Cultural Experience and Parents

Intergenerational Conflict, Crime, and Delinquency Becoming American for immigrant parents versus the second generation is something that has everything to do with leaving one's native place to integrate into another. First generation families experience that: they have those memories of the old country that they take with them. Second generation families do not have that: they have nothing else to compare their present situation to. They do not have the experience of being from any other place. To them, America is their native country.

They may still be around family members who are first generation, who remember coming over to America, who speak of the old country and remember its customs -- but the second generation identifies mainly as American -- much more so than those who come to be American after spending some of their lives as something else. The transition for immigrant parents, then, is one that is much more dramatic and meaningful because of the complexity of experience.

This paper will discuss what this means for immigrant parents and why it is different for second generation immigrant families. As Vallejo notes, the immigrant family is not conceived simply: there is no box that the family fits into that defines it. Some are able to incorporate into the American experience more smoothly and easily than others; some are not. It depends greatly on the community into which the family moves, the work that the family does, the connections it makes, the social or civic activity it undertakes.

For some, the biggest factor is education. Immigrant parents are less likely to be impacted by an American education than their children or than the second generation. The ones who grow up in the country are far more likely to be Americanized than the immigrant parents. For the children growing up in America, they define being American as normal: it is what they have always been. Conflicts can arise between the two, therefore. They can experience a conflict of culture, of values, and of ideals.

The immigrant parents can value the old way of doing things -- the way that they learned -- for example, when it comes to religion, to family life, to society and social norms; to ways of speaking, to ways of socializing, etc. Children on the other hand are likely to be cultivated by the American experience, by what they see their American friends doing.

Their values are likely to be different from their parents' and they may have different senses of the importance of religion, for example, as a result of their own unique experience growing up in America rather than in the old country. Children of immigrants in America may adopt more liberal views and values -- or ones that contrast with the morals and ethics of the parents simply because of the cultural experience that each have. Areas that can lead to intergenerational conflict include education, work, family, society, politics, and finances.

Children may view obtaining credit as a good thing while parents may frown on it. Children may adopt more liberal views on dating while immigrant parents may wish for a more traditional or conservative approach. Immigrant children are more likely to want to fit in and "be" American while parents may want to cling to their native ways and identity. Immigrant groups may not be able to quickly "become American" and that phrase has complex meanings for many people anyway.

The second generation certainly reaps benefits from being embedded in its own ethnic community: it learns traditions, customs, values, and ideals that it otherwise would not. But it also benefits from mixing and integrating with the community outside the ethnic group because in this way it can focus on incorporation and becoming one with the overall country. This process should not forced or sped up in an unnatural way. For some, it is a fairly direct process and for others it is more difficult.

It should proceed organically in however the immigrant family and community best sees it. The problem with it not proceeding at all, however, is that some second-generation youths may find the ethnic gangs to be the best place to go: they may fear integrating in with the overall American community and want to be with persons that they understand and know -- persons like themselves.

The Vietnamese youth gangs in Little Saigon, for instance, are like safe places for the second-generation youths who have never been able to integrate (Vigil, Yun, Cheng). The macrostructural factors that.