Cultural Socialization By Chinese Parents in Canada and the United States: The Role of Racial Discrimination

Background and Purpose:

Parental cultural socialization, the processes that parents “teach children about their racial or ethnic heritage and history; that promote cultural customs and traditions; and that promote children’s cultural, racial, and ethnic pride, either deliberately or implicitly” (Hughes et al., 2006, p. 749), has gained increasing attention because of its effect on immigrant children’s ethnic identity and well-being. While some research shows that parents’ experiences with racism has positive effect on cultural socialization among African Americans, there is no conclusive empirical evidence for this relationship among Asian Americans. Hence, this paper aims to explore the relationship between Chinese parents’ experiences with different levels of racism and their cultural socialization practices, with special attention to internalized racism.

Methods:

Chinese parents were recruited to complete a 20-minute survey on Qualtrics. The inclusion criteria of participants were: (1) self-identified as being of Chinese descent; (2) currently living in Canada or the US; (2) parents of children of 19 years old or below; and (3) currently living with their children. Participants were recruited through online forums and social media. The survey was available in English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Cultural socialization practices were measured by a 12-item scale by Su (2011). Experiences with institutionalized and personally mediated racism were measured by the scale of acute (9 items) and everyday racism (9 items; Williams, Spenser, & Jackson, 1999). Internalized racism was measured by three subscales of the Colonial Mentality Scale (21 items; David & Okazaki, 2006). Data was analyzed by multiple linear regression and will be analyzed by SEM in the next stage.

Results:

At this initial stage of data collection, a total of 92 parents completed the survey. Fifty-eight (63%) of them were female, and most of them were between 35-39 (31.5%) and 40-44 years old (28.3%). A majority of them were born in Hong Kong (65.2%), followed by Taiwan (27.2%), and all of them lived in Canada. The next stage of data collection will purposively focus on Mainland Chinese and second-generation immigrants, and those who live in the US. Preliminary results show that cultural shame and internalized cultural/ethnic inferiority were negatively associated with cultural socialization behaviors (p<.05). Also, parents who had more experiences with both interpersonal and acute racism were more likely to have higher internalized racism (p<.01). A more comprehensive mediation model will be tested upon a larger sample in the next stage.

Conclusion and Implications:

Although studies with African Americans show that the more racism the parents experience, the more likely they socialize their children into their culture, our findings suggest the opposite for Chinese Canadian parents. Internalized racism is a possible mediator – Chinese parents may internalize these negative racial experiences and perceive traditional culture as detrimental to the future of their children. They thus refrain from passing on cultural messages as a preventive measure. However, as research shows the benefits of cultural socialization, it is crucial for practitioners to support Chinese parents to navigate through their social experiences and internalized beliefs.