a child from the breast earlier, place an infant more quickly into separate sleeping quarters, take advantage of institutionalized care that provides opportunity for both parents to work, get a child toilet-trained earlier, and use less authoritarian means of discipline. Other differences may appear later in the life course. Cultures emphasizing traditional or collectivist norms may set stricter curfews, demand obedience from teenagers, restrict social activities and monitor romantic allurements, look for family/tribal compatibility in the seeking of a spouse, expect kin-keeping from their grown children, and sanction elders to become the carriers of tradition to younger generations. The identity crisis created in immigrant children will no doubt vary from teen to teen dependent on such things as: parental assimilation to American culture, adherence to spiritual faith, sibling order, geographic location in the United States, age of the child’s exposure to the western world, family proximity and level of interaction with non-western families, and the level of parental cultural identity and sense of self.
Immigrant parents who have come from traditional cultures unaccustomed to recognizing adolescence or emerging adulthood as distinct stages of life carrying their own developmental tasks of increased individuation and autonomy may feel ill equipped to facilitate the resolution of conflict created by the clashes of culture during these years. To promote the preservation of their traditional culture that gave their own life anchoring and meaning, immigrant parents often attempt to promote traditional values and practices. After all, they reason that, that is how they were raised and they turned out well! Quite unwittingly, the host culture in this protective process can become demonized—e.g., “that corrupted American society.”11 Whereas there may be legitimacy to such cultural critiques, such brandishing creates a difficult double-bind for teenagers being raised in these families. To succumb to decadent American values can be regarded as a damnable defiance of one’s parents and heritage, as well as a denial of one’s very ontology; but to not assimilate to the host culture is to suffer feelings of isolation, abnormality, or other consequences of disaffiliation.
Ethnic identity that is more salient in traditional culture has strong components of social development that tap deeply into feelings of belongingness. Hence, ethnic exploration typically involves the process by which individuals explore, learn, and become involved with their ethnic group. By contrast, ego identity that is so cherished in Western culture operates at the individual, and psychological level. Processes of individuation or differentiation are often pitted against aspects of connectedness, belonging or integration across many domains of identity.12 In very traditional cultures, for example, a woman is not regarded as a person in her own right; rather her identity is defined by her parents when she is young, and when she becomes an adult her husband and his family redefine her identity.13 More moderate examples might be the young man who works two jobs while attending college in order to financially support siblings back home or the young woman who ends a courtship on the basis of parental disapproval. Each of these may find their Western counterparts encouraging them to relinquish such filial piety and “live their own life.” Indeed, in psychotherapy, such dispositions of connectedness to one family of origin may be mis-diagnosed as diffused relationships or dependent disorders.
Research has begun to explore how parents from traditional cultures navigate these complicated waters with their young and some helpful conceptualizations are beginning to emerge. Strategies that “prepare the young for bias” such as teaching them how to respond to discrimination or subversive value judgments may prove to be more pro-social than strategies that “promote mistrust” such as inciting fear about the potential negative consequences of interacting with others. Family conversations that center discussion on values such as equality and coexistence may facilitate higher reasoning that equips the young best for adult interaction.14
A Particular Model of Racial Identity Development (for All Minorities)
In the following section we address some of the minority cultural identity crisis and development minority children have to face with special focus on the North American context, looking through the lens of Sue and Sue’s “Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model” (R/CID Model). The model has five stages of identity development: Conformity, Dissonance, Resistance and Immersion, Introspection, and Integrative.
Sue and Sue characterize this first stage, conformity, by noting the eagerness to “fit in” that most minorities who leave their country of origin and migrate to North America feel despite bringing with them their own culture.15 Much energy may be spent on trying to assimilate into the North American (White) culture at the expense of his/her own. Interestingly, the idea of trying to “fit in” is similar to what Sue and Sue say typifies even those minorities who are born into the North America experience:
Similar to individuals in the pre-encounter stage . . . minority individuals are distinguished by their unequivocal preference for dominant cultural values over their own. White Americans in the United States represent their reference group, and the identification set is quite strong. Lifestyles, value systems, and cultural/physical characteristics that resemble White society are highly valued, whereas those most like their own minority group are viewed with disdain or may hold low salience to the person.16
As this stage is correctly named, the minority individual is aiming at developing an identity that suits the North American White cultural context. Conformity represents an absence of identity exploration. When first encountering a new culture, individuals may show no interest in actively searching for the meaning and importance of their ethnicity in their day-to-day functioning. They may uncritically adopt the values, preferences and attitudes of the majority culture, sometimes internalizing negative stereotypes of their own ethnic group held by those in the dominant society.17
The downside is that the environment is not as accommodating and nurturing of that new identity. Geographic distance and a lack of common interests tend to eliminate the likelihood of extended family from the homeland becoming natural role models for immigrant children. Parents may attempt to bridge the chasm by encouraging phone calls, showing pictures of extended kin, and storytelling, but all too often immigrant teens fall under the influence of Western sports heroes, pop culture, or political icons. Consequently, ethnic minority youth growing up in diaspora movements may be at risk of failing to achieve a secure ego identity if they simply adopt attributes imputed to them by the dominant culture. Students in this state of unexamined ethnic identity often report the poorest self-concepts.
The fact that the minority is trying to fit into a context that is not accepting creates much tension in trying to assimilate. This subjective tension propels one into a posture of what Sue and Sue term as dissonance. How can one accept him/herself as a valued and respected individual member of the society, yet have to deal with the fact of trying to fit into a cultural value system that devalues him or her, feels oppressive, and sees one as inferior and inadequate? To fit into this oppressive cultural mold, the immigrant may first deny him/herself and look up to the White cultural values and system as superior. Seeing majority culture as one to be admired and emulated, they may internalize a sense of themselves as inferior and less intelligent. Sue and Sue say about the dissonance stage:
No matter how much one attempts to deny his or her own racial/cultural heritage, an individual will encounter information or experiences that are inconsistent with culturally held beliefs, attitudes, and values. An Asian American who believes that Asians are inhibited, passive, inarticulate, and poor in people relationships may encounter an Asian Leader who seems to break all these stereotypes. . . . A Latino/a who feels ashamed of his or her cultural upbringing may encounter another Latino/a who seems proud of his cultural heritage. An African American who believes that race problems are due to laziness, untrustworthiness, or personal inadequacies of his or her own group may suddenly encounter racism at a personal level. Denial begins to breakdown, which leads to a questioning and challenging of the attitudes/beliefs of the conformity stage.18
A shift begins to occur when the person in dissonance realizes that there is something problematic about the system, not about who s/he is as an individual or about his or her cultural group. S/he becomes aware that s/he has bought into false stereotypes about minorities. The person begins to realize the numerous ways that ethnic identification
