Asian American Families and Youth

Lang Ma

Asian American families are a multicultural group composed of individuals from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), Filipino, and other Asian backgrounds and cultures (Fong, 1995; Sung, 1995). While Asian American families are similar in some aspects of their heritage cultures, they are diverse in many ways (Sung, 1995). Asian American families are not static, but are fluid and adaptive in the ongoing processes of acculturation (Fong, 1998). Changes within the context of acculturation can happen unevenly in different dimensions, such as family structures, beliefs, values, and behaviors. For different families and different family members, changes can happen at different paces. This entry describes and discusses some salient characteristics of Asian American families relevant to youth development identified in literature and practical implications of these characteristics. There are some salient similarities among Asian American families. One important general characteristic is the great influence of the traditional Asian ...

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