Date of Award
Summer 1995
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Ivanoff, John
Second Advisor
Dupuis, A.
Third Advisor
Bansal, Naveen
Abstract
Hmong people from highland Laos have shown enormous ability to adapt to : American society since their arrival nearly twenty years ago. Hmong parents, however, have experienced difficulties in parenting practices because of intergenerational conflicts with their teenage children. As an Asian immigrant parent myself, I have been concerned with how to best raise our children in America so that they may grow up with the best of both Asian and mainstreamed American cultures. Perhaps a study of this sort would be not only interesting but very helpful to large numbers of Asian-American parents. Biculturalism/multiculturalism has been portrayed as the best desirable form of acculturation for individuals of immigrant minority status. In their work with Cuban immigrants in the 1970's, Szapozcnik and Kurtines (1980) advocated that individuals with a bicultural/multicultural orientation are in an optimal stage of acculturation and they enjoy the greatest psychological adjustment. In his work with Mexican-Americans, Ramirez (1977) noted that individuals with a monocultural orientation may overacculturate or underacculturate and in either case, they lack flexibility for effectively coping with their entire cultural milieu. There is evidence to suggest that immigrants actually prefer acculturation to assimilation (Katz, 1992; Wong-Rieger & Quintana, 1987). But what are the observable and measurable benefits that an individual with a bicultural/multicultural orientation shows that those with a monocultural orientation do not?...