Intergenerational Cultural Dissonance

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Cognitive Dissonance

Intergenerational Cultural Dissonance

Everyone remembers fighting with their parents at some point in their life, whether as a young child who wants a toy or as a teenager who isn’t allowed to go out. It’s normal to want to challenge authority when growing up, because it helps young people to make their own decisions and become individuals. Teenagers rely on few close friends and the last people expected to be confidants are their parents.

As a Filipino-American and a child of immigrant parents, the consequences of my rebellion are much more serious than for a child of American-born parents. My parents raised me as if I was growing up in the Philippines. The values and practices they had were completely different from ones of someone born and raised in the United States. Growing up, I never felt comfortable talking to my parents about my problems, because my parents would always say, “I am your parent, not your friend, don’t talk to me like that.” The only times that parents did talk about problems would only be during family parties. My cousins and I often overheard our parents gossiping about us in Tagalog and Ilocano all the time and despite the little Tagalog and Ilocano we understood, once we heard our names, it was like we were fluent speakers. We knew exactly what they were saying about us.

I always felt my parents were against me and thought everything I did was wrong. My parents would constantly put me down for the things I did wrong. I felt awkward whenever I did something right and received praise for it. I always felt like the victim and a lot of my friends felt the same way, too. I bonded with fellow Filipinos at school and we discussed our struggles living with strict parents. I envied pe...

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