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Article Excerpt
The Asian/Pacific Islander or API group has" been one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States for the past several decades (Kim, Rendon, & Valadez, 1998; Lee & Zhan, 1998; Takaki, 1989). The Vietnamese population is a part of the API group and is considered one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Its growth rate was 125.3 percent between 1980 and 1990 and 80.7 percent between 1990 and 2000 (Asian-Nation, 2005). According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2002), among the 10.2 million APIs in the United States reported in 2002, 8.3 percent were Vietnamese, whereas the most recent statistics show a 10.9 percent representation of Vietnamese among all Asian ethnicities in the United States (Asian-Nation, 2005). Although Vietnamese Americans represent only .5 percent of the entire U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002), the rapid growth of the Vietnamese population has drawn social workers' attention in human services planning.
After escaping their homeland, many Vietnamese parents and children face and endure the initial hardship of adapting to economic, political, and cultural changes in a different society. This adaptation process may be much harder and longer for parents than for children. The migratory stress and incongruence in perceived cultural differences and the differential rate of acculturation can cause dissonance in the family system and become the source of conflicts between parents and children. This study focuses on the unique relationships between the acculturation level and parenting style and addresses the effect of parenting style on mental health outcomes of Vietnamese adolescents.
Given the current number of the Vietnamese population residing in the United States (which increased to 1.2 million in 2005, according to Campi, 2006) with an expected increase in the next decade, the paucity of mental health research on this specific population is alarming and can be detrimental for the Vietnamese population as well as for professionals who serve this population. Despite the general impression about Vietnamese immigrants being a "model minority" and having few mental health problems, the limited research that has been conducted indicates the contrary. It has been reported that Asian Americans, such as Vietnamese, are underusing and underreporting their use of mental health services and are keeping their problems private, and that those who seek mental health services tend to display severe mental health problems (S. Sue & Morishima, 1982; S. Sue, Sue, Sue, & Takeuchi, 1995). Factors that contribute to mental health problems include acculturation and assimilation issues among individual family members, cultural and familial conflicts between parents and children, and the strict parenting style used by Vietnamese parents that adversely affect children's mental health (Herz & Gullone, 1999; Zheng, 2001). To date, no studies have examined the relationship between acculturation of Vietnamese parents and their parenting style or between parenting styles and adolescents' mental health outcomes.
VIETNAMESE ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR PARENTS
Vietnamese immigrants have to adjust between the Eastern and Western cultures. Little empirical research addresses cultural adjustment issues among Vietnamese youths. Furthermore, the little research that has been completed on the Vietnamese population has been mainly observation or lacks generalizability because of small sample sizes. Fuligni (1998) asserted that a few studies (such as Kao & Tienda, 1995; Rosenthal & Feldman, 1992; Rumbault, 1995) have consistently suggested that many immigrant children do not have as much difficulty with school as expected from a cultural adjustment perspective. In fact, it was found that children of Asian immigrant families perform in school as well as, if not better than, their native-born counterparts (Caplan, Choy, & Whitmore, 1991). Despite the fact that most of the Vietnamese immigrant children may thrive academically, they are facing an environment that is very different from their native one. The adaptation process is similarly stressful for parents and children, but the process is different for both in many aspects. During the journey of escaping Vietnam, they left their relatives, gave up their livelihood, and survived the dangerous journey. Once landed in the United States, these parents must quickly adapt to the new and foreign economic system and immediately attempt to find jobs so they may rebuild their fives and provide for the family. Vocationally, most Vietnamese parents experience a drop in status by accepting mediocre jobs with low wages and begin working in fields that are unfamiliar to them (Zhou & Bankston, 1998).This can be a humiliating experience for many parents, which is worsened by their lack of knowledge about the English language. Along the process, most Vietnamese parents must deal with the unfamiliarity of U.S. culture, values, and rules in the working environment and the potential for discrimination.
Vietnamese children face a process of adapting to the school environment and beginning their academic work among unfamiliar people and an incomprehensible language. At the same time they attempt to "fit in" or socialize with their peers but must also deal with teasing by those very same peers. This immersion in the mainstream culture allows Vietnamese children to experience drastic differences in American values while simultaneously perserving traditional Vietnamese values preached and practiced at home.
The individual stress of the parents and children incurred by their respective environments is coupled with their different ways of adjusting to cultural values. The complexity of their experience plays a crucial role in fueling the overall stress of the family system, thus creating friction between members. Situations as such can be volatile and can deteriorate quickly, especially in a traditional Vietnamese family structure that is rigid with limited communication and does not reach out to community resources. The end result can be a...
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