Why do my parents have “mistrust” of other families who do not look like them? These are all questions rooted in one’s identity according to beliefs and morals that the child is beginning to sort out for themselves.
The inner crisis is ignited by the fact that when the child looks at him/herself in the mirror they see a likeness of parents, but the feeling inside approximates that of their friends and friends’ parents more than their own. “Who am I?” is a loaded question that points to all kinds of inner turmoil for the child of first generation immigrants and a question that continues to plague them as they negotiate the various stages towards adulthood.
Living in Two Worlds
Questions of “who am I?” lead many immigrant children to learn to live in bifurcated worlds. To keep peace at home, they learn the expectations, values and morals of their parents. They follow these as closely as possible and thrive on heaped praise from their parents for exemplifying good character and virtues.
The journey to this amicable seeming compromise is however long, tedious and painful. In most cases, there have been experiences of painful fallout with parents; arguments, denouncements, warnings and seemingly unfair consequences. Pain of depression and feeling alone is very common. Experiences of feeling different, hating oneself, being ridiculed and failing to fit in are also part of this journey. At the juncture they reach this point of compromise and resignation to follow the ways of the parents, for the child it is most likely a resignation to never be understood, while for the parents it is a manifestation that at last the child can see their way. Hence, it is not necessarily the amicable sense of fulfillment that it seems on the surface. Indeed, this juncture may be characterized by occasional lapses to arguments, and disregard of parental direction. To the parents this is termed as disobedience, and disrespect while to the child it is yet another fling at asserting Western individual freedom. The reality is that while the child has learnt what pleases the parents and cues in to these, he /she also has their foot in the other western world of individuality where what matters most is what he thinks and wants as long as it is not legally violating any one. For instance, many children will not argue with their parents about a certain issue being forbidden as a family value—but they will do it any way behind their parents’ backs. While general literature on identity crisis may point to similar experience with Western children, the difference is that with the Western parents, as long as what the child is involved in is not illegal, the parents believe that it is up to the child to make that decision and live with the consequences. In other words, it is okay as long as the child can amicably live with his/her own decision. There is no question for the child developing feelings of shame or guilt and therefore no particular danger to developing internal distress and psychosis based on his/her differing views with parents. The parents may express disappointment but are not as invested emotionally. For the non-western parents however, engagement in what has been forbidden as a moral value is regarded as a moral failure. Its consequences are far-reaching in effect to the larger family and even community. Due to such far-reaching effects, the consequence on the child’s sense of self is huge. In some instances, the parents not only express their disappointment but also manifest grief and despair over what they think is moral failure on the child and a parental failure on their part.
Furthermore, this sense of failure is communicated to the child if not by word, by gesture, body language and temperament of the parents. Issues of guilt and shame become a pestering part of the child’s conscience. This in turn affects the dynamics of the family system in terms of communication patterns, stress, and greater sense of doubt by the parents about their own responsibility in nurturing their child. Many parents question their own parenting styles and responsibility in child’s feelings of dissonance. Families find themselves caught in a self-defeating cycle of fluctuating confidence, uncertainty in parental expectations and standards, cycles of harmony and disharmony with teenage children, and fear of the unknown in an unknown country.
With regard to the first generation immigrant children then, the very experience of living two selves: one for the parents’ expectations and the other for the individual self can be a source of dissonance and depression. It further distances the child from experiencing a sense of continuity in their own identity. Referring to the four-stage model espoused in chapter 1, the child may find him/herself arrested in a vicious cycle between the foreclosed and the moratorium quadrants. The older the child gets and cannot move forward from these cycle, the more dissonance s/he experiences, and the more disillusioned and lost s/he feels.
Peer Pressure to Conform to Majority Culture
One of the main hallmarks for teenage identity crisis is the competing voice of peers against that of parents. This is an experience across the board whether one is Caucasian, of color or a child of an immigrant. However, what needs to be noted at this point is the unique driving force that children of immigrants experience during this period of peer pressure. A contextual scenario here is insightful. While for most of the other pre-teen children the parents are the best thing that could happen to them, the first generation immigrant child’s relationship with the parents has already been dented. Many children of immigrant families lose their admiration of parents around this age as they begin to compare their families with those of their friends. For instance, many of Hispanic families who have come to the US in search of better jobs and income to sustain their families, rely on their children as the main interpreters of the English language. Most parents are fearful of enrolling in English as Second language (ESL) for various reasons, including the fear of losing their own language by learning a new one, or the fear of being exposed to harsh immigration laws. Their children are therefore occasionally pulled out of school to help interpret for their parents at the banks, social services and even in medical matters. Even where an institution offers interpretation services, many Hispanic families will trust their children for more accurate interpretation because of the history of prejudice, discrimination and general mistrust of the majority culture. While children will obligingly offer these services to their non-English speaking parents, they begin to sense that their family is different and inferior. Their admiration of their parents compared to those of Caucasians begin to dwindle. In a similar fashion, for instance, children of African immigrants, lose their admiration of parents as they begin to sense the inferiority complex that the African parents likely manifest, an aspect associated with cultural identity development and the remnants of colonization as discussed in chapter 1 under the subtitle racial minority identity development. Even where parents are confident and courageous in the face of majority culture, the children make their own meanings about the status of parents’ heritage. After all, the society around them including social media, mission work and political rhetoric shows works of charity by the Americans, usually directed towards Africa and other third world countries. Even where parents actively teach their children and expose them to the richness of their culture either through videos, actual visits or stories, the ravages of poverty, disease, hunger and land pollution cannot escape the eye of the child. Indeed, amidst the glorious stories of countries of origin, are the realities of parents supporting their family members financially! While such gestures speak of charitable hearts of their parents to the children, the fact is not lost to the children that unlike their friends’ grandparents who spoil them with gifts and vacations and money on their birthdays, and other special occasions, theirs is a reverse. The teenagers also view their parents as un-savvy in navigating the culture they presently live in. For a teenage child whose focus developmentally is the self, this is not a welcome realization about his family. The teenager may love the parents sincerely but simultaneously experience shame in association with them and thus seek to psychologically distance themselves from the family. One can see why peer pressure for the immigrant child becomes a readily welcome alternative to the less admired parents. The need to be accepted by the peers as one who is at par becomes almost obsessive. The more this peer pressure engulfs the child, the more the child tries to seek independence from parents whom s/he views as inferior in knowledge of the American culture. Conflict and constant collision between child and parents become inevitable. The greater the constancy of such conflict the more the feelings of disillusion and dissonance to both the parents and the children, and the greater the possibility of life long rifts between them. Though the examples given here of how such adverse
