Intergenerational Conflicts
Intergenerational Conflicts In all kinds of ethic groups in the United States, Asian Americans such as Chinese and Indians are considered as the largest immigrant group. Although conflicts are inevitable between parents and children, immigrant families face more challenges in intergenerational conflicts, and there are several reasons. First of all, the disagreement of different values and assumptions between two cultures mainly cause family conflicts. For Chinese immigrant parents, they follow the Confucian values, which emphasizes filial piety, hard work, service and achievements in education and occupations as standards in lives (Foner, p. 21); however, children who are born and raise in American culture, seek more independence and freedom for their own aspects, and majority results against their parents. Moreover, issues of discipline and respect may easily create gaps between generations. For the second generations, who are reared in American culture and refuse to follow the rules and origin culture, consider their parents as old-fashion and arrogant, and “ [t]he parents, with their (sometimes idealized) old world standards, often think their children are rude and disrespectful ” (Foner, p.5). Besides, exceeding expectations and inabilities of language interpretation for some immigrant parents also struggle the relationships with their children (Lieber, p.35). Even though intergenerational conflicts in immigrant families in the U.S. may weaken the relationship between parents and children, as children grow up as adults, those conflicts actually help strengthen the relationship in the long run. Intergenerational conflicts may cause negative consequences for both parents and children. Discrepancies of warmth from parents may influence the attitude of immigrant children in a negative way. For example, some Asian immigrant parents such as India are not very expressive with their children physically and emotionally, and this makes Asian American adolescents, who
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