Asian American Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Relationships

Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D., is Professor and Fitch Nesbitt Endowed Chair in Family and Consumer Sciences, Director, Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth, and Families. He completed his doctorate in sociology at Duke University in 1994 and postdoctoral training in Life Course Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1997. His research focuses on adolescent sexual orientation and identity, parent-adolescent relationships, ethnicity, and culture. Lisa J. Crockett, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1986. Her research focuses on adolescent development and well-being with an emphasis on the role of ethnicity. Ruth Chao, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Chao was also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Families Studies at Syracuse University. Her research interests include sociocultural perspectives of parenting and the family focusing on Asian immigrants. She recently completed a five-year, longitudinal study, funded by the National Institute of Health, examining the effects of parental control, warmth, and parental involvement in school on adolescent's school performance and behavioral adjustment. Her research also includes studies of the language acculturation of Asian immigrant families across time and its effects on adolescent's adjustment.

• Introduction: Asian American Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Relationships.- Do Measures of Parenting Have the Same Meaning for European, Chinese, and Filipino American Adolescents? Tests of Measurement Equivalence.- Parental Beliefs and Their Relation to the Parental Practices of Immigrant Chinese Americans and European Americans.- Parental Sacrifice and Acceptance as Distinct Dimensions of Parental Support Among Chinese and Filipino American Adolescents.- The Meanings of Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality Among Chinese American and Filipino American Adolescents.- Interdependent Independence: The Meanings of Autonomy Among Chinese American and Filipino American Adolescents.- Conclusions: The Role of Asian American Culture in Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Relationships.

"A much needed and extremely thoughtful contribution to the scholarship on Asian American families. The authors rely on a variety of research methods to reveal patterns that challenge stereotypes and urge us to move beyond pan ethnic categories and explore the rich diversity among Asian Americans. This book is an exemplary study of culture and parenting." (Niobe Way, President, Society for Research on Adolescence / Professor of Applied Psychology, New York University) "In Asian American Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Relationships, Stephen Russell, Lisa Crockett and Ruth Chao have garnered a wealth of information on Asian American youth and their families, especially Chinese and Filipino Americans, and provided readers with exceptional insight into parenting influenced by cultural differences. ... The book is a highly informative reference for researchers, clinicians, and graduate students across multiple disciplines, including developmental, clinical, child, and school psychology, sociology, and anthropology as well as ethnic and women's studies. ... It is fascinating to understand how parenting goals, style and warmth are tinted by the colors of culture." (Prathiba Nagabhushan, in Journal of Youth and Adolescence)