Bicultural conflicts in Chinese immigrant children.

To study the adjustment experience of Chinese immigrant children to the US research was undertaken with a grant from the Administration for Children Youth and Family Department of Health Education and Welfare from 1976 to 1979. The study shows how the social institutions of the family school and community deal with the problems encountered and how they provide or fail to provide support for the immigrant children and youths in their transition process; this paper deals with the bicultural conflict of the immigrant experience. Some of the conflicts studied include: 1) agressiveness; 2) sexuality--a difference in attitudes and customs; 3) sports--the traditional Chinese way of thinking is that development of the mental faculties is more important than development of the physique; 4) tattling--the Chinese feel duty bound to report wrongdoing; 5) demonstration of affection--a lack of demonstrative affection extends to spouses and friends; 6) education--the bright student is not always the one who is respected and looked up to in American schools; 7) thrift--the conflict between the consumption of material possessions and the Chinese tradition of frugal success; 8) dependency; 9) respect for authority; 10) heroes and heroines; and 11) individualism--the Chinese are situation-centered not individual-centered. For Chinese immigrant children who live in New Yorks Chinatown or in the satellite Chinatowns these conflicts are moderated to a large degree because there are other Chinese children around to mitigate the dilemmas that they encounter. Even so teachers and parents should be made aware of these conflicts to avoid exacerbating the differences and to inculcate in both the Chinese and the non-Chinese a health respect for cultural differences.