Asian American families and socialization
Asian American families encompass a diverse array of national backgrounds, including but not limited to Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Hmong, Vietnamese, and Asian Indian Americans. While it is important to avoid broad generalizations due to this diversity, certain family traits tend to be common across major Asian American groups. These families are often characterized by authoritarian structures, where parents are viewed as primary authority figures, and by an other-centered approach that prioritizes the needs of family members over individual desires. Emotional closeness, stability, and longevity in family ties are also significant, with many Asian American families experiencing lower divorce rates compared to other American families.
Socialization within these families plays a crucial role in individual well-being and adaptation to society. Strong kinship ties can help individuals share problems, potentially reducing anxiety, while established family roles provide a sense of identity and psychological comfort. However, the close-knit nature of these families may also present challenges, particularly when family expectations conflict with children's efforts to form their own identities in the broader American context. Additionally, cultural traditions such as Confucianism are often transmitted through family socialization, impacting children's educational success and integration into American society. Overall, the dynamics of Asian American family socialization have both positive and negative implications for individuals navigating their cultural identities.
Asian American families and socialization
SIGNIFICANCE: Socialization and family relations in Asian American families are often different from what they are in other American families. This may create a generation gap between children, who identify with the forms of behavior and attitudes found in the larger society, and adults. Family styles may also affect the extent to which children socialize with members of other racial and ethnic groups, and they can affect mobility in American society.
The category “Asian American” includes people from a wide variety of national backgrounds, including Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Hmong, Vietnamese, and various Asian Indian Americans. Generalizations about such a diverse category are likely not to apply to many Asian American groups or individuals. Still, there are some common family traits among the major Asian American groups that can affect socialization. Families in many of the major Asian American groups are usually characterized as authoritarian, other-centered, close-knit, long-lasting, and stable. The authoritarian character of these families means that parents, especially fathers, are seen as authority figures who are to be obeyed with few, if any, questions. Researchers and theorists describe Asian American families as other-centered because family members are expected to put the needs and wishes of others in the family ahead of their own needs and wishes. These families are said to be close-knit because the cultural values of many Asian groups encourage a high degree of emotional intimacy among family members. They are long-lasting because offspring retain these intimate ties to parents and siblings throughout life. They are described as stable both because of the long-lasting nature of family ties and because most Asian groups show divorce rates substantially lower than those of other Americans.
Family Socialization and Individual Well-Being
Anthropologist Francis Hsu, an authority on the Chinese family, has argued that strong kinship ties in Asian American families enable individuals to share problems with other family members. Thus, Hsu maintains, these individuals tend to suffer less anxiety than people in more loosely organized American families. George DeVos, in studies of the Japanese family, has emphasized the importance of strongly established family roles in enabling Asian Americans to adapt to the world around them. DeVos argues that most American families have relatively weak attachments to roles, encouraging their members to be themselves rather than to act out stereotypical roles of father or mother or son or daughter. Roles, though, provide individuals with a sense of identity, so that adhering to roles can actually be a source of psychological comfort and support for individuals.
Psychologist Stanley Sue, one of the foremost experts on Asian American psychology, has argued that patterns of socialization in Asian American families can have both positive and negative consequences for individuals. He maintains that, while research does support the view that relations tend to be close-knit in Asian American families, the very closeness of these families can create problems. This closeness is especially likely to create problems when it interferes with the needs of children to establish a sense of their own identities in the larger American society. Similarly, the strong roles in Asian American families, particularly the authoritarian roles of fathers, may conflict with the ideas and expectations children learn outside the family.
Family Socialization and American Society
Family socialization affects the adaptation of children to their society as well as their psychological well-being. Because children in modern times usually enter the economic and political institutions of their society by means of education, most theories and research on socialization and societal adaptation concentrate on how family socialization affects schooling. Asian cultural traditions, such as Confucianism, are often believed to be passed from parents to children through family socialization. Psychologist Nathan Caplan and his colleagues maintain that Vietnamese American families teach their children cultural values of hard work and respect for authority, enabling the children to do well in American schools and society.
Sociologists Min Zhou and Carl Bankston III have claimed that the relative success of many new Asian groups in American society is due, in part, to the close, cooperative relations in families. They have also argued that new Asian immigrants often settle in some of the nation’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, so family and community socialization must shield children from the negative influences that surround them. Shielding children from surrounding neighbors of other ethnic or racial backgrounds, however, can often hinder the development of understanding between Asian Americans and members of other groups.
A number of researchers and social workers have pointed out that ethnic gangs have emerged among young people in a number of Asian American groups. It is often argued that the gap between the culture of the parents and the culture of the children makes communication and socialization difficult, leading to inadequate socialization.
Bibliography
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Choi, Yoonsun et al. “Upholding Familism Among Asian American Youth: Measures of Familism among Filipino and Korean American Youth.” Adolescent research review vol. 6,4 (2021): 437-455. doi:10.1007/s40894-020-00148-9. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.
Ng, Franklin. Asian American Family Life and Community. New York: Routledge, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
Sue, Stanley, and James K. Morishima. The Mental Health of Asian Americans. San Francisco: Jossey, 1982. Print.
Sung, Betty Lee. The Adjustment Experience of Chinese Immigrant Children in New York City. Staten Island: Center for Migration Studies, 1987. Print.
Wong, Angie, Y. Joel Wong, and Cecilia S. Obeng. “An Untold Story: A Qualitative Study of Asian American Family Strengths.” Asian Amer. Jour. of Psychology 3.4 (2012): 286–298. PsycARTICLES. Web. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.
Zhou, Min, and Carl L. Bankston III. Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York: Sage, 1998. Print.