Korean American Families in Immigrant America: How Teens and Parents Navigate Race

This book about Korean American immigrant families is the result of a collaboration between an anthropologist and a psychologist. Combining quantitative surveys with family ethnography, the book explored the central question, How do Korean American teens and parents navigate immigrant America? Both survey and ethnographic data revealed that acculturation differences between parents and teens—long assumed in the psychological literature to account for distress—did not necessarily make for family hardship. Instead, this research found that families struggle together, although not always easily, to figure out how best to navigate an American society that they all understood to be racist. This is not to say that the parents did not speak about cultural distinctions or that they were unconcerned about academic achievement. But what these parents anguished over most was how to fortify their children with protective psychological health and character traits that would allow them to succeed. Ethnographic chapters on five Korean American immigrant families introduce the parenting strategies and adolescents’ responses, which were at times defiantly resistant, sometimes accommodating, and at other times enormously appreciative. The book examines the delicate negotiations between parents and teens in the intimacy of family life, following them from homes to shopping malls, music recitals, church, workplaces, and school. The five families reflect a diversity of family dynamics, but uniting them all is the hard work that parents and children engage in to maintain the bonds of their family relationships.