Exploring sense of indebtedness toward parents among Korean American youth

Kang, Hyeyoung

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/16077 Copy

Description

Title

Exploring sense of indebtedness toward parents among Korean American youth

Author(s)

Kang, Hyeyoung

Issue Date

2010-05-19T18:34:09Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Larson, Reed W.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Larson, Reed W.

Committee Member(s)

• Raffaelli, Marcela
• Okazaki, Sumie
• Ebata, Aaron T.
• Jarrett, Robin L.

Department of Study

Human & Community Development

Discipline

Human & Community Development

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Asian American
• Korean American
• immigrant family
• emerging adulthood

Abstract

Korean American youth experience immigration-related parent-child challenges including language barriers, generational cultural divides, and parental unavailability. Despite these challenges, studies suggest their lack of negative effects on these youth’s global perception of their parents and an indication of positive relationships in Korean immigrant families. Evidence suggests the important role of Korean Amercian youth’s positive meaning-making in their perceptions of their parents and past family challenges, as well as the salience of their perception of parental sacrifice in the process of positive meaning making. Thus this study proposed Korean American youth’s sense of indebtedness toward parents as an important concept that may be useful to understand the gap between parent-child challenges and their outcome among Korean immigrant families. Using symbolic interactionism theory and grounded theory methods, this exploratory qualitative study examined the role of Korean American youth’s sense of indebtedness toward their parents in understanding the process of positive meaning-making. The findings show that the majority of these youth developed their narrative sense of indebtedness toward parents, in which they incorporated SIP-related perceptions into their own narratives. However, only some youth internalized sense of indebtedness toward parents, making these perceptions integral part of their own beliefs by attributing personal and significant meaning to these perceptions. The findings suggest that Korean American youth’s internalization of sense of indebtedness toward parents may play a role as a protective factor against parent-child challenges by positively affecting the youth in cognitive, affective, and behavioural domain, through which it appeared to help youth overcome parent-child challenges and promote more positive parent-child relationships.

Graduation Semester

2010-5

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16077

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 Hyeyoung Kang

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