Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Intergenerational/intercultural conflict in immigrant families arises due to differential acculturation between immigrant parents and their immigrant or American-born children. Having been socialized in their culture of origin, adult migrants tend to retain those values and acculturate slowly to majority American culture, while their children are developmentally more susceptible to environmental influences and engage with the majority culture through schooling and peers. Over time, this intergenerational discrepancy in acculturation widens, leads to conflict and results in psychological problems in the child. Thus far, no study has examined this process longitudinally. Informed by the ecological theory that suggests conflict in the family microsystem will diminish the child's well-being, we hypothesized that intergenerational discrepancy in acculturation during early adolescence would predict intergenerational conflict in late adolescence, which, in turn, would increase depressive symptom level in late adolescence. Specifically, we tested intergenerational conflict as a mediator between the relationship of acculturation gap and depression level. The study focused on Southeast Asian adolescents. Due to their recency of arrival, virtually all Southeast Asian youth are growing up in refugee headed households. They are at high risk of intergenerational/intercultural conflict because 1. their parents are less acculturated than immigrant parents with comparable length of stay; 2. differences between Southeast Asian and majority American cultures are great (e.g., interdependence versus independence); and 3. this difference is most pronounced during adolescence when separation-individuation is normative in American culture, while increasing family responsibility is expected in Southeast Asian cultures.

Method: Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, 490 Southeast Asian American adolescents (48.4% Vietnamese, 26.3% Laotian, 16.5% Cambodian, and 8.8% Hmong) in eighth and ninth grades completed paper-pencil surveys and again three years later (Waves I and II, respectively). Intergenerational discrepancy in acculturation was measured by the difference in the adolescent and his/her parents' preference for American ways at Wave I. Intergenerational/intercultural conflict was assessed at Wave II by items such as “My parents and I often argue because we don't share the same goals.” Depressive symptom level was assessed at Wave II by four items from the Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale.

Results: As hypothesized, regression analyses controlling for gender and Wave I depressive symptom level showed that intergenerational discrepancy in acculturation in early adolescence significantly predicted intergenerational conflict in late adolescence (standardized beta = .13, p=.003), which, in turn, was correlated with depressive symptom level in late adolescence (beta =.34, p<.001). Furthermore, intergenerational conflict fully mediated the effect of the acculturation gap on depressive symptom level, as the latter was no longer a significant predictor of depressive symptom level once conflict was included in the model.

Implications: These findings support the importance of interventions that target the intergenerational/intercultural conflict as a means of enhancing Southeast Asian adolescent's well-being. As they tend to underutilize traditional mental health services due to unfamiliarity and stigma, community-based outreach efforts are particularly needed.