Religious/Cultural Values
For the purpose of this book and focus, Christianity will be the faith of focus given the editors’ familiarity to its spiritual impact. Yet, issues of dissonance regarding spiritual matters about children of immigrant families are not confined to Christianity. Insights of spiritual dissonance discussed here may have similar implications for Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and other world religions.
We have noted a major difference between Western Christianity and non-western Christianity. This may come as a surprise to some readers for whom the claim that Christianity is Christianity since it is premised on the teachings of the Bible. However, we also know that the Biblical teachings and mandates are contextualized by interpretation of the word. Furthermore, Christianity in the non-western world has spread mainly through oral culture than the written word. Hence, its appropriation to the moral, traditional, and cultural value makes it difficult to conclusively distinguish between what is cultural and what is religious. In most non-western contexts, religion permeates the lives of people so much so that a meaningful distinction cannot be made between that which is religious and that which is social. Mbiti, writing from the African perspective, claims, “to be human is to be religious.”29 Though speaking of the African traditional religion, this is the very understanding with which Christianity was appropriated in the life of the African, such that the line between the sacred and the secular is very thin or non-existent. Religion, and for those who are Christians, Christianity, is therefore so intertwined and ingrained in the life of the first generation African Christian Immigrant, whether he/she professes the religion or not. Hence, the values and morals which guide their being are also held with such sacred significance. The immigrant’s world is therefore perceived and experienced through the eyes of religion. Experiences are explained using religious terms and understandings. Meanings are made through religious beliefs and symbolism. This is a very different perspective from the Western analytical world where everything is first analyzed and scientifically explained.
Such interpretations and meanings have huge implications with regard to what immigrant parents teach their children and how they respond to their children’s developmental behaviors and struggles. It is for instance not a surprise to see an immigrant parent experiencing what he or she terms as disrespect from their child, resigning to an explanation that “it is the devil who is trying to attack the family.” The solution then must also be spiritual—pray! If one is not a Christian, some families will begin to wonder if they have done something wrong to their ancestors or families at home to warrant these kind of attacks. Sometime they may even voice these meanings to their children in the heat of the moment and I can only imagine what a child who does not have religion as the reference to explain the world thinks of such response to their struggles. Further insights on the effects of spiritual dissonance among first generation immigrant’s children might be regarded as moral-value issue that affects immigrant teenage identity crises. The phrase moral value in some ways captures the totality of third level identity crisis and its unique characteristics. The difference between how laws, morals and values are transacted in the West and non-western communities, lays the main foundation of critical dissonance that leads to unique identity crisis for the first generation immigrant teen and their families.
As already discussed in chapter 1, there is a distinction between laws and morals and values as the guiding vehicles of relationships in the Western and non-western communities respectively. In the West, morals and values are transmitted mostly by one’s family. In some cases, institutions such as the church and other faith-based institutions may also influence which morals and values are transmitted. Laws on the other hand are judicial and set apart from morals and values in the West. Laws are written and can be easily referenced, and cited in the judicial system. They apply to all adult members of the society and can be used to coerce required behavior. Because of their power to enforce punishment and consequences, laws in the Western world are powerful in directing behavior.
Among non-western cultures however, morals and values are the guiding standards of normality. In many cases, laws organically spring from morals and values and if a law cannot find a place within the communal moral and value standards, they could very well be dis-regarded as non-functional. They are meant to elicit feeling and emotion, and thus lead to the formation of what psychologist refer to as the super ego. Heinz Kohut recognizes that the formation of the super ego or the moral structure of our being is a transaction of the internal maturity and external impartation of guidance from parents through idealization of the parental system. In other words, the child internalizes the realistic ideals of the parents into the developing psychic structure of the super-ego. In adult personality the super-ego is the important component of our psychic organization that holds up to us our ethical and moral guide—or rather the ideals that hold us accountable to behavior. In Kohut’s words, the super-ego “leads to the building up of those aspects of the super-ego which direct toward the ego, the commands and prohibitions, the praise, scolding and punishment that formerly the parents directed towards the child.”30
The difference in the communal societies is that such impartation is not just directly from the parental system but rather a wider circle of influencers in the moral formation, including extended family and clan members. Indeed, this wide circle of influencers goes as far as to invoke the spirit world of ancestors long gone but whose heritage remains an influencing factor for the family. It is not new to hear an immigrant parent say to the child, “you must always remember that your grandpa’s spirit lives in you, live up to his name,” or something close in the name of teaching some moral value to the child.
By guiding standards of normality, morals and values thus determine normal behavior and psychosis. For instance, respecting one’s parents and seniors is one of the shared highest moral standards in the non-western world. Similarly, while the phrase “children are to be seen and not to be heard” is widely accepted in the non-western world, it is often misconstrued in the Western world to mean denying the child a right to voice or freedom. Rather it points to the expectation that the child must show his/her parents due respect. Even if the parents are wrong, the child should still find the most humble way to bring this to their attention but not blurt it out as though in the same social standing as the parent. Similarly, the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” may be conceptually used in the West, but is very practically applied in the non-western world, meaning, children can be corrected and even disciplined by any non-parental adults.
This moral–value versus legal conflicting worlds are a root for the dissonance experienced by children of first immigrant parents and leads to what we are referring to as the third-level identity crisis. The ensuing paragraphs discuss several features of the third level identity crisis as experienced by children of first generation immigrants. We wish to mention that these aspects are not necessarily exhaustive of the teenage experience since such experience varies from teen to teen and may be further varied by factors like: parental assimilation of western culture; parental adherence of spiritual faith; child’s sibling order; family location in the north America; age of child’s exposure to western world; family proximity and level of interaction with other non-western families; level of parental cultural identity and sense of self.
Identity Dissonance: Who Am I?
As stated in the general identity crisis development, one of the major questions that sparks identity crisis is the question “whom am I?” This is the question that ignites teenage exploration of family narrative, personal looks, substance, gender, etc. For the minority teenage in the US, the question has the rider of who am I as an African American, Asian American, Native American? The same rider is rarely an issue for the Caucasian teenager whose ethnicity is the default for the United States. Such questions will generally bear the aspects of race, color and history associated with one’s ancestry. For the teenage child of first immigrant parents, the question bears the third layer rider of “why do my parents (family) behave, believe, and have requirements so different from all my other friends’ parents around me, both parents of color and Caucasian? What does this make me? What makes this or that wrong when we all agree it is not illegal? With whom should I hang out? Why do my parents deter my company of friends
