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—Anne Kiome Gatobu

In order to understand the third level identity crisis of children of first generation immigrants, it is important to have some base knowledge of both their experience in the social realm and at home, as well as that of their parents. This chapter’s objective is to help the reader get into the world of these families from both the perspective of the first generation immigrant parents and that of their children. It is therefore divided into two parts for ease of discussion, first to discuss the journey of parents navigating a new culture and second how such navigation translates into their parenting roles and the response of their children.

Parents Navigating a Foreign Culture

Ultimate Cultural Shock—Loss of Status

Speak to any immigrant person and they will each have an experience of some sort regarding cultural shock. For many, it is the seasonal changes and ensuing extreme weather changes (especially if coming from equatorial climates where the days are generally the same throughout the year). For these immigrants, the changes of four drastically different seasons are a phenomenon to which one never really gets used. The idea of snow and chilling icy cold is not one to which these immigrants really acclimate. Yet for others, cultural shock is experienced in the foreign foods they have to get used to, and the reality that familiar foods often found in specialty stores are five times as expensive in the US as they are in their home country. For instance, even after living in the US for seventeen years, I still have trouble buying a mango for $1.49 when I remember that fifty cents could buy a fifty-pound sack full of mangoes in Kenya! The same case applies to kale and collard greens. Greens, in Kenya acquired a popular name “sukuma wiki” which means “stretching the week” because of its availability in abundance and therefore cheapness—indeed a week stretcher for families with meager financial means. One can imagine the shock it elicits with the conversion of its cost of about $1.29 in the US to the Kenyan shilling. Other immigrants, experience cultural shocks in the form of language differences. One may have come from a country where English is an official school language and therefore believed themselves to have the command of the language—only to land in the US and realize they have a deep accent that most people complain about and sometimes one is relegated to not knowing English. This realization comes with an undercutting of one’s confidence in communication in public especially among proficient English speakers. While these and other experiences are unique to geographical location and social context, as well as the experience of the immigrant, the one most cited by people as the greatest and most shocking is the loss of social status. This is especially pertinent to the experience of immigrants from Africa and Asia whose main reason for immigrating to the US is pursuit for higher education. Consider the following scenario for a moment which may give insight into what constitutes loss of social status: Most immigrants in pursuit of educational opportunities are generally the cream of their society in their home country either by virtue of higher education level which earned them recognition by a Western institution, or by virtue of coming from families with financial means. Many such immigrants also happen to be second career persons who have already been serving in recognized institutions and positions in their home country. They have been living in decent homes, and their kids have been attending private schools, which are affordable to the middle-class since public education is usually not desirable. Most of these people are regarded as dignified leaders in their communities. In most cases, they have live-in servants who cater to all the household needs, not necessarily because they are very rich but because it is the norm: servants are affordable and provide a necessary security against burglary. Some, especially married men, do not launder or iron their own clothes, or cook their own meals, or wash dishes.

Yet, because of the popular exposure to the West as a land of opportunity and the general mindset of the West as more developed and a first world country, the prospect of living and making an even better life in the first world captures their excitement. That is, until they arrive. In a couple of weeks reality sets in. One pastor whose experience was the typical immigrant loss of status shock captured the experience in these words:

“At home I was respected, catered to by everyone around me, rubbed shoulders with heads of the state as their pastor, and in one month in the US I became a poor beggar who relied on the wishes of my sponsors. My children could not understand why they had to share a bedroom in our two-room school apartment when at our home in Africa they each had a huge room with en-suite bathroom.”

The loss of status is not only associated with loss of material resources but also, and maybe more detrimental, the loss of a place of honor in the society and its ensuing impact on the ego and sense of self. The community leader who had an administrative assistant and hundreds of workers under his supervision, now becomes a student who according to immigration requirements can only work in the educational institution that sponsors his Visa. Unfortunately, the educational institution, because of limited work-study positions and institutionalized prejudice, only has the lowest of jobs open to international students. So the corporate manager or esteemed pastor in his country now finds himself/herself a cook in the school kitchen, or a custodian to clean toilets. Except for the few who come on a full scholarship (usually one international student per year or in some institution every two to four years), all international students somehow have to take the “lowest” paying job within the institution to survive! Men from these communities have the hardest time transitioning to these statuses because of the high esteem with which they are held back in their countries of origin. Women make the transition easier because of their greater resiliency and coping resources, developed from years of demand for their versatility and gender discrimination in their own countries.

Gender Roles Adjustments

Many men will therefore try to hold onto their status at least in the home where they can still wield some power. In many situations, this also becomes a battlefield with wives who, now without help of house servants, are overwhelmed and demand the fair share of responsibilities from their husbands. If the man was raised very traditionally with regard to gender expectations, the very necessity to be involved in the daily affairs of the home as cooking, cleaning, or changing diapers becomes yet another blow to his manhood. The impact of loss of status ripples through the whole family system: greater conflict between spouses leads to emotional withdrawal and depression, making them emotionally unavailable to each other at a time when they really need each other because of lack of meaningful community. The less supportive of each other they become, the less emotionally available they are to the nurture of their children. The more their status is eroded both at home and in society, the less confident they feel, and the more they mirror insecurity to their children.

It does not help the situation when generally the American society favors the woman of color over their men because of the stereotypical association of crime and violence with men of color. Often this translates to greater opportunities for the immigrant wife rather than her husband in terms of finding jobs, scholarships or promotions—yet another blow to the status for the man!

Challenges of Immigration Status

The passage to the US in recent years for most first generation immigrants is gained either in pursuit of education, through the green-card lottery, via an application for an HB-1 work visa for skilled profession labor, or through illegal immigration via the borders. Visas have their own specific requirements and time limits to maintain one’s legal status. Hence, each passage poses its own set of challenges to the individual and family in general. For instance, those families that come on student Visa, usually have the F-1 or the J-1 visa. The spouse would then have a F-2 or J-2 Visa and is not allowed to work at all under the under this visa status, while the spouse with an F-1 Visa can only work the lowest paying jobs in their educational institution. In a country where life is generally expensive, this means the family must live below poverty level with very few forms of social help. Even when help is available, most immigrants are not aware of these resources. Some, even though aware, choose not to access it because of shame associated with coming from a place where they could adequately provide for their family.

The J-2 Visa has more leeway in terms of accessing work but even then, the holders experience a blow to their sense of self because the skills which may have been well respected in their countries are not recognized when they migrate. I am reminded a friend who was a well-accomplished dentist in Kenya, owning his own dental clinic and a staff of nine. In his country he was renowned, generally referred to as “Daktari” (Doctor)—one of the highest titles in the community. He had just lost his wife and wanted to give his children a new start by migrating to the United States. He followed all the proper channels thinking that when he got here he could easily get a job with his almost twenty years of dental experience. His first big shock was to discover that his whole training and experience was equivalent to zero years in the US. To even qualify to work as a dental hygienist or assistant he would have to go back to school. He bit the bullet and started a journey of seven years in dental school. The irony is that during his residency, the instructors usually looked up to him for insights and advice when faced with challenging dental work. Today, he owns three clinics in the U.S.A.—an accomplishment that required a long, humiliating journey. On the same vein, I met a lady who migrated after marrying her spouse who was already living in the US. In her country of origin, she had risen to a managerial position in one of the largest banks in her native country. When she migrated she expected to easily get back into her banking line since she had an undergraduate and a Master of Arts degree in banking and economics, only to realize that her degrees meant nothing in the USA. She could not even get a job as a teller in a bank because she was told she was over-qualified.

There is the also the plight of those who have no legal status because their Visa had expired or because they came without more permanent papers. Their challenge is even worse because they have to take jobs that are paid under the table and below minimum wage to support their families. They are constantly in hiding and must strictly instruct their children on how to avoid the law. The children are aware of their precarious position but must wrestle with the existential questions of “why them?” The children find themselves in constant dissonance about themselves and their families, noting the differences in social and economic status of families that surround them. The school system allows their children to be enrolled—but only through high school. After high school, no college will enroll their children. I am reminded of a family in a small town in Central Nebraska whose parents were some of the sweetest, most abiding citizens I knew. The small community loved them because they were helpful and polite. They had lived in this community for a long time but always took care not to get too close to anyone for fear that they might discover that they did not have papers. The wife always expressed how much she would have loved to go to the community college close by but could not. When the son, one of the most obedient and smart kids in the school, turned sixteen, I asked naively if he was excited that he could now drive. His mother was in tears and said he cannot get a driver’s license. I understood exactly what she meant. The son lived through being taunted for not driving by his fellow classmate who could not be told the truth. Then when he completed high school, he had to face the fact that he could not enroll in college like his friends. How can anyone say young people are on the same playing ground and should just apply themselves? There are tons of stories of varied life experiences that tell us status matters in the mental, spiritual and economic welfare of first generation immigrant children.

Response to Prejudice

For most immigrants to the United States color and race have never been an issue. In fact, most report that they were not aware of their racial color until they had to fill out the immigration entry form at their point of entry. I remember not filling anything in on that field of the form because I had never described myself or even known that people are classified by color!

In cultural identity literature, this phenomenon has been well articulated by T. L. Cross26 in the minority cultural development model. Unlike the normal minority cultural development that begins for minority Americans at a very early age, when they begin to ask the question of “who am I?” in a multicultural world, the immigrant does not begin this process until they have come to the US and are socially defined as a minority person of color. The obvious response of the immigrant is to attempt to conform to the majority culture—a natural remnant of identity in colonialism where the European is always considered superior due to technological and industrial advancement.

In time, this response changes as the raw experiences of racism and prejudice begin to encroach on the immigrant. For some who remain in this conformity stage to fit in and gain the benefits of conforming to the majority culture, there is a sense of repressing their needs and expressions. There is a sense of almost living an imposter’s life foreign to who they truly are. Enduring, false humility and amicability with the majority world, while allowing their real selves to emerge only in the familiarity of their fellow ethnic friends and family, characterize such a life. One may call it a “double-life” to distinguish it from the pathological label of bi-polarism. For others who manage to move through the stages of cultural identity development to the Integrative Awareness stage, the journey is long, arduous and many times painful. The journey is characterized by typical developmental symptoms associated with the in-between stages of Dissonance, Resistance & Immersion, and Introspection. Some of the indicators of these stages include:

Strong Need to Maintain Cultural Traditions

Many immigrant families will voice the need to maintain cultural traditions. I call this a “need” because of its function to fill a gap that has been created by the experience of lack of belonging through prejudice. Threat to the sense of self leads to a psychological drive to retain a sense of self-continuity by retrieving to a secure base or a holding environment.27 Idealizing and maintaining cultural traditions is a secure base that is easily accessible to an immigrant in a foreign land. It is the retraction to that which is familiar—like food, dressing, or worship.

Sue and Sue, writing about social enclaves and maintenance of cultural traditions states that many immigrant families find that holding onto their cultural traditions gives them a source of identity in a context that threatens to rob them of identity.28 There is a familiarity that feeds the psychological need to belong when one can cook meals as they always did at home or when they speak their language.

While on the conscious level this may be deemed as a valuation of their own culture above the foreign culture, its function to feed the threatened sense of self should not be underplayed. Cathecting to this need can become detrimental to children when parents demand that children appreciate these traditions as much as they do. Such demands overlook the fact that these traditions may mean absolutely nothing to children who are growing up in the western context!

For many families, maintaining their cultural traditions becomes almost an obsession to contrast the feeling of insecurity in the foreign majority culture. For instance, many parents will simply ignore the Western developmental stages of being sixteen and beginning to date, or turning eighteen and being defined as an adult, demanding that their children pattern their parents’ development. I remember thinking how absurd it would be for me to see my sons holding hands and kissing at sixteen! Those are things that if we engaged in at that age in our African context, they were not meant for the parents to even know! I have also never been comfortable displaying public affection for my husband or receiving affection from him in public because that is just not African, especially not in front of my children.

Displays of affection adored in the West as an expression of love, can easily be termed as crossing of boundaries between parents and children or age groups in Kenyan culture. The response of most families to such cultural expression is a resolution to deepen their commitment to maintain their traditions. Such strict worldviews and age demarcations limit the extent of what one is able to do for recreation with their teen and young adult children. For instance, for many parents it becomes increasingly difficult to go to the movies with their teen children because of fear of the movie having nudity and other age inappropriate language and scenes!

Social Enclaves—Depleted Communal Life

When the immigrant person gets re-defined by the new society as having less value and status sometimes with ridicule and non-appreciation of their giftedness, they, like any other human being, retreat to their social enclaves. In other words, they tend to only socialize in circles where they feel comfortable and appreciated. For most immigrants, this means their social circle is their fellow immigrants usually from the same country/continent. These social enclaves often breed a psychological bias where everything that is foreign in the new culture is de-valued and everything that is familiar and culturally accepted is cherished and protected. To cherish and protect may indeed require the formation of select groups of people where one can truly be oneself and relaxed, while the other (majority or even minority groups that are unlike the self) may be seen as untrustworthy. It is not uncommon to hear children of first generation immigrants who are at various identity stages wondering why their parents do not associate with other parents or frequent social hangouts as do parents of their friends in the majority culture. Parents may associate with majority culture friends either through workplace, church and other necessary social relationships, but these hangouts are essentially different in terms of psychological safety emotional freedom, and other qualitative indicators of open relationships. In more extreme situations, the immigrant family becomes socially isolated especially in geographical areas where they have less contact with their own country people. Their children are essentially caught in between this dichotomy of social clusters and can easily find themselves isolated because they do not necessarily fit in the parents’ social enclaves and yet do not fully belonging in the majority culture.

Integrated Religious/Cultural Values

For the purpose of this book and focus, Christianity will be the faith of focus given the editors’ familiarity to its spiritual impact. Yet, issues of dissonance regarding spiritual matters about children of immigrant families are not confined to Christianity. Insights of spiritual dissonance discussed here may have similar implications for Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and other world religions.

We have noted a major difference between Western Christianity and non-western Christianity. This may come as a surprise to some readers for whom the claim that Christianity is Christianity since it is premised on the teachings of the Bible. However, we also know that the Biblical teachings and mandates are contextualized by interpretation of the word. Furthermore, Christianity in the non-western world has spread mainly through oral culture than the written word. Hence, its appropriation to the moral, traditional, and cultural value makes it difficult to conclusively distinguish between what is cultural and what is religious. In most non-western contexts, religion permeates the lives of people so much so that a meaningful distinction cannot be made between that which is religious and that which is social. Mbiti, writing from the African perspective, claims, “to be human is to be religious.”29 Though speaking of the African traditional religion, this is the very understanding with which Christianity was appropriated in the life of the African, such that the line between the sacred and the secular is very thin or non-existent. Religion, and for those who are Christians, Christianity, is therefore so intertwined and ingrained in the life of the first generation African Christian Immigrant, whether he/she professes the religion or not. Hence, the values and morals which guide their being are also held with such sacred significance. The immigrant’s world is therefore perceived and experienced through the eyes of religion. Experiences are explained using religious terms and understandings. Meanings are made through religious beliefs and symbolism. This is a very different perspective from the Western analytical world where everything is first analyzed and scientifically explained.

Such interpretations and meanings have huge implications with regard to what immigrant parents teach their children and how they respond to their children’s developmental behaviors and struggles. It is for instance not a surprise to see an immigrant parent experiencing what he or she terms as disrespect from their child, resigning to an explanation that “it is the devil who is trying to attack the family.” The solution then must also be spiritual—pray! If one is not a Christian, some families will begin to wonder if they have done something wrong to their ancestors or families at home to warrant these kind of attacks. Sometime they may even voice these meanings to their children in the heat of the moment and I can only imagine what a child who does not have religion as the reference to explain the world thinks of such response to their struggles. Further insights on the effects of spiritual dissonance among first generation immigrant’s children might be regarded as moral-value issue that affects immigrant teenage identity crises. The phrase moral value in some ways captures the totality of third level identity crisis and its unique characteristics. The difference between how laws, morals and values are transacted in the West and non-western communities, lays the main foundation of critical dissonance that leads to unique identity crisis for the first generation immigrant teen and their families.

As already discussed in chapter 1, there is a distinction between laws and morals and values as the guiding vehicles of relationships in the Western and non-western communities respectively. In the West, morals and values are transmitted mostly by one’s family. In some cases, institutions such as the church and other faith-based institutions may also influence which morals and values are transmitted. Laws on the other hand are judicial and set apart from morals and values in the West. Laws are written and can be easily referenced, and cited in the judicial system. They apply to all adult members of the society and can be used to coerce required behavior. Because of their power to enforce punishment and consequences, laws in the Western world are powerful in directing behavior.

Among non-western cultures however, morals and values are the guiding standards of normality. In many cases, laws organically spring from morals and values and if a law cannot find a place within the communal moral and value standards, they could very well be dis-regarded as non-functional. They are meant to elicit feeling and emotion, and thus lead to the formation of what psychologist refer to as the super ego. Heinz Kohut recognizes that the formation of the super ego or the moral structure of our being is a transaction of the internal maturity and external impartation of guidance from parents through idealization of the parental system. In other words, the child internalizes the realistic ideals of the parents into the developing psychic structure of the super-ego. In adult personality the super-ego is the important component of our psychic organization that holds up to us our ethical and moral guide—or rather the ideals that hold us accountable to behavior. In Kohut’s words, the super-ego “leads to the building up of those aspects of the super-ego which direct toward the ego, the commands and prohibitions, the praise, scolding and punishment that formerly the parents directed towards the child.”30

The difference in the communal societies is that such impartation is not just directly from the parental system but rather a wider circle of influencers in the moral formation, including extended family and clan members. Indeed, this wide circle of influencers goes as far as to invoke the spirit world of ancestors long gone but whose heritage remains an influencing factor for the family. It is not new to hear an immigrant parent say to the child, “you must always remember that your grandpa’s spirit lives in you, live up to his name,” or something close in the name of teaching some moral value to the child.

By guiding standards of normality, morals and values thus determine normal behavior and psychosis. For instance, respecting one’s parents and seniors is one of the shared highest moral standards in the non-western world. Similarly, while the phrase “children are to be seen and not to be heard” is widely accepted in the non-western world, it is often misconstrued in the Western world to mean denying the child a right to voice or freedom. Rather it points to the expectation that the child must show his/her parents due respect. Even if the parents are wrong, the child should still find the most humble way to bring this to their attention but not blurt it out as though in the same social standing as the parent. Similarly, the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” may be conceptually used in the West, but is very practically applied in the non-western world, meaning, children can be corrected and even disciplined by any non-parental adults.

This moral–value versus legal conflicting worlds are a root for the dissonance experienced by children of first immigrant parents and leads to what we are referring to as the third-level identity crisis. The ensuing paragraphs discuss several features of the third level identity crisis as experienced by children of first generation immigrants. We wish to mention that these aspects are not necessarily exhaustive of the teenage experience since such experience varies from teen to teen and may be further varied by factors like: parental assimilation of western culture; parental adherence of spiritual faith; child’s sibling order; family location in the north America; age of child’s exposure to western world; family proximity and level of interaction with other non-western families; level of parental cultural identity and sense of self.

Identity Dissonance: Who Am I?

As stated in the general identity crisis development, one of the major questions that sparks identity crisis is the question “whom am I?” This is the question that ignites teenage exploration of family narrative, personal looks, substance, gender, etc. For the minority teenage in the US, the question has the rider of who am I as an African American, Asian American, Native American? The same rider is rarely an issue for the Caucasian teenager whose ethnicity is the default for the United States. Such questions will generally bear the aspects of race, color and history associated with one’s ancestry. For the teenage child of first immigrant parents, the question bears the third layer rider of “why do my parents (family) behave, believe, and have requirements so different from all my other friends’ parents around me, both parents of color and Caucasian? What does this make me? What makes this or that wrong when we all agree it is not illegal? With whom should I hang out? Why do my parents deter my company of friends just because they do things differently? 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 rifts may come about are from Hispanic and African families, other immigrant families are not exempt from such dissonance.

Lack of Clear Role Models

Most first generation immigrants in the US are cut off from their families of origin and the larger extended families. A few of these families may have very tight ties with their homeland and may keep regular contact with extended families especially in the present age of communication technology that includes skype, zoom, tweeter, telephones, instagram, emails, etc. However, very few will ensure that these ties involve their children as well. If the children were born in the US there is a sense in which they are disconnected from infancy. Many parents will try to get conversation going between their family at home and their children in North America, but then language becomes a barrier. I am reminded of a noble idea my husband and I had for our children to be connected and learn our mother language. The opportunity presented itself that I would be gone to South Africa on an academic sabbatical for three months while our children were still young. So we thought what a great opportunity to have their grandmother come and stay those three months so that they can learn the language and have some emotional connection with her. She came and stayed three months. The twist was that she ended up learning English while they did not learn any Meru language whatsoever. Emotional connection? Yes, a little, but it was soon eroded by the distance and the children’s irregular visits to Africa.

There is also lack of common interests on which to converse. Many parents try the occasional phone call or skype with extended family outside of the US. However, unless this is an intentional and regular effort, it soon gets ineffective because the two have no common grounds for a conversation. Hence, the simple act of living away from their homeland cuts off the most natural role models that the extended family may offer. Yet we know the importance of role models within the family. For instance, we always hear people referring to a great grandparent or uncle or aunt who inspired them in one-way or another. For the immigrant child, that is not a practical avenue. The child may see pictures, have an occasional word or two on phone with an extended family member, but they do not translate to life-size influence that is so important in creating role models.

As already discussed earlier, the parents are also not the most popular role models. The child is left to find role models in the society either through sports, Hollywood or political icons—who in some ways are also not exactly the mirror likeness to the child because of his/her feelings of being different as an immigrant’s child. It is not a wonder that the first generation immigrant’s children usually experience a sense of lack of clear direction and ambition in terms of who they are, what they want to do with their lives and who they look up to for inspiration.

Spiritual Dissonance

The first generation immigrant parents who have grown in contexts where religion totalized their entire being—thinking, meaning making, behavior and choices—engender the same perspective as they bring up their children. However, their children are growing in a context where the religious and the secular are intentionally separated. The child is learning from school, teachers, sport coaches, friends, church and politics to live in a world of spiritual/secular dualism. When confronted by syncretism, the child is left in confusion and does not understand why the issues in discussion which seems purely an issue of logical analysis, bears a religious conviction in the mind of the parent. The child cannot understand why the parents are stressing so much on a choice that rests on their own logical analysis and conclusion. Meanwhile, the parent is stressing not because they do not see the logic of the child but because the issue at hand does bear a sacred significance and can have far-reaching consequences for the child and the whole family. Such misunderstandings can become a significant issue between parent and child when the child knows they can put up a logical argument about why they should be allowed to do what they wish as long as it is not harming another. For the parent, such insistence is perceived as defiance, and in many cases, moves against the religious foundation of obeying and seeking guidance of parents. One child, sharing with me their dilemma with parents stated, “I am twenty-two and an adult. Yet you have no idea the kind of guilt I feel every time I go to buy a beer!” This I believe is not an action that any Western young adult would have dilemma and dissonance over because it would not be an issue that has been communicated to them with sacred connotations. However, it is talked about by most immigrant families and this is exacerbated if the child is still living at home with the parents, a norm among immigrant families.

In a similar way, immigrant parents have been known to interpret disobedience, and the embrace of what they consider as immoral values, not just as defiance but also as the influence of an external entity. In Africa as well as some Asian cultures, such would be easily characterized as the influence of an evil spirit. This may sound very strange to non-western parents because it almost sounds like a parent is pronouncing their child as evil. Far from it! It has more to do with the religio-cultural intertwinedness of religion and culture in interpreting life events as already discussed than it has to do with a negative perception of their child. For most non-western cultures, that which cannot be explained rationally, the default is to go to the religious spiritual world. The irony of this situation is that the more the child of first generation immigrant parents struggle to find their identity in a unique emotional wrangling crisis, the more their parents become convinced that they are under the influence of an evil spirit. The more the parents insist on perceiving the child’s behavior and choices as influenced by an external entity, the more the propensity of the child to engage in the undesired behavior as they experience isolation, dissonance and even show signs of mental illness.

Conflicting Stages of Rites of Passage

One of the most recurring patterns we find across cultures is the difference between parents and children in how developmental stages are perceived. While not necessarily unique to immigrant families, it seems more pronounced because of cultural differences. Take for instance the year sixteen, popularly referred to in the West as “sweet sixteen.” What makes this “sweet” for many western kids is that they can now apply for an interim driver’s license, some get their first cars, others can now begin to date, go to their first prom, and given extended curfew hours to hang out with friends, etc. The prom (which comes with being spoiled with an expensive dress and a dance,) becomes part of the rite of passage for this stage. These are experiences many western parents look back with some nostalgic feelings.

Posing these sentiments to a non-western parent and asking them what “sixteen” meant in their experience growing up, many would venture that it was anything other than “sweet!” If they were living in a refugee camp, it meant greater responsibility to help parents care for the younger siblings or find work to help support the family. If they were young girls in the developing world, age sixteen might signify that they had become marriageable and under pressure to find a suitable partner to help escape the poverty at home. Where dowry is practiced, a poor family may look at their daughter’s marriage as a potential source of monetary income. For others, this age brings them to a rite of passage whereby males (or in some cases females) might be circumcised and secluded to be given specific instruction of what it means to be a young adult woman or man and the responsibilities of raising a family.

Age eighteen is another good example to show the disparity in cultural markers. In the Western world, turning eighteen means that legal and social support systems now regard you as an adult. At this age, young adults can now buy controlled substances like tobacco; they can file their own taxes; they can differ with the wishes of their parents—and the legal system will recognize their wishes. They can drive with full license; they can even marry. While some of these same realities may be true in the non-western world, eighteen is not the magic bearer of adulthood; rather, it is the manifestation of responsibility. This adult responsibility is measured by relational rather than independent standards such as: respect shown to others in society, logical thinking that takes into account the well-being of the family or community, proper communication of feelings including respect for those older than oneself, fair treatment of the opposite gender during conflict, initiative in education and future vocation. These are the markers of adulthood for most non-western communities. If a teen is not exhibiting these or other traits that the community upholds, they are not considered to be an adult ready to face the world or raise their own family. Age is nothing but a guide signaling around when these real indicators should be attained.

Movement through these ages creates a growing source of anxiety and conflict among children and parents of immigrant families. Each passage may involve numerous negotiations in the family with frequent fall outs and the felt impact exacerbated if it is perceived that these are relatively easy transitions for American families. Indeed, the mere act of argument with parents at this age may be deemed as a sign of immaturity and a lack of readiness for adult privileges and responsibilities!

The manifestation of dissonance and internal conflict brought on by these rites of passages differ from individual to individual. The differences are however, more pronounced by the distinction made so well by Agwu Chinaka31 regarding first generation, 1.5 generation and second generation children, as already discussed in chapter 1.

Though presented here as a source of dissonance both for the children and the parents due to their differing perspectives of the developmental stages, we believe that rites of passage have the power to help the child and parents integrate the two words amicably. They are therefore the focus of chapter nine as an effective mode of intervention among immigrant families.

26. Cross, Negro to Black Conversion Experience, 13–17.

27. Winnicott, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.

28. Sue and Sue, Counseling the Culturally Diverse.

29. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religions, 108.

30. Kohut, Analysis of the Self, 41.

31. Agwu, Acculturation and Racial Identity Attitudes.