Navigating Acculturation-based Conflicts: The Perspectives of Chinese Canadian Adults

Date
2018-06-14
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Abstract
Chinese Canadian immigrant parents and their children often identify with Canadian and traditional Chinese cultural values at differing levels. Such intergenerational discrepancies in values identifications have been associated with increased conflict and decreased parent-child relationship quality. Although a breadth of the acculturation literature examines coping and reactions to intergenerational conflicts in Asian American families with adolescents and children, there is a dearth of qualitative literature exploring Chinese Canadian adults’ personal perspectives of effective or ineffective influences in their navigation of intergenerational conflicts. Using the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT; Butterfield, Borgen, Maglio, & Amundson, 2009), this study explored what second-generation Chinese Canadian adults identified as helpful or unhelpful in managing acculturation-based conflicts. Interviews with 10 participants yielded 179 critical incidents that were organized into the following nine categories: (1) capacity for empathy and understanding, (2) facilitation of dialogue and conversational exchanges, (3) compromising, complying, and accepting parents’ wishes or demands, (4) self-affirmative acts or behaviours, (5) self-care and coping, (6) distancing, (7) external supports or influences, (8) impact of lifestyle and schedules, and (9) parental habits, behaviours, or personality traits. The findings illustrate that for some individuals, intergenerational conflicts and cultural differences within Chinese Canadian families can be salient and persistent beyond the adolescent and young adult years. The findings also highlight the importance and need for considering contextual influences in parents’ and adult children’s interactions. Implications for counsellors and helping professionals and researchers are outlined and delineated.
Description
Keywords
acculturation, family conflict, counselling
Citation
Dang, J. (2018). Navigating Acculturation-based Conflicts: The Perspectives of Chinese Canadian Adults (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32003