Verified Document

Cultural Experience And Parents Essay

Related Topics:

Intergenerational Conflict, Crime, and Delinquency Becoming American for immigrant parents versus the second generation is something that has everything to do with leaving one's native place to integrate into another. First generation families experience that: they have those memories of the old country that they take with them. Second generation families do not have that: they have nothing else to compare their present situation to. They do not have the experience of being from any other place. To them, America is their native country. They may still be around family members who are first generation, who remember coming over to America, who speak of the old country and remember its customs -- but the second generation identifies mainly as American -- much more so than those who come to be American after spending some of their lives as something else. The transition for immigrant parents, then, is one that is much more dramatic and meaningful because of the complexity of experience. This paper will discuss what this means for immigrant parents and why it is different for second generation immigrant families.

As Vallejo notes, the immigrant family is not conceived simply: there is no box that the family fits into that defines it. Some are able to incorporate into the American experience more smoothly and easily than others; some are not. It depends greatly on the community into which the family moves, the work that the family does, the connections it makes, the social or civic activity it undertakes. For some, the biggest factor is education. Immigrant parents are less likely to be impacted by an conflict of culture, of values, and of ideals. The immigrant parents can value the old way of doing things -- the way that they learned -- for example, when it comes to religion, to family life, to society and social norms; to ways of speaking, to ways of socializing, etc. Children on the other hand are likely to be cultivated by the American experience, by what they see their American friends doing. Their values are likely to be different from their parents' and they may have different senses of the importance of religion, for example, as a result of their own unique experience growing up in America rather than in the old country. Children of immigrants in America may adopt more liberal views and values -- or ones…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Vallejo, Jody Agius. 2012. Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican-American

Middle Class. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Vigil, James; Yun, Steve; Cheng, Jesse. "A Shortcut to the American Dream?" Chapter
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Cultural Experience Description the Event Is More
Words: 2391 Length: 8 Document Type: Essay

Cultural Experience Description The event is more a series of events. I went on vacation with some friends to Miami, and while not everything I experienced on that trip would count as a cultural experience, there is little question that there were some very different experiences. There was the visit to the Haitian restaurant, for example, but the event that stands out the most was my visit to Calle Ocho, the old

Cultural Diversity Interview Narrative Cultural
Words: 4850 Length: 15 Document Type: Term Paper

While in high school, she worked as a waitress at a local diner. Most of the population was black, therefore there was little contact with white customers or employees. Margaret feels that she was socially isolated until the 1950s. She was not exposed to white culture; it was foreign to her. She was only exposed to black culture of the time. They were not allowed in certain stores, restaurants,

Parenting Co-Sleeping Has More Advantage
Words: 1257 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

More Care Giving to Babies: One of the biggest advantages of co sleeping is increase in breast feeding (McKenna, 1994; Richard et al., 1996). This is admitted even by the most conventional American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that co-sleeping has the most advantage of breast feeding. According to the research, mothers who co-sleep breast feed an average of twice as long as non-co-sleeping mothers. Moreover, the act of sucking in breast

Parent Trap 1 And 2
Words: 4825 Length: 17 Document Type: Term Paper

Family therapy believes that problems that the individuals evidence stem from the fact that problems occur within the family unit itself and that the family is divided into several component parts. To address these problems the therapist, as it were, therefore steps into the family unit, becomes "a part of it" and intervenes. His doing so not only enables him to see the family patterns from the inside; thereby understanding

Cultural Anthropology
Words: 497 Length: 1 Document Type: Term Paper

individual may have about a particular group of people can drastically effect their attitude and behavior towards that particular group of people. When two people from different cultures, with their own biases and cultural thinking, are faced with the prospect of interacting, these preconceptions can emerge in the form of confusion, misunderstanding, and even anger. One situation that comes to mind occurred while a friend was visiting her boyfriend. His

Value of Having Cultural Experiences
Words: 1329 Length: 4 Document Type: Case Study

Understanding Culture with International Students1Culture is a difficult thing to define because it encompasses so many different aspects of human life. When thinking about the most important cultural things in my country, three key themes come to mind: diversity, history, and family. First, I would point out that my country is a very diverse country, with people from all over the world coming together to create one national culture. This

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now