By: Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
Cross-cultural dissonance (i.e., intergenerational conflict) occurs within immigrant families as children acculturate more quickly to the dominant United States (U.S.) culture than their parents. These young people learn the subtle nuances of English in school and many begin to embrace Western values such as freedom and individual rights, expressiveness, and emotional congruence. These values may be antithetical to their own cultural heritage.
For
example, the traditional Confucian values of family obligation and duty, deference, and emotional restraint among East Asian families may run counter to the values placed upon individualism and assertiveness found in Western society.
There
are four ways minority families accommodate to the host culture when they
migrate to the U.S. First,
if the families are not English-speaking, it is natural for
them to seek people of their own ethnicity and live among them. As long as they do not have to interact with other people beyond their cultural enclaves such as ‘‘Little Italy’’ or ‘‘Chinatown,’’ they
manage well. However, beyond their ethnic enclaves,
they may be dependent on their more acculturated
children and community leaders to help them navigate the complexities of American bureaucracy.
Second,
there are families
who assimilate themselves totally to the dominant majority. They take great
pains to extricate themselves from any aspect of their own culture. They not
only live in a White community and attend a White
church, they also do not associate with their own
people at all. They attend English classes,
learn American history, and adopt an American lifestyle and beliefs.
Third,
some immigrants who have escaped their country because of economic, political, or religious persecution, may harbor a hatred for anything that
reminds them of their past and may even refuse to speak their own language. Such extreme actions of
emotional cut-off from one’s cultural heritage have shown to be unhealthy for psychological well-being.
Sometimes immigrants in such situations find that they are not fully accepted either by their adopted
culture or by their own cultural groups. This can give rise to marginalization by both the host culture and
the individual’s own ethnic group. Families in this category suffer from identity crisis and experience
extreme cross-cultural dissonance.
Finally,
the fourth way of
acculturation is known as biculturalism or multiculturalism.
Studies have shown that the ability to function
in both cultures is the essence of cultural competence.
This requires an immigrant to be open to learning
new experiences, be willing to take risks, and be
prepared to embrace and celebrate the strengths of diversity in both their own and that of their host country.
Individual
family members do not have the same rate of acculturation. Sometimes both generations may move in the same direction with the parents acculturating
slower than the children. Even though this may seem
cross-culturally consonant, it may also give rise
to problems in the parent-child relationship, For instance, parents who are not acculturated at the same
pace can become dependent on the child to translate
documents and conversations. This role reversal in
immigrant families is sometimes referred to as a
parentification of children.
A
disconcerting situation for immigrant families is when two generations acculturate in
different directions. For instance, the parents become more
isolated from the host culture and hold on to their traditional ways, while the
children decide to assimilate fully with the
majority culture. In this case, cultural dissonance
takes place and misunderstandings can easily
result because due to the clash of cultures and differing
values that play out in the household.
Since
the school is often the focal point of multiculturalism, school personnel and
clinicians need to become
culturally aware and sensitive to the potential for
cultural dissonance between parent and student, teacher
and student, and among multicultural groups in
the classroom. It is critical that teachers are aware of the potential for cultural dissonance between themselves and
their students as well as among the generations of the family whose student is
in their classroom.
References
C.
S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School
Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, Springer
Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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