Effects of Being a First Gen. American Traditionally growing as an American kid should be pretty easy and fun. For the most part it should be going to pool parties and eating hot dogs with a group of friends or neighbors. Occasionally going out to the movies, amusement parks, and bowling alleys and other things that you would expect a kid to go to. For the most part its true, but not if you live in a first generation American family. First Generation Americans are people that immigrated to the United States, usually being born in another country. They are very peculiar to the American eye, because of the culture and personalities they bring along. Most immigrants usually have a stereotype of what the American people are like, and it differs …show more content…
Immigrant parents don’t like the idea of westernization, mainly because there cultures have been with them for many centuries and they don’t feel as if they should change just because they came here. They are very ignorant on understanding new concepts and ideas because they feel as if their way of life was perfect and anything new is unnecessary. Me being a first generation American as well, one thing I hate that my parents do is expecting everything I do to be perfect and anything less a failure caused by the American culture.
Living in an immigrant family, I learn a lot about both cultures and understand most reason on why things are the way they are. There are plenty of things I didn’t get to experience while I was younger and mostly because of my parent’s traditions and their beliefs about how I should have been raised. There were also a lot of things that indirectly caused me to succeed in, because of different lifestyle. There are plenty of things that happen to people like me, some of the more popular ones are: Getting good grades in school; Having a very small social life; Becoming well mannered; Never getting complimented
Although having a Mexican mother and an American father was not always socially acceptable, growing up with a different food taste, having a close-knit family, as well as regularly getting disciplined shaped how I am as a person today. I was dipped into a very different childhood most children did not grow up into.
Although most parents and children experience turmoil stemming from simple disagreements, immigrant families face more divisive tensions due to a cultural and societal gap between generations, strict parental expectations to conform to the ideals of a distant land, and differing beliefs on child rearing.
... culture and they become a combination of both. Therefore it’s a culture within a culture. Immigrant youth are more satisfied changing their ‘old’ culture to adjust to the new one, however parents are more hesitant to do so. This transformation causes a lot of tension within the family.
The type of parenting style used by parents may be determined by the parent’s own cultural heritage. As immigrants move to a new country, it will take time to learn the new culture and to be accustomed to their ways. Therefore, it would not be surprising if first generation immigrant parents place the hardest strain on their children. Since they have not yet been accustomed to American culture, they will be more likely to adhere to their traditional ways. Immigrants who have been in the country longer may have slowly compromised traditional views with new
Cultural influences have formed who I am. “Every aspect of global communication is influenced by cultural differences”(Goman). Being both Mexican and American has affected my upbringing. “Culture is, basically, a set of shared values that a group of people holds. Such values affect how you think and act and, more importantly, the kind of criteria by which you judge others”(Goman). Since values of both cultures have been instilled in me, my family has certain expectations for me. In Mexican culture women marry young and are supposed to maintain the household and children. An education past high school is not necessary. In the U.S a woman is encouraged to have a career and be independent. My parents mix these two values together. I am expected to be able to maintain
In conclusion growing up with an ethnic background was pretty hard; I did not get ridiculed for looking different or doing things differently. There was when I had to assimilate to be accepted in a new town because I did not want to be known as a nerd if I played with the Asian kids instead when I was at school I adapted and changed my beliefs and played with the White kids to feel accepted. But, the hardest part was not in the social atmosphere it comes when it came to my parents. My parents put up these social barriers to not allow me to expand out of my own race. Growing up I broke out of their chain and started to explore different friends and started to date people of other races.
An example of this is sports. In my house, the elders are very in tune with the sports cricket. Where there from almost everyone plays and learns the sport from a very young age. Since I grew up here in Canada, I have been able to develop a passion for sports that my parents were never familiar with growing up. From a young age, I was able to draw up a passion for the game of hockey. I would play, watch, and talk about hockey with my brother and friends and never learned anything about the sports my parents played. Another way growing up here helps me differ from my parents is the type of music I can listen to. Instead of listening to the same music my parents listen to I can listen to both English music and music from my parents country. Having the freedom of being able to choose certain things over others allows me to mold the way I view the world compared to my
The immigrant came to another country with their kid or wife trying give them a better life or attending to change a better job. Even these first generation of immigrants can accept their living environment or job very well, they will still feel unfamiliar about the new world they staying at which reminds me about my aunt and uncle. They have immigrated to America for more than 7 years, got a stable job even their kids. However, when I talked with her about how do they feel about this country, they told me that the culture here is very different from where they came from; therefore, sometimes they had to face some culture shocks. For immigrants , it is difficult to eliminate the sense distance over time because the immigrant have to make compromises
America is often known as the land of opportunity, a place where you can be free. Many Immigrants came to America so that they could have a greater possibility at succeeding in life. Immigrants took a leap of faith when coming to America, for some it worked out well but for others they had a difficult time here. Despite the struggles that the immigrants encountered such as; standing out from others, being separated from their families, and breaking their culture, the immigrants are still grateful to be in America because they were in better conditions than they were in their home land. When viewing interviews or looking at an immigrant’s perspective you get many responses to being in America, some major things that stood out were the amount of freedom the immigrant had, and the age of the immigrant. These two things had a huge impact on the opinion of America from an Immigrants point of view.
Should immigrant parents Americanize their children? Should they prioritize adapting to the environment over their own cultural heritage? I don't think they should, and I don't think they have to. I can tell from my own experience that parents actually have much less influence on deciding how a child grows up than it would seem. But that is not to say that they have no role at all. As the perceived root of their children's culture they do play an important part. Personally, if I ever had questions about our customs, religion, or where I came from the people to ask were my mother or my grandmother. They always had an answer, even if they had to make it up.
As we may all have once experienced, acculturation is one of the most common part of our lives, either by music, language or habits. In many occasions is more noticeable, but they are still a part of our entire lives. Through my own experiences and some of my classmates we were able to identified this topic in our own lives. I being born in USA but raised in Mexico until I was 16 years old, made my acculturation really clear when I came to this country without any previous knowledge of this language or society. Everything was completely different, but I was able to adapt to a new culture in a small period of time, learning a new language and successfully ending High School. Now that I came to college, I feel that I am going to a new acculturation process, not as harsh or obvious. But leaving and having many Asian friends have been acculturated me to their Asian culture little by little. Everything starts when you put in practice small customs as taking your shoes at the door, eating rice with anything and eating specially with chopsticks. I have been presented to this, and in my opinion have become acculturated to this culture. However, not everyone stories are the same. Lizandro Laverman experienced acculturation more indirectly by his parents experiences. His parents, basically, came to the United States to have a better lifestyle. He himself personally considers himself as an American. Although he is actually 75% Guatemalan and 25% German he considers himself to be 100% American. He also speak fluent in both languages, so the English and the Spanish, but speaks English more than anything. He also feels embraced when as Guatemalan dishes. In general, his parents are only used to a lifestyle that comes from Guatemala as train...
I was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. My mother was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States to continue her education when she was in her mid- twenties. My father is from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. My parents have different cultures, and as a result they have completely different backgrounds. When I was growing up, I had a hard time reconciling these different cultures. It was difficult for me and my sister to know what to do in many social situations because our primary schema (our parents) would act completely different in similar social situations. When I would ask my parents for advice, they would give me contrasting suggestions. As I grew older, I started to realize that both my parents were right, even if they acted like opposites.
At some point in our lives we experience a culture as an outsider by moving from one culture to another.In the world today there are so many different cultures and not one of them is found to be the same.Instead they all have something that makes them unique, whether its language or even the clothes they wear and their behavior as well.The differences they have is what separates them from one another and who ever joins that particular culture must get accustomed to their way of life.In the society today we have many people immigrating to the United States to start a new and better life but what they soon begin to realize is that it’s a whole new world out there and in order to survive they have to get accustomed to the new way of life which is much different from their lives before.
I spoke with a person I work with. He grew up in Mexico with his two brothers and his parents. He and his family moved to Ohio when he was fifteen, about eight years ago. He told me the biggest difference in the cultures was that his family lived a lower class life in Mexico. His parents had jobs, but they did not make enough to have a great life. The reason they came to the United States was for better job opportunities. "Coming to the U.S. let us live a better life." He told me that he is not rich, because he moved to the United States, but he lives a middle class life. He had never experienced a life like this before. He experienced culture shock when moving from Mexico to the U.S, because he did not speak English. He had begun high school not knowing any English. It took him several years to know the English language decently. It was still hard to have a conversation with him; I had to listen very carefully to understand everything.
People always say how they are different from another generation. My generation and my parents aren’t the same, of course. I find it immensely fascinating that a group of people born within the same twenty year frame could all be so similar in how they were raised, thus leading to how they act becoming similar. After reading about Generation Y and Generation Z, two generations that somewhat overlap, I would consider myself to have a closer connection with Generation Z, but have noticed many people I know would fit more closely with Generation Y.