Acculturation Discrepancies and Intergenerational Conflict in Chinese American Families
Immigration to a new country may present the need to establish a career, learn a new language, build a new support system, and adapt 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 country’s culture) and enculturation (learning the family’s culture of origin) can have an impact on family dynamics and adjustment. Much of the literature on intergenerational conflict has centered on non-immigrant families who come from the same 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.
The Sociocultural Context
According to Markus & Kitayama (as 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 overlooked. In Chinese and other collectivist cultures, there is an interdependent sense of self that values connectedness and harmony, where boundaries between self and other are less distinct, and a person’s interests are not considered separate from their family’s. Being empathetic and agreeable are associated with positive emotions, whereas promoting individual self-interests or causing conflict are associated with negative emotions. These differences are especially apparent when it comes to the experience of anger. In individualistic cultures, anger is an expected response to being violated or harmed. In collective cultures, anger is suppressed, as it 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 attachment, but the way that love is expressed and received varies based on the cultural context. Chinese parents traditionally express love through caring for their children in practical ways, while children express love for their parents by fulfilling family obligations. Children growing up in the United States, who often have more exposure to American culture through media and peers than their parents, may learn to express love through words of affection rather than obedience and fulfilling obligations. This cultural mismatch in ways of expressing love brings up feelings of alienation, frustration, and guilt in children. As their more Americanized children may be defiant and fail to fulfill their family obligations, Chinese immigrant parents might feel disappointed and that their children are not deserving of care and love (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 one of the only means for upward mobility for the entire family. Failure in academics historically undermined stability and thus causes anxiety and anguish in parents about the future and triggers an adaptive coping mechanism of pragmatic problem solving, where issues are externalized rather than explored internally and emotionally (Chung, 2006). Stressors that parents face in the immigration and acculturation processes have been shown to correlate with a decrease in positive parenting practices, indicating that these stressors might make it more difficult for parents to maintain emotional resources needed to support their children’s 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 have little or no familial support systems, it’s common to continue this traditional practice and send their children back to China to live with grandparents or other family members. In a New York Chinatown Health Center, that serves 1,500 new babies each year, 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 as 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, fear about 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 prone to depression, lowered self-esteem, and behavioral problems.” In many cases, children separated from their parents will return to their parents’ care before starting grade school. These different 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 Conflict 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 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 knowledge about American customs” 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 have a negative effect on family cohesion and offspring outcomes. In fact, these conflicts that occur during separation-individuation in adolescence have a positive long-term impact on children, allowing them to “explore their identities, develop greater autonomy, and promote parent–offspring connections, mutual respect, and more balanced authority distribution in the family” (Koepke & Denisson as cited by Lui, 2015). While mainstream American families may experience conflict over everyday issues like chores and homework, they tended to agree on important values related to culture and identity. Even though conflict in Chinese American families might also be about everyday issues on the surface, they reflect deeper, more serious cultural value differences between collectivistic and individualistic conceptualizations of self (Juang, Syed, & Cookston, 2012).
In addition to everyday conflicts, there are also acculturation-enculturation specific conflicts around topics such as level of offspring responsibility for family 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 frequent and intense. These conflicts may not be resolved by the time that Chinese American children enter adulthood and can lead 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 can “rigidly apply parenting behaviors that reflect traditional Asian values of high parental authority 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 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 distance between the parent-child dyad (Lui, 2015).
A Case Example
A clinical case study by Yeung & Chang (2003) about a Chinese American family is representative of the family dynamics and intergenerational cultural conflicts that have 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 save money for graduate school. At first the family minimized the incident, showing shame, desire for the incident to stay in the family, and stigma around being referred to see a therapist. The therapist decided to focus on family dynamics rather than incident with the father 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 most of the housework and working as a nurse to provide for the family. She had difficulty communicating her needs, which resulted in resentment and anger that was suppressed and then enacted through her tendency to try to control her daughter. The father made the decision to immigrate to America so that their daughter could have 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 self-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 by his need to re-assert himself as the authority, but he also felt guilt and shame for what happened. The daughter, who was more acculturated than her parents after living in a dorm at university, felt a sense of superiority because she perceived that she was more capable and independent than her parents.
Early in therapy, issues revolved around acculturation differences between the daughter and parents, mostly manifesting through conflicts between daughter and mother (as the daughter had a closer, warmer relationship with her father). The daughter complained that her mother was nagging, pushy, critical, and controlling about the way she dressed, cooked, drove, and so forth. The mother said that the daughter was loud, confrontational, and disrespectful. The daughter’s direct style of confrontation and desire to assert her autonomy was viewed by her parents as “disrespectful, selfish, and even abusive.” The daughter saw her parents’ efforts to advise her in her day-to-day life as “invasive, patronizing, and judgemental.” When the father was frustrated by his job prospects, he took his anger out mostly on his wife but also sometimes on his daughter. Conflicts in the family did not affect their work and social life, however, because they wanted to hide their difficulties from their friends and extended family.
The therapist implemented a number of strategies to improve the family’s ability to communicate. When forming an alliance, the therapist was careful to respect the hierarchical values and acknowledge the father’s authority in the family. The therapist tried to understand their cultural perspective in a nonjudgmental way and help everyone voice their feelings, views, and expectations of one another. In the end, the daughter and father agreed to share responsibility for some of the household chores that the mother was doing, the daughter 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 so that they could navigate cross-cultural issues easier (Yeung & Chang, 2003).
Clinical Implications
In working with immigrants families that have differences in levels of acculturation, it’s necessary to not only listen 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 be especially culturally relevant for “parents who felt the loss of social status as immigrants or ashamed that they have failed in providing the proper guidance and discipline 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 mutual understanding within the family (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 relationship, their child’s experiences of negotiating cultural differences at school, and parenting techniques (such as active listening, structure 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 various family members to negotiate their needs (Yeung & Chang, 2003). A study on protective factors against intergenerational conflict in Chinese families that also looked at parent attachment and social support networks showed that “only open communication on the cultural differences in the family moderated the relationship between acculturation gap and intergenerational conflict” (Fan, 2012). Families might feel more comfortable knowing that intergenerational conflict is a normal part of the developmental process when children are adolescents (Juang et al., 2012). Chinese immigrant parents who reported more instances of conflict also showed an increase in positive parenting practices. Perhaps conflicts didn’t come up as often if children shut down communication because they didn’t think that parents would be supportive. Parents who reported more frequent conflicts might have changed their parenting styles after these conflicts arose to adapt to their child’s needs (Miao et al., 2018).
A study on attachment and sense of coherence amongst 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 attachment contributed to a sense of coherence and reduction of depressive symptoms. Chinese American students who were late immigrants (who came to the US after age 12) had higher levels of parent attachment and lower levels of peer attachment 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 especially intense due to their implications on fundamental cultural values and schemas (Chung, 2006). In contrast 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 adulthood 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 communication as well as 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.
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