Session: Asian American Families and Youth Development: Moving Beyond "Tiger" Parenting (Society for Social Work and Research 23rd Annual Conference - Ending Gender Based, Family and Community Violence)

Research efforts continue to debunk monolithic stereotypes and misperceptions of Asian American parenting, such as the most recent caricaturist “tiger mom.” This organized symposium comprised of three papers aims to move us beyond debunking the misunderstanding and toward a more complex and nuanced portrayal of family processes and youth development among Asian American families. The papers used data from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Asian American Families (ML-SAAF). ML-SAAF is a longitudinal study of Asian American families, specifically to examine the impact of culture, race/ethnicity and immigration on youth development with a particular interest in family process. ML-SAAF includes a pretest survey conducted in 2013 (N=682; 155 Filipino American youth and parents, 186 Korean American youth and their parents), Wave 1 survey in 2014 (N=1,580; 379 Filipino American youth and their 377parents, 410 Korean American youth and their 414 parents), and Wave 2 survey in 2016 (N=1,213; 284 Filipino American youth and their 275 parents, 330 Korean American youth and their 324 parents, a 80% retention of Wave 1 families). The data collection for Wave 3 is currently under way.

The first paper reports a detailed process of the development of new measures, through which we can more accurately understand Asian American family process as a unique blend of traditional Asian culture, mainstream U.S. culture, and the experiences of immigration and racial/ethnic minority status. This paper illustrated how Eurocentric theory based family process models may not fully explain Asian American family, how Filipino American and Korean American parents differ despite their shared overarching “Asian” cultures, and how Filipino American and Korean American parents are developing bicultural parenting. This paper produced a set of indigenous parenting measures that the other two papers in the symposium utilized in their inquiries. The second paper tackles to answer questions on why Asian American youth exhibit a paradoxical pattern of developmental outcomes, i.e., less externalizing problems and good grades, but more internalizing problems compared to other groups. The study identified a set of important universal factors that would pose risks on youth regardless of one's background. It also demonstrated that the similar parenting behaviors (e.g., parenting control in various forms) can lead to less externalizing problems, but poor mental health. The study also provided insights on which cultural elements may be harmful (or beneficial), so that Asian American parents should consider shedding (or maintaining) in the process of cultural adaptation. Finally, the last study confirms that abusive and disengaged parenting is an adverse element for Asian American youth and its impact is equally negative regardless of one's gender or ethnicity. Culturally disjointed parenting, however, is a more salient issue among Asian American youth and may increase vulnerability as these youth straddle between their immigrant parents and the mainstream society, which make culturally different, often conflicting, demands. The findings from these papers together provide compelling empirical evidence and important implications for social work practice, i.e., what and how to target in interventions.