Acculturation,

Development,
and Adaptation
Eugenio M. Rothe, MDa,*, Dan Tzuang, MD
b
,
Andres J. Pumariega, MDc,d

KEYWORDS
 Culture  Acculturation  Childhood  Development

Acculturation refers to the process that occurs when groups of individuals of different
cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, which changes the original culture
patterns of either or both groups. The encounter causes cultural diffusion of varying
degrees and may have one of 3 possible outcomes: (1) acceptance, when there is
assimilation of one group into the other; (2) adaptation, when there is a merger of
the 2 cultures; and (3) reaction, which results in antagonistic contra-acculturative
movements.1 Acculturation is a concept that applies to individuals living in communi-
ties other than where they were born, such as immigrants, refugees, and asylum
seekers. It does not apply to groups whose ancestors were subjected to involuntary
subjugation in their own land, such as Native Americans, or to individuals whose
ancestors were brought to the United States by force and subjugation, such as African
Americans. Today more than ever before acculturation has become a relevant
concept as a result of the phenomenon of globalization, which defines the sociocul-
tural climate of the twenty-first century.
Globalization occurs when there is an acceleration of movement of people, prod-
ucts, and ideas between nations.2 It is characterized by an increase in fluidity between
the financial and political borders between countries, which in turn increases the
complexity of the everyday problems that are faced by the inhabitants of the countries.
Another important aspect of globalization has been the increase in large migrations in
the last decades, predominantly from poor countries to more developed ones, like the
United States.3 Historically, federal legislation has played a significant role in this
process. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act, also known
as the Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished racial discrimination in

a
Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
b
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences Building, 401 Quarry Road, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
c
Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
d
Department of Psychiatry, The Reading Hospital and Medical Center, Sixth Avenue & Spruce
Street, West Reading, PA 19611, USA
* Corresponding author. 2199 Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Suite 304, Coral Gables, FL 33134.
E-mail address: erothe@fiu.edu

Child Adolesc Psychiatric Clin N Am 19 (2010) 681–696

doi:10.1016/j.chc.2010.07.002 childpsych.theclinics.com
1056-4993/10/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
682 Rothe et al

immigration law. As a result, each independent nation had a yearly quota of 20,000,
whose children, parents, and spouses could enter as legal immigrants. This legislation
had a significant effect in certain immigrant populations. For instance, the ethnic
Chinese population in the United States almost doubled each decade after the act
was passed, although Chinese people accounted for only one-tenth of 1% of the pop-
ulation in the 1960 census.4
As a result of their arrival and resettlement in the United States, immigrants usually
undergo varying degrees of acculturation stress, which leads to alterations in the
person’s mental health status.5 These alterations may improve or worsen with the
person’s later acculturation and adaptation to the United States.

THE NEW DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE UNITED STATES

Until the mid-twentieth century, the United States received predominantly European
immigrants, whose racial and cultural characteristics allowed them to assimilate
rapidly into the American social fabric. In the past 40 years, immigration from Europe
and Canada has declined dramatically, and non-European immigration has increased
faster.
The foreign-born population in the United States increased by 57% in the last
decade, compared with only a 9.3% growth of the US native population. By the
year 2050, European-origin Americans will no longer be the numerical majority; this
will happen before 2030 among children younger than 18 years and is already true
among 6-year-olds.6 Most of the new immigrants to the United States describe them-
selves as nonwhite, and immigrants from the Caribbean and Central and South Amer-
ica are the most racially mixed, with less than 45% self-reporting as white. The United
States faces a rapidly changing demographic landscape with an increasing multiracial
and multicultural population. These changes largely result from 3 major factors: (1)
progressive aging and low birth rate of its European-origin population; (2) lower
mean ages and increasing birth rates in non-European minority groups; and (3) a signif-
icant increase in immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. These growing
populations of children are diverse in their racial, ethnic, national origin, immigration,
and socioeconomic makeup. However, as a group, they are different from the older,
European-origin, white, and higher socioeconomic mainstream population.

CULTURE AND IDENTITY

Hughes7 defines culture as a socially transmitted system of ideas that: (1) shapes
behavior, (2) categorizes perceptions, (3) gives names to selected aspects of experi-
ence, (4) is widely shared by members of a particular society or social group, (5) func-
tions as an orientational framework to coordinate and sanction behavior, and (6
conveys values across the generations. Cultural process refers to the fluid and
ever-changing characteristics of a culture that responds to changes in the historical
and cultural contexts in which cultures are imbedded. Hughes7 considers that it is
more accurate to refer to a particular group’s cultural process, rather than a group’s
culture, which implies that it is stationary. However, in this article the term culture
is used, although what is implied is cultural context.
In childhood, from the age of 3 to 4 years old, children are already capable of detect-
ing differences in language use, and between 4 and 8 years of age children develop
a sense of ethnic identity. They identify as members of a particular ethnic group,
they consolidate a sense of group identity, and they develop curiosity about other
groups that are different from their own.8
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 683

Identity formation has been historically viewed as one of the principal tasks of the
passage into adulthood. The concept of identity is composed of individual and social
components and is closely related to the culture. Erikson9 conceptualized identity as
resulting from the dynamic interplay between the individual and his group and cultural
context, and added that identity development is the central task of adolescence that
(1) optimally results in a coherent and self-constructed dynamic organization of drives,
abilities, beliefs, and personal history and that (2) functionally guides the life course.10
However, this concept of the universality of development, representative of the
modernist European tradition, has been vigorously challenged. It has been considered
to be based on male oriented and Western values that are more descriptive of the
white mainstream majority in the United States. The critics of this model postulate
that it may not adequately represent the experiences of members of minority groups,
such as adolescents born to immigrant families. The postmodernist tradition suggests
the opposite. It argues that identity formation is idiosyncratic and that it is different
each time, and particular to every individual. In a review of the literature, Schwartz
and Montgomery11 were unable to find any empiric studies supporting the postmod-
ernist tradition; instead, their research supports a third alternative hypothesis, which
argues that the fundamental structure of identity is consistent, but it is also influenced
by variables that are particular to the individual and take into account the different
styles of acculturation. Taking this third model into account, Schwartz and
colleagues12 regard identity as “the organization of self-understandings that define
one’s place in the world”(p5). They conclude that identity is a synthesis of personal,
social, and cultural self-conceptions. Identity has been divided into (1) personal iden-
tity, which refers to the goals, values, and beliefs that the individual adopts and holds,
(2) social identity, which refers to the interaction between the personal identity and the
group with which one identifies, and (3) cultural identity, which refers to the sense of
solidarity with the ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the members of a partic-
ular cultural group. There is often confusion between the terms cultural identity and
ethnic identity. Ethnicity refers to the cultural, racial, religious, and linguistic character-
istics of a people,13 and ethnic identity refers to the subjective meaning of one’s
ethnicity. Ethnic identity is contained within the broader concept of cultural identity,
which refers to specific values, ideals, and beliefs belonging to the particular cultural
group. Ethnic identity has always been a socially constructed product, which is
affected by several variables. It can recede into the background, or it can become
an engulfing concern.

Case 1
Ives, a 17-year-old Haitian adolescent, was sent away by his family to a prestigious
boarding school in the midwest United States, to protect him from violence and the
possibility of being kidnapped in Haiti. His father occupied an important government
position on the island and the family belonged to the mulatto aristocratic class. Ives
was unable to adapt or fit in at the school. He complained that his peers “were not
used to dealing with an educated black person and didn’t know what to do with
me,” and that they talked down to him and treated him with fear and contempt. He
added that he could not find anything in common with the American blacks who
attended the school, most of whom came from poor families, had come from the adja-
cent urban ghettos, and were studying on scholarship. Ives became depressed and
suicidal at the school and eventually moved to Miami, where he began residing with
extended family and attending day school. At this time, Ives was also seen in weekly
psychotherapy. Immediately, he began to question his Hispanic male therapist about
the perceptions his therapist had of him, given that both were of a different culture and
684 Rothe et al

race, and together they were able to explore his emotional pain, his sense of alien-
ation, and his fears of rejection. Ives slowly became aware that sometimes he pre-
sented with a hostile attitude toward others, which was a defense against the
anticipation of being rejected, and realized that this attitude kept people away from
him. Slowly, Ives became less defensive and together with his therapist began discus-
sing Haitian culture and history. Ives also developed an interest in the short stories of
Haitian folk author Edwidge Danticat, which he described and discussed during the
therapy sessions. One day, after several months in psychotherapy, he told his thera-
pist “I had never given much thought to the fact that I’m black until I came to the United
States. I have now discovered that I am ‘Black and Haitian’. I feel proud of my heritage,
because Haiti was the first free Black Republic in the world. Now I feel more Haitian
than ever, and in Miami I have found enough people that are like me. Yet, I am also
beginning to feel like an ‘American’. I consider that the United States is my home
and I have no interest in ever going back to live in Haiti.” In the therapy, and with
the help of the supportive community of compatriots in Miami, Ives was able to
discover new aspects of his ethnicity and culture of origin; these identity fragments
became integrated into a new, richer, and more cohesive sense of self. In turn, this
allowed him to successfully integrate to his new peer group, which included adoles-
cents of various ethnic origins and nationalities.
The concept of identity functions as a regulatory social-psychological structure and
is particularly pertinent to immigrant people, who are trying to locate themselves
between the culture of origin and the host culture, and who are trying to maintain
a sense of self-consistency and consider new possibilities.12

The Stresses of Immigration

DeVos14 and Ogbu15 describe 3 themes that have a determining effect on the adap-
tation and identity formation of the immigrant child and his or her family.

1. Under what circumstances does the immigrant enter the host culture (voluntary
migration vs forced migration, conqueror vs slave)?
2. Is there a structural ceiling (social hierarchy) above which the immigrant cannot
rise, regardless of effort, talent, or achievement?
3. Is there a cultural ethos or stereotype that fits the immigrant, from which he or she
cannot separate?
At times, a person who is regarded by the majority culture as a member of a partic-
ular ethnic group or who regards himself or herself as of a particular ethnicity may find
his or her identity changed by the immigration process.
Most immigrants that come to the United States are financial immigrants who have
fled poverty in their country of origin in search for a better life. However, because of the
changing immigration landscape influenced by federal law, there is tremendous diver-
sity among immigrants and their levels of education. Amongst Asian Americans, first-
generation experiences vary tremendously, ranging from initial penniless Chinese
immigrants who came to work on America’s railroads and gold mines in the 1800s,
to more recent patterns of college-educated professionals from Taiwan, China, Korea,
and India who came to pursue graduate degrees and stayed, versus the experiences
of those in the Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian populations who may have entered
the United States to seek political asylum from their war-torn home countries.
However, overall it can be said that the immigrant experience is one of the most
stressful experiences a family can undergo. It removes the family from their relation-
ships, friends, neighbors, and members of the extended family. It also removes the
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 685

family from their community, jobs, customs, and sometimes language, placing them in
a strange and unpredictable environment.16
Garza-Guerrero17 constructed a theoretic model to understand culture shock,
a phenomenon that immigrants experience when they first encounter the new culture.
He describes 2 elements that are the hallmark of culture shock: (1) mourning, related to
the loss of the culture, country, language, friends, and predictable environment; and
(2) the vicissitudes of identity, in the face of the threat of a new culture. He divides
culture shock into 3 phases: (1) the cultural encounter, (2) reorganization, and (3)
a new identity. If completed successfully, this process leads to personal growth and
an enrichment of the self. This process of culture shock closely resembles the process
of adolescence itself, and presents a double developmental challenge to the immi-
grant adolescent.

Case 2
Juan, a 13-year-old adolescent arrived in Boston abruptly with his mother and 3
brothers following a marital dispute caused by his father’s infidelity. The family began
residing in the small one-bedroom apartment of his aunt and cousin, which soon led to
tensions. Juan and his brothers struggled to fit into a multiethnic, inner-city school,
where his difficulties were aggravated by his poor command of English. Juan became
aggressive and joined a school gang. He was referred to therapy by his pediatrician,
who believed that Juan was depressed and experiencing auditory and visual halluci-
nations. Juan presented as an angry and despondent adolescent, who missed his
father and his home life in Puerto Rico. One day he told his psychiatrist about a dream
he had had the night before: “I dreamt that my brothers and I were riding on a train, that
we fell off and found ourselves trudging through a marsh that never seemed to end.
Suddenly, we were attacked by three men that were wearing masks. We fought
with them and their masks fell off. One man was blond, the other man was black,
and the third one was Chinese.”
Juan’s dream is an example of the first phase of culture shock, the cultural
encounter, which is characterized by a sense of confusion that results when aspects
of the old culture are compared with aspects of the new, host culture. The discrepancy
that results from the comparison may lead to feelings of disorientation, loss, mourning,
and helplessness. Often in these situations, aggression becomes a defense against
helplessness, which may explain Juan’s acting-out behaviors. If these feelings of
aggression are projected outwards, some aspects of the new, host culture may be
perceived as persecutory. Juan’s persecutory feelings and his feelings of helplessness
and social alienation may serve to explain why he joined a gang. The gang provided
him with a peer group that offered protection and also validated his feelings and his
defensive acting-out behaviors.

ACCULTURATION ACROSS HISTORY: CHANGING VIEWS

The history of the United States is a history of immigration. The massive migrations
that have shaped the identity of the United States throughout its history as a nation
have often given rise to nativist movements, whose goal has been to stop or decrease
immigration. They are led by the previously settled inhabitants, who perceive a threat
to their established customs, or fear competition in their job markets. These fears are
often enhanced by the high fertility rates found among immigrant minority groups and
lower fertility rates found among the more established groups.18 These historical
events contributed to the notion that the best way to enter into the American culture
was to assimilate, totally renouncing the culture of origin and immediately becoming
686 Rothe et al

American. This model applied well to immigrants arriving from Europe in the 1800s and
into the twentieth century. Most of these immigrants had similar ethnic characteristics
and often Americanized their names, forming the American melting pot. The term
acculturation was first used in 1936 by a group of anthropologists of the Social
Sciences Research Council, and became an issue of wide discussion after the bur-
geoning refugee and immigrant resettlement crisis generated after World War II.19
The acculturation process causes change not only in the immigrant but also in the
receiving culture, leading to a process of interculturation. Immigrants often choose
one of several acculturation strategies: (1) cultural maintenance (choosing to what
extent cultural characteristics are important to maintain), (2) cultural participation
(determining how they participate with members of the host culture, or remain among
themselves), (3) integration (equivalent to assimilation), and (4) marginalization
(choosing to segregate themselves from the host culture).5 The United States is an
ethnically complex society, so rather than understanding acculturation as a uniform
and linear phenomenon, Portes and Rumbaut20 have proposed the concept of
segmented acculturation. Their research has mapped segments of immigrants with
different patterns of acculturation in the United States, whose differences are deter-
mined by factors that are intrinsic to the immigrant, as well as factors that are intrinsic
to the particular area of the host country to which the immigrant has arrived. For
example, an immigrant from a rural area in Cambodia arriving in Oregon has a different
acculturation experience to that of an Eastern European professional arriving in
a northeastern American city to further his professional training.

Effects of Acculturation on Children, Adolescents and Their Families

The family is the primary context in which the child grows, develops an identity, is
socialized, is hurt and healed, and struggles with powerful developmental issues.21
There is an abundant literature describing how people of different cultures express
their distress.22,23 The process of immigration causes intrafamilial stressors that result
from the process of acculturation, because family members frequently have different
levels of acculturation and family bonds can be threatened by conflicting acculturation
responses. In addition, sometimes even members of the third and fourth generation
may still differ from the dominant culture in their customs, values, and behaviors.
For example, Cespedes and Huey24 found that Hispanic female adolescents experi-
enced more discrepancy in gender roles between themselves and their parents
than Hispanic male adolescents. These discrepancies led to increased levels of
depression and poorer family functioning for Hispanic girls, but not for boys. Romero
and colleagues25 reported similar findings for Hispanic female adolescents, but found
that bicultural stress and depression affected Asian female adolescents even more,
when both groups were compared with European Americans.
For Asian Americans in particular, there is the added stress of being looked on as
the model minority, which has progressively been debunked but still casts long
shadows. Originally coined by sociologist William Peterson in the 1960s to describe
Japanese Americans who had assimilated successfully into American culture, this
catch phrase was reapplied by the media in the 1980s to expound on the educational
triumphs of Asian Americans.4 Although some Asian Americans may take pride in the
model minority image, the general consensus in academia and Asian American
studies is that this image is detrimental to Asian Americans because it can lead to ster-
eotyping and to viewing Asian Americans as a uniform group. This may affect
resources allotted by federal assistance programs to Asian ethnic subgroups in
need. In addition, the model minority myth may play a significant role in Asian
American mental health. Asian American scholars have postulated that the pressures
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 687

exerted by Asian-American parents on their children, so they will do well in school can
lead to increased suicide rates.26 Among 15- to 24-year-old women, Asian Americans
have the highest rates (14.1%) of suicide deaths compared with other racial groups in
the United States. Asian American men of the same age have the second-highest rate
of suicide deaths, at 12.7%.27 Despite these alarming statistics and other mental
health problems such as depression, there is still consistent underuse of mental health
resources by Asian Americans across the United States.28

Case 3
Joann is a 17-year-old Asian American adolescent girl of Vietnamese descent who
presented to the outpatient clinic after her mother brought her in for evaluation of
“academic problems.” Her mother was primarily concerned that Joann’s grades
had fallen from As to Bs and Cs during her junior year of high school, and that her
poor performance would adversely affect her chances of entrance to a prestigious
university and becoming a lawyer. Joann had been reporting problems concentrating
and after some hesitation, her family decided that it was time to get her some help. She
was seen by a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with clinical depression and eating
disorder. She also had difficulty sleeping, decreased appetite, and had been exer-
cising 2 to 3 hours a day in an effort to “look like Asian girls should.” She reported
passive suicidal ideations, with occasional cutting that was unknown to her parents.
Joann came from a middle-class blended family, and her mother had recently given
birth to a younger half-brother, who “is treated like a prince.” She had limited knowl-
edge of her biologic father until this past year, when he contacted her without her
mother’s knowledge, and she learned that he lived in a different part of the state
and had difficulty maintaining consistent employment. Joann felt that she was not
able to really talk to her parents about how sad and confused she felt in relation to
her recent reconnection with her father. “All they want to talk about is grades, and
how I need to do well on my SATs or I won’t get accepted into UC Berkeley or Stan-
ford.” She felt the only person in whom she could confide was her boyfriend. Joann
was sexually active with him and they practiced the rhythm method of contraception.
She constantly felt insecure “because I just worry he’s going to leave me for a hotter,
skinnier Asian girl.” Joann and her mother reluctantly engaged in therapy and were
firmly against psychopharmacologic intervention. “I don’t want to take medications
just because I’m messed up. I should be able to handle this. and no way am I going
to take medications. My parents are definitely against anything that’s not ‘natural’.”
Several factors in Joann’s case are commonly encountered by clinicians when treat-
ing Asian American teens: parental and societal pressures to succeed, in addition to
parental focus on academic success, without attention to emotional well-being,
compounded by stigma against mental health treatment. Clinicians treating Asian
Americans should be aware of how these cultural demands may play an important
role in the mental health of this population.
One of the functions of the parents in the family is to teach and to provide leadership
and guidance in firm but loving ways. This capacity can be weakened by immigration.
If there are disagreements between parents and children about the basic blueprint of
how the family should operate, this can be destructive and may lead to triangulation
among the different family members. Family factors have a direct effect on the devel-
opment of adverse outcomes of children and adolescents, and exert a strong influ-
ence in which behaviors endure and are linked to adolescent substance-abuse
disorders and delinquency.29 Also, family functioning and acculturation often have
a circular effect on one another. For example, Hovey and King30 described how low
levels of family functioning increase acculturative stress, which in turn leads to
688 Rothe et al

depressive symptoms in the adolescents of immigrant families. Also, Duarte and

colleagues31 found that low parental acculturation was associated with more antiso-
cial behaviors in Puerto Rican adolescents living in New York City, as well as in Puerto
Rico. Conversely, adaptive family processes can serve as a protective factor in high-
risk environments and alleviate adolescent problems that have already surfaced. For
example, Liu and colleagues32 studied Chinese immigrant families residing in the
United States and found that adolescents with Chinese mothers who were more
acculturated, had higher levels of maternal monitoring of their children, and used
less harsh discipline had lower levels of conduct problems. In a recent Harvard study
of high-school students,33 Asian American students who participated and reported
symptoms of depression had higher grades than their peers but reported more
concern about academic factors and also felt that their parents were not interested
in their emotional lives.
Language barriers sometimes result in disempowering the parents of immigrant
children. For example, parents of minority children are expected to advocate on behalf
of their children in schools and in neighborhoods that are often filled with discrimina-
tion and prejudice. A good command of the English language is often necessary to
undertake these tasks. Liu and colleagues34 found that Chinese mothers who were
more proficient in English tended to have children with higher academic scores and
fewer depressive symptoms. In addition, these researchers found that proficiency in
both English and the native Chinese language was a protective factor against depres-
sion for foreign-born young Chinese people, more than for young Chinese people born
in the United States.
Among immigrant families, it is not unusual for a disciplinary meeting to take place at
school in which the child serves as the translator between the parents and the school
teacher or principal, thus undermining the hierarchical structure of the family and
compromising the executive power of the parents in the eyes of the school authorities.
Parents of different cultures also relate differently to institutions. In some cultures,
such as among members of the Asian cultures, institutions are greatly respected
and considered sacred and never challenged. There are also countries, such as Haiti,
where citizens have been subjected to centuries of abuse and persecution. It is not
uncommon for psychiatrists to come into contact with Haitian immigrants who may
initially perceive American institutions as potentially cruel and persecutory, and relate
to them with fear and distrust. This fear and distrust also permeate the therapeutic
relationship; the psychiatrist often has to use tact, empathy, patience, and persever-
ance to overcome this resistance. These distorted perceptions can undermine the
parents’ capacity to advocate for their children in the new, host culture. The family
member with the greatest competence in the mainstream American culture is the
best prepared to negotiate with powerful extrafamilial systems, such as courts,
schools, and social agencies.31

Language and Ethnicity in the Second Generation

Acquisition of unaccented English has been, and continues to be, the litmus test
of citizenship in the United States. In no other country are languages extinguished
with such speed.35 For immigrants, the switch to English is both an empiric fact
and a cultural requirement demanded of those who have sought a new life in
America. Kataoka and colleagues36 found that in California, students with lower
English-language proficiency had a disproportionate impairment in difficulties
with grades. Outside the ethnic enclaves that exist in the United States, to speak
English only is a prerequisite for social acceptance and integration, and those who
try to educate their children in their mother tongue confront immense pressure for
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 689

social conformity from peers, teachers, and the media. Portes and Rumbaut20
explain that “In a country lacking centuries old traditions, and simultaneously
receiving thousands of foreigners from the most diverse lands, language homoge-
neity has been seen as the bedrock of nationhood”(p96).
Several empiric studies highlight that the first generation of immigrants learns
enough English to survive economically, the second generation (born in the United
States to immigrant parents) may use the parental tongue at home but use English
in school, and in the third generation, the home language and mother tongue shift
to English.35 Language use can also have subtle connotations in everyday life in Amer-
ica. Waters37 studied first- and second-generation blacks in New York City and noted
that middle-class blacks convey, through the use of mainstream English, verbal and
nonverbal cues that they are not from the ghetto and that they disapprove of
ghetto-specific behavior.
Language retention is closely related to socioeconomic variables. For example,
immigrant children growing up in impoverished communities receive no encourage-
ment to retain their parents’ native language, because the native language is stigma-
tized as a symbol of lower status.35 This is the case in second-generation Haitian
young people in Miami, who rapidly shed Haitian Creole for English and prefer to be
identified as African American, rather than Haitian American.
Portes and Stepic38 studied language use in Miami, Florida. They found that
Spanish was alive and well among first-generation Cuban immigrants, but that
language retention decreased in proportion to the length of stay in the United States.
They found that despite the economic prosperity, excellent self-esteem, and social
support offered by the Cuban ethnic enclave in Miami, 90% of second-generation
Cubans preferred to communicate in English.
The interplay between the immigrant parents and their children in the second
generation also accounts for the type of “goodness of fit”39 that occurs in the accul-
turation process into the United States. Generational consonance occurs when
parents and children acculturate at the same rate, or when the parents encourage
selective acculturation among the second generation, such that the cultural harmony
between parents and children is maintained, allowing the children to adapt to their
new American reality. Cultural dissonance occurs when the second generation is
neither guided nor accompanied by the changes in the first generation. Consonant
resistance to acculturation occurs among isolated immigrant groups that are strongly
oriented toward return and view their presence in the host society as temporary,
such as exiles.20

Case 4
Kathy (Ekaterina), an 18-year-old adolescent girl, emigrated from Russia to Miami with
her family at the age of 7 years. Kathy was referred for psychotherapy because of
oppositional-defiant behavior at home and difficulties getting along with her parents.
Kathy shared with her Hispanic male therapist that she felt “very American,” and
added “I feel embarrassed to take anyone to visit my home, because my parents
barely speak English and they insist on speaking to me in Russian in front of my
friends. It makes me stand out and feel different and I don’t like it. I just want to be
a regular person, like everyone else. My parents don’t make any effort to fit in, they
just hang out with other Russian people and they don’t understand anything about
my life, it’s like they live in another planet.”
This case presents an example of how language use increases the cultural disso-
nance between 2 generations of an immigrant family. This dissonance leads to feelings
690 Rothe et al

of alienation in the adolescent, who lacks the necessary guidance and protection that
parents are able to provide during the adolescent passage.

RESILIENCY AND RISK

Second-generation children (American-born offspring of immigrants) have been found

to be at higher risk of more behavioral conditions, such as substance abuse, conduct
disturbance, and eating disorders, than the first generation of immigrant young
people.31,40,41 In some groups, such higher risk may be a result of this group facing
the chronic stresses created by poverty, marginalization, and discrimination without
the secure identity and traditional values of their parents, when they do not yet have
a secure bicultural identity and skills. Garcia and Lindgren42 studied Hispanic families
and found that adolescents boys reported that having to work in addition to or instead
of going to school to provide financially for the family was the key stressor of immigra-
tion, whereas the girls complained about losing relationships and mothers spoke
about the fears of deportation, listing names of friends who had been deported.
Also, Pumariega and colleagues43 found that second-generation Mexican Americans
who had an overreliance on peers, were more exposed to the media, and spent less
time with their families and in religious activities had a significantly higher risk of
substance abuse and suicidality44 than more traditional young people born and living
in Mexico. Various studies have shown greater risk for eating disorders in more accul-
turated immigrant young people both in the United States and in Europe.44 This situ-
ation may hold particularly true for Asian Americans, who face the double pressure of
perfectionism brought on by the expectations of the model minority myth and the glori-
fication of the perfect body image. Low self-esteem and personal identity confusion
can result from feeling marginalized and discriminated against and often lead to
substance abuse, increased sexual risk-taking behavior, conduct problems, and
poor school performance45; acculturation orientation has been associated with proso-
cial behaviors.46 Being the victim of racism has been associated with low self-esteem,
depression, poor school performance, and poor school motivation, as well as
increased parent-child conflicts.47 Some second-generation immigrants seem to be
more vulnerable to the effects of racism than those who were born outside the United
States. For example, US-born Chinese people reported experiencing more discrimi-
nation than those who were born in Asia.48 Yet, Chinese-Americans who remained
close to the Chinese culture experienced less depressive symptoms than those
who reported feeling more dissociated from the Chinese culture.49 Also, self-esteem
proved to be the most important protective factor against substance abuse among
Hispanic adolescents who resided in monocultural Hispanic households.50
Racism, discrimination, and social marginalization among minority adolescents
often lead to the development of adversarial identities, such as affiliation with gangs.
The adolescent who feels marginalized and discriminated, lacking opportunities for
upward mobility and who belongs to a racially unmeltable minority group, seeks vali-
dation from peers, standing in defiance of the values of the mainstream majority
culture.51
Adolescent refugees have also been found to be at high risk for mental health
problems, especially posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. These problems
are often unrecognized by parents and teachers, and culturally competent mental
health services for refugees are often lacking.52,53
The degree of closeness among family members varies according to whether the
family functions as a nuclear or extended network system. Some Hispanic and Asian
families function as extended families, and thus mothers and grandmothers act as
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 691

coparents to the children. In these families, the failure to involve key family members in
therapy, such as grandmothers, can lead to sabotage of the therapy by the excluded
member. Also, the degree of closeness among family members and the sense of filial
duty tend to be greater in extended families. Rodriguez and Weisburd54 reported that
adolescents who are closer to their families are also less reliant on their peers. When
the level of family bonding is high, adolescents tend to find peers whose values and
beliefs are similar to those of their families. This tendency can serve as a protective
factor, but may also slow down acculturation. A greater degree of acculturation is
also inversely related to family obligations, because immigrants frequently transition
from an extended family network system more commonly found in developing coun-
tries, to a nuclear family, which is more commonly found in industrialized societies.
Loyalty and conformity are also influenced by how authority is handled in the family.
Some cultures have families in which authority is linear and hierarchical, maintaining
traditional gender roles, whereas others are more egalitarian and emphasize negotia-
tion. Sometimes, immigration-related changes in parental authority and communica-
tion can undermine the traditional family structure and lead to family deterioration. For
example, language can present a concrete obstacle to communication among the
members of different generations within the immigrant family. If well-acculturated
adolescents speak only English and parents and grandparents speak only the
language of the country of origin, this diminishes the amount of communication. Inter-
ests and shared experiences decrease, and the parents and children may feel a sense
of distancing that makes them believe that they are living in different worlds. Szapozc-
nik and colleagues29 studied Cuban families with poorly acculturated parents who
spoke little English and with well-acculturated adolescents who spoke little Spanish.
They found that these adolescents felt alienated from their parents, had an overreli-
ance on their peer group, and gravitated toward peers who felt equally alienated.
These adolescents were found to be more at risk for depression, substance abuse,
and delinquent acting-out behaviors. In contrast, German and colleagues55 found
that among Mexican American adolescents, higher levels of family involvement acted
as a protective factor against deviant peer affiliation, and accounted for lower levels of
conduct problems and externalizing behaviors. Zayas and colleagues56 reported that
among Hispanic adolescent females who attempted suicide, less mutuality between
mothers and daughters increased suicide risk, whereas increased communication
between mothers and daughters served as a protective factor against suicide. In addi-
tion, McHale and collegues57 reported less depression and involvement in risky
behaviors among Mexican American adolescents who were well supervised by their
parents, as well as more involvement in academic activities when the parents valued
the importance of education.
In addition to family integrity, love, and supportive communities, school has been
found to play an important role in the resiliency of immigrant and second-generation
adolescents in the United States. The Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation
Project (LISA)58 showed that immigrant families place their hopes of improvement
on providing a better education for their children. Dominican immigrants in New
York City have the third-lowest level of educational attainment of all immigrants to
the United States. However, in less than one generation, their children accomplish
the highest level of school retention and the highest percentage of high-school
completion of all the immigrant groups in the New York public school system.59
This “Dominican miracle in New York”60 supports the finding that success in school
is one of the most important predictors of psychosocial adaptation for first- and
second-generation immigrant children to American society. Immigrant children who
succeeded in school also became more connected to their ethnic communities.
692 Rothe et al

Rather than shamefully distancing themselves from the cultural heritage of their
parents, these children saw success in school as payback for their parents’ efforts
and sacrifices, and as a way to make their community proud of their success.58

MEASURING ACCULTURATION

Acculturation is a complex construct that presents a challenge to investigators

because it encompasses socioeconomic, historical, political, and psychodynamic
variables. For this reason, the study of acculturation has become of interest to the
fields of sociology, political science, economics, and the mental health sciences.
The inherent complexity of how culture influences cognitive mechanisms and human
behavior may help to explain the proliferation of acculturation measures and the lack
of substantive reviews of the literature that evaluate the specificity and validity of these
measures. The understanding of acculturation has evolved from a linear concept to
a multidimensional process of confluence between the cultural-heritage community
and the cultural-receiving community. In the linear model of acculturation, the compo-
nents of acculturation that are assumed to change are (1) language and (2) cultural
practices. In most of these studies, greater acculturation is associated with negative
outcomes, a concept known as the immigrant paradox.61,62 However, Schwartz and
colleagues63 highlight that it is not clear whether the negative outcomes that appear
with progressive acculturation are caused by acquiring new practices, or to losing
the practices of the heritage culture. These investigators add that it is also not clear
whether immigrants should be discouraged from acquiring new practices, or encour-
aged to preserve the old ones. Escobar and Vega19 have concluded that little explan-
atory power is added to psychiatric epidemiologic studies by the inclusion of
multidimensional acculturation scales. Instead, when conducting epidemiologic
studies, the preferred language, the person’s place of birth, and number of years
residing in the United States are frequently used as proxies for acculturation. They
are used as dependent variables that have consistent main effects on problems
such as drug use and psychiatric disorders. Preferred language and place of birth
are also stronger predictors when using multivariate models to predict health
outcomes. However, Schwartz and colleagues63 argue that the linear model of
studying acculturation misses multiple dimensions that are involved in acculturation.
In terms of language use, these investigators propose that some immigrants may
identify with their culture of origin, yet not be proficient in their heritage language,
such as many Asians in the United States. In terms of ethnic identification, traditionally
most white non-Hispanics have identified themselves as American. However, with the
changing racial composition of the United States, it is unclear whether in the future
people who reside in the United States will continue to equate American with white.
Cultural values are assumed to change when the person acculturates. Some of the
values that have been attributed to certain immigrant groups are also common to other
groups. Schwartz and colleagues63 argue that more than being characteristic of any
ethnic group in particular, these values may be common to people who emigrate
from collectivist, agricultural societies to individualistic, industrialized societies, and
that it is important for acculturation measures to take into account the context of
reception of the host country, for example, if the immigrant is arriving in a rural,
possibly more closed community versus an urban, possibly more open community,
the economic characteristics of the community and of the host country at the time
of the immigrant’s arrival and whether the skills that the immigrant possesses or lacks
are valued in the host community at the time of the immigrant’s arrival. Biculturalism
can vary from a model that involves synthesizing the elements of both cultures to
 Acculturation, Development, and Adaptation 693

the point at which the separation of the elements of each culture sometimes becomes
indistinct, to a model of blended biculturalism, in which the immigrant keeps the
cultural values, practices, and identifications of the heritage culture separate from
the new influences. Schwartz and colleagues63 propose that in future studies, to accu-
rately understand and measure acculturation, 6 processes need to be taken into
account: (1) the practices, (2) values, and (3) cultural identifications of the receiving
culture; and the (1) practices, (2) values, and (3) cultural identifications of the heritage
culture.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The process of immigration and acculturation often leads to a fluidity of household

compositions that may generate distancing and conflicts among the different family
members and result in adverse mental health outcomes. Clinicians treating immigrant
children, adolescents, and their families must be prepared to understand divergent,
and often well-hidden, world views, as well as difficulties with acculturation that
may cause intrafamilial conflicts and that interfere with the completion of the child’s
developmental process. Most important is to keep in mind that the children of today’s
immigrants are a generation oriented not to their parents’ immigrant pasts, but to their
own American futures.

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