Examines Southeast Asian parenting practices in the United States during a period of acculturation and transition, focusing on conflicts arising between parents and adolescents. Thirty-six Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese parents living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota participated in a series of focus groups. Among the key findings were that: (1) Southeast Asian parents felt that the U.S. school, legal, and judicial systems hampered their ability to guide their children successfully; (2) parents’ negative experience of U.S. systems and culture exacerbated a bicultural and intergenerational gap in Southeast Asian families; (3) tension also intensified when parents felt torn between their children’s demands for change and their own need to maintain traditional cultural practices and when adolescents did not behave according to the cultural code; and (4) parents’ style of motivating children to succeed also often caused heightened tension, especially when it involved constant surveillance of adolescent behavior conflicting with parental expectations. Social workers and other practitioners need to take into account the diversity and complexity of adjustment and adaptation among families and to design sensitive and respectful programs that affirm cultural strengths and meet parents’ needs and expectations.
