Somali Parenting in Western Contexts: Acculturative Stressors and Family Strengths

Somali immigrants have been present in the US since the late 19^th century, with the current population around 150,000. For US social workers to provide culturally responsive, effective services, an elementary awareness of Somali family systems and post-migration experiences is necessary. This poster describes a scoping study examining the empirical literature on Somali childrearing beliefs and practices, and how parents experience those beliefs and practices in the context of childrearing in Western countries. Research Questions are: 1) What are methodological characteristics of the scoped studies? 2) What does this literature tell us about how Somali immigrants experience their culturally normative parenting beliefs and practices within host countries? 3) How do Somali parents report acculturating to Western social services including child welfare?

Our scoping review examined Somali families resettling in Western countries. It included studies focused on Somali parenting beliefs and practices that were published in English, and were peer reviewed empirical articles or dissertations. Our analysis of the scoped studies was sensitized by intersectionality, systemic racism theory, and acculturation theory.

A total of 19 studies met the inclusion criteria. Most were qualitative studies (18) conducted by primary investigators who were not Somali (16). The host countries in which Somali parents were negotiating parenthood were the United States, Australia, Canada, South Africa, England, and in northern Europe. Three major sources of acculturative stress were identified in the scoped studies: value conflicts between Western and Somali values in the context of power imbalances; a shift from communal to nuclear family parenting; and shifts in family dynamics largely created through state involvement in the family. The literature also described a variety of effective ways in which Somali immigrant parents addressed those challenges. Parents described spending more time intentionally teaching their children about Islam and Somali culture rather than relying on the environment to transmit those values. Parents also described consciously setting time aside for conversations that attend to their children’s emotional wellbeing. Parents shifted toward Somali community networks to support individualized parenting in the absence of extended family networks. Finally, parents described a sense of disempowerment and loss of authority over their children, and responded to that by making changes in their parenting style to preserve their relationship with their children and their children’s relationship with their cultural and spiritual identity.

As a result of methodological limitations within the available body of literature (i.e., limited use of methods to enhance the rigor of qualitative studies), the empirical research contained some inadequate cultural understanding, cultural deficitism, and uncritical approaches to analyzing findings. There is an urgent need for rigorous qualitative research exploring the post-migration experiences of Somali families settling in Western nations. This is vital for improving social service providers’ abilities to provide culturally relevant, effective support to the Somali community. Researchers can adopt rigorous, Indigenous methodologies and racialization conceptual frameworks to minimize Western centrism and reduce white racial framing. To deepen our understandings of Somali immigrant families’ experiences and to avoid essentializing, future research also needs to attend to variation within Somali communities.