chinese society, where doing well in civil examinations was 1 of the only ways for upward mobility for the entire family. Failure in academics historically undermined stability and thus causes anxiety and anguish in parents about the hereafter and triggers an adaptive coping mechanism of businesslike problem solving, where issues are externalized rather than explored internally and emotionally (Chung, 2006). Stressors that parents face in the immigration and acculturation processes accept been shown to correlate with a decrease in positive parenting practices, indicating that these stressors might get in more than difficult for parents to maintain emotional resources needed to support their children'south developmental needs (Miao, Costigan, & MacDonald, 2018).

In Chinese culture, grandparents and other family members are traditionally extensively involved in a child's upbringing. When Chinese parents immigrate to the United states or Canada, where they often take little or no familial support systems, it'southward mutual to go along this traditional practice and send their children back to Cathay to live with grandparents or other family members. In a New York Chinatown Wellness Heart, that serves 1,500 new babies each twelvemonth, it's estimated that 10–20% of the infants are sent to live away from their parents (Sengupta as cited by Bohr & Tse, 2009). Reasons for separation are largely practical such equally lack of affordable childcare and a need for parents to develop their careers, but some parents also cite the desire to preserve Chinese cultural values and traditions in their decision. Many parents feel a mix of sadness, guilt, fright near loss of bonding, resignation that they have no choice, and a sense of sacrificing for the good of the family around the act of sending their children away (Bohr & Tse, 2009). According to Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco (as cited by Bohr, 2010), "children separated from their parents during the process of immigration have been shown to be more decumbent to depression, lowered self-esteem, and behavioral issues." In many cases, children separated from their parents volition return to their parents' care earlier starting grade school. These unlike separation events, first from the parents and then from the grandparents, will likely have effects on attachment that come into play with the ensuing family dynamics and mental health outcomes for these children (Bohr, 2010).

How Intergenerational Cultural Disharmonize Impacts Families

A literature review on Asian and Latino families shows that intergenerational cultural conflict has a negative effect on mental health and educational outcomes in children (Lui, 2015). Greater acculturative discrepancy in Chinese families, resulting from communication and cultural value differences, is correlated with higher depressive symptoms in children and mothers, higher levels of family conflict, and lower levels of family unit cohesion and satisfaction (Hwang, Wood, & Fujimoto, 2010). Chinese parents reported "uncertainty and difficulties in monitoring, socializing, and communicating with their children due to language barriers and a lack of noesis about American community" and were especially frustrated when "they perceived a large acculturation discrepancy between themselves and their children" (Kim et al., 2012).

The consensus from research on non-immigrant American families shows that intergenerational conflict does not accept a negative effect on family cohesion and offspring outcomes. In fact, these conflicts that occur during separation-individuation in boyhood have a positive long-term impact on children, allowing them to "explore their identities, develop greater autonomy, and promote parent–offspring connections, common respect, and more counterbalanced authority distribution in the family" (Koepke & Denisson as cited past Lui, 2015). While mainstream American families may feel conflict over everyday issues like chores and homework, they tended to agree on important values related to civilisation and identity. Even though disharmonize in Chinese American families might as well be about everyday bug on the surface, they reflect deeper, more serious cultural value differences betwixt collectivistic and individualistic conceptualizations of cocky (Juang, Syed, & Cookston, 2012).

In addition to everyday conflicts, there are too acculturation-enculturation specific conflicts effectually topics such as level of offspring responsibility for family unit welfare, educational and career paths, dating and marrying within the ethnic group, level of respect for authority, gender roles, level of connection to the family vs. autonomy, and more. Because Chinese culture is more restrictive for women, conflict between Chinese parents and their daughters can be more than frequent and intense. These conflicts may non be resolved by the time that Chinese American children enter adulthood and can atomic number 82 to poor adjustment in children, whereas conflicts within mainstream families generally do not (Lui, 2015). Intergenerational cultural conflict can arise and intensify when children are experiencing psychological distress. Because parents tend to rely on their culturally adaptive coping mechanisms, they tin can "rigidly apply parenting behaviors that reflect traditional Asian values of high parental dominance and hierarchy, emphasize solely on academic achievement, and use non-open communication" in response to their children's challenges. In contrast, Chinese parents of children who are not distressed tended to show more than openness and flexibility in their parenting styles (Qin as cited by Lui, 2015). This tendency has the effect of exacerbating negative mental health outcomes in children and creating greater altitude betwixt the parent-kid dyad (Lui, 2015).

A Case Case

A clinical case written report by Yeung & Chang (2003) about a Chinese American family is representative of the family dynamics and intergenerational cultural conflicts that take been mentioned in this paper. This family was referred to therapy with a Chinese American clinician after the father was arrested for physically assaulting his daughter, who just graduated from university and moved back home to live with her mother and father to salve money for graduate schoolhouse. At showtime the family minimized the incident, showing shame, desire for the incident to stay in the family, and stigma around being referred to come across a therapist. The therapist decided to focus on family dynamics rather than incident with the begetter to avoid pathologizing him and align with their collective, family-centered values.

The mother had a strict upbringing and worked hard for the family, doing well-nigh of the housework and working equally a nurse to provide for the family unit. She had difficulty communicating her needs, which resulted in resentment and anger that was suppressed and and then enacted through her tendency to try to control her daughter. The begetter fabricated the decision to immigrate to America then that their daughter could accept a better future. He left a career as a professor and had a lower level, manual labor job due to difficulties in speaking English. Although he held the position of authority in the family, his sense of cocky-esteem, which was tied to his ability to provide for his family, felt threatened. The fight that brought the family into therapy was partly caused past his need to re-assert himself as the authority, but he as well felt guilt and shame for what happened. The girl, who was more acculturated than her parents afterward living in a dorm at university, felt a sense of superiority because she perceived that she was more capable and contained than her parents.

Early on in therapy, issues revolved around acculturation differences betwixt the girl and parents, generally manifesting through conflicts betwixt daughter and mother (every bit the girl had a closer, warmer human relationship with her begetter). The daughter complained that her mother was nagging, pushy, disquisitional, and decision-making nigh the way she dressed, cooked, drove, and and so along. The mother said that the girl was loud, confrontational, and disrespectful. The daughter's directly style of confrontation and desire to assert her autonomy was viewed by her parents as "disrespectful, selfish, and even calumniating." The daughter saw her parents' efforts to propose her in her solar day-to-day life as "invasive, patronizing, and judgemental." When the father was frustrated by his chore prospects, he took his anger out mostly on his wife but also sometimes on his daughter. Conflicts in the family did not touch their work and social life, however, because they wanted to hibernate their difficulties from their friends and extended family.

The therapist implemented a number of strategies to better the family'due south ability to communicate. When forming an alliance, the therapist was conscientious to respect the hierarchical values and acknowledge the father's authority in the family unit. The therapist tried to understand their cultural perspective in a nonjudgmental way and assistance everyone voice their feelings, views, and expectations of ane another. In the stop, the daughter and father agreed to share responsibleness for some of the household chores that the mother was doing, the girl agreed to express her feelings in a more gentle way, and they all agreed to support the father in his goal of starting a business. The therapist also educated the family on American laws and values and then that they could navigate cantankerous-cultural issues easier (Yeung & Chang, 2003).

Clinical Implications

In working with immigrants families that have differences in levels of acculturation, it'south necessary to not simply mind for interpersonal dynamics but also for the cultural context of emotions and behaviors. Acknowledging strengths in the family and validating the struggles of making a new life in America can help children appreciate their parents' strengths and the therapist establish a therapeutic alliance (Chung, 2006). A strengths-based perspective can exist especially culturally relevant for "parents who felt the loss of social status every bit immigrants or ashamed that they have failed in providing the proper guidance and subject area for their children." Because emotions and meanings of behaviors are interpreted through a cultural lens, where the same behavior might be interpreted as positive or negative depending on the cultural perspective, helping clients to reframe their emotions and behaviors in the cultural context can facilitate empathy and common understanding within the family unit (Chung, 2006). A parenting class designed to improve the intergenerational relationships in Chinese families showed that educating parents on cultural differences between China and America, their child's perspective on the parental human relationship, their child's experiences of negotiating cultural differences at schoolhouse, and parenting techniques (such as active listening, construction setting, and stress reduction) resulted in an improvement in the intergenerational relationship and coherence in the family (Ying, 1999).

As in the clinical case above, much of therapy might be spent on facilitating communication and strengthening the ability for diverse family members to negotiate their needs (Yeung & Chang, 2003). A report on protective factors against intergenerational conflict in Chinese families that likewise looked at parent attachment and social support networks showed that "just open advice on the cultural differences in the family unit chastened the relationship between acculturation gap and intergenerational disharmonize" (Fan, 2012). Families might feel more comfortable knowing that intergenerational disharmonize is a normal part of the developmental process when children are adolescents (Juang et al., 2012). Chinese immigrant parents who reported more instances of disharmonize also showed an increase in positive parenting practices. Peradventure conflicts didn't come up as often if children shut down advice considering they didn't retrieve that parents would be supportive. Parents who reported more than frequent conflicts might accept changed their parenting styles later on these conflicts arose to adapt to their child's needs (Miao et al., 2018).

A report on attachment and sense of coherence among Chinese American college students found that American-born Chinese students mirrored the attachment patterns of their White American peers, where peer attachment rather than parent zipper contributed to a sense of coherence and reduction of depressive symptoms. Chinese American students who were belatedly immigrants (who came to the Us after age 12) had higher levels of parent attachment and lower levels of peer zipper relative to their peers who immigrated earlier or were American-born (Ying, Lee, & Tsai, 2011). This suggests that peer support may have a mediating effect on intergenerational cultural conflict at home for American-born Chinese children.

Conclusions

Intergenerational conflicts that occur in Chinese families during a child's adolescence can be specially intense due to their implications on fundamental cultural values and schemas (Chung, 2006). In dissimilarity to normal conflict that arises during individuation-separation in American families, these intergenerational cultural conflicts can have a lasting effect on mental health and education outcomes in children from immigrant families and continue through machismo as the cultural issues remain unresolved (Lui, 2015). Children and parents with different levels of acculturation might be expressing their needs and love in ways that are lost in translation at both the surface level of advice also equally the underlying emotional experience of events. Clinical interventions from the research were discussed, and understanding cultural context and dynamics is important for clinicians working with Chinese American families (Chung, 2006). Beyond this foundation of cultural competence, listening with cultural humility, openness, and a nonjudgmental stance is imperative in encountering and working with the unique needs of each family in therapy.

References

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