Generational acculturation
Generational acculturation refers to the process by which immigrant families adapt to the cultural norms of their new country over generations, often leading to a gradual shift from their original cultural identities toward the dominant culture. This phenomenon has been observed since the colonial period in the United States, where a diverse array of ethnic groups has interacted with and adapted to Anglo-Saxon cultural influences. Typically, the first generation of immigrants establishes ethnic enclaves, where they maintain their cultural practices and provide support to newer arrivals. In contrast, the second generation often becomes more acculturated, acquiring English skills and American values through education and media, which can create a cultural gap with their parents.
Further complexities arise with the third generation, which may experience a renewed interest in their ethnic heritage, seeking to reconnect with their grandparents' roots. Recent research suggests that generational acculturation is not strictly linear; it can be influenced by various factors, including socioeconomic status and societal attitudes towards diversity. Today, many newer immigrants are more likely to retain their cultural traits due to an emphasis on cultural diversity in American society. As a result, the landscape of generational acculturation continues to evolve, reflecting a dynamic interplay of cultural retention and adaptation among immigrant populations.
Generational acculturation
SIGNIFICANCE: Acculturation is defined as the changes in cultural patterns of groups when two or more ethnic and racial groups interact. Generational acculturation refers to the different degree and speed of this acculturation process depending on generations. Although assimilation and acculturation are used interchangeably in sociology and anthropology, acculturation is a part of the assimilation process.
Since the colonial period, America has received immigrants from all over the world and created a mosaic of ethnic groups of various races, religions, and national origins. However, Anglo-Saxons from England had the greatest impact on American culture, particularly in the United States’ language, religion, and cultural values. Many ethnic and racial groups have gone through voluntary and involuntary acculturation processes over time to conform to this Anglo-Saxon culture. Members of the second generation (children of foreign-born parents) are more acculturated than their parents, and members of the third generation (children of native-born parents) are more acculturated than theirs. The concept of generational acculturation assumes that the foreign cultures that immigrants bring with them will be attenuated over generations.
Generational Difference
The first generation of many immigrant groups established ethnic enclaves, such as Little Italies, Little Tokyos, Chinatowns, and Jewish communities, and provided new immigrants of the same national origin with elements of their old culture, including ethnic grocery stores, cafes, and restaurants, and protection from societal hostility. First-generation immigrants were able to function in their own ethnic enclaves without speaking English and without changing their religious faith or cultural values. These immigrants were structurally and culturally separated from each other and from the core society, thus creating what Horace Kallen called “structural pluralism” (in Culture and Democracy in the United States, 1974).
Members of the second generation (American-born children) in general, however, achieved English competence and acquired American values through the public school system and the mass media. Because of societal hostility toward immigrants who possessed cultural traits not derived from Euro-American culture, native-born children, who witnessed their parents’ hardships, tended to abandon their parents’ culture. The second generation’s relinquishment of distinctive cultural traits frequently created a gap between them and their parents, who retained the cultural values of their nation of origin.
Linear Model
Historians often cite a theory of second-generation rejection, as if there were iron-clad laws that dictated the cultural changes undergone by immigrant children. Generational acculturation tends to assume linear assimilation of immigrants to the core culture over generations. Members of the third generation (American-born children of American-born parents) are more acculturated than their parents. According to this linear model of generational acculturation, newer generations will either eventually be absorbed into Euro-American culture or contribute to creating the American melting pot.
Since the 1960s, scholars have frequently conducted research on Chinese and Japanese Americans to study generational differences in acculturation processes. Unlike most European immigrants, the first generations of Chinese and Japanese entered the mainland of the United States during a short and distinctive span of time; then, immigration was blocked. Chinese people first entered the US mainland as unskilled cheap labor in the 1860s, and their immigration was blocked by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. After the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, the demand for cheap labor attracted the Japanese, and their immigration continued until it was restricted by the Immigration Act of 1924. For both groups, the second generation was born during a rather distinctive span of time, and even the third generation can be fairly well defined by the span of years of birth. The three generations were also rather discrete birth cohorts and experienced distinctive acculturation processes in the change of cultural and behavioral patterns, in integration with White individuals, and in intermarriage with other racial and ethnic groups.
Nonlinear Model
In 1952, scholar Marcus Lee Hansen described a renewed interest in ethnicity among members of the third generation: “What the second generation tries to forget, the third generation tries to remember.” He argued that there may be internal social and psychological forces rather than external social forces that explain the persistence of White ethnicity. Members of the second generation, who observed the hardships that their foreign-born parents had experienced, tended to de-emphasize their ethnicity and cultural traits to avoid prejudice and discrimination from the larger society. Hansen found that members of the third generation, who are more acculturated in terms of English skills and American values and are free from severe discrimination, try to reconnect with their grandparents and their ethnic roots.
Ethnogenesis theory, set forth by Andrew M. Greeley in Ethnicity in the United States (1974), also argues that ethnic identity and acculturation are situational. Although newer generations of immigrants share cultural traits with the host group, they also retain distinctive characteristics. This process of rejection and maintenance of original cultural traits is situational and contextual according to an ethnic group’s nationality, mode of entrance to the United States, the political and economic climate at the time of entrance, and a host of other factors. Therefore, according to Greeley, acculturation is neither linear nor accelerated over generations.
Scholars in the late twentieth century have criticized the linear acculturation model, which assumed an Anglo-conformist perspective to analyze the acculturation process of ethnic and racial minority groups. These scholars argue that the acculturation of these groups was a forced and involuntary process for them to be accepted as members of the host society. These processes are reflected in the episodes of boarding schools for Indigenous American children, a different taxation system for Catholics, the prohibition of Spanish in public education, and so forth.
Acculturation Process for Later Immigrants
Generational acculturation of immigrants since the late 1980s differs from the abovementioned patterns. Recent immigrants tend to retain their distinctive cultural traits over generations because of the emphasis on cultural diversity in the workplace and the American educational system. The motives behind cultural maintenance are also related to the social class of recent immigrants. Immigrants who lack English skills retain their own language out of necessity, but immigrants who possess English skills and high socioeconomic status retain their language and culture out of desire. These immigrant parents hope their children will become bilingual and bicultural—able to speak two languages and live in two cultures. With an increasing number of immigrants expected in the twenty-first century and a continuing appreciation of diversity, more immigrants may retain their distinctive cultural traits.
A study conducted in the 2020s found that second-generation adolescents acculturate much more quickly than first-generation immigrants. This can create a gap between generations, leading to less family cohesion and more conflict in the home. Sometimes referred to as acculturation dissonance, this gap is often evident in the differing values and expectations between generations.
Bibliography
Chuang, Susan S., and Robert P. Moreno, editors. Immigrant Children: Change, Adaptation, and Cultural Transformation. Lexington, 2011.
Harris, Kathleen Mullan, and Ping Chen. “The Acculturation Gap of Parent-Child Relationships in Immigrant Families: A National Study.” Family Relations, vol. 72, no. 4, 2023, pp. 1748–72, doi:10.1111/fare.12760. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.
Hidalgo, Danielle Antoinette, and Carl L. Bankston. Issues in US Immigration. Salem, 2015.
Smokowski, Paul R., and Martica Bacallao. Becoming Bicultural: Risk, Resilience, and Latino Youth. New York UP, 2011.