Explores the perspectives of 36 Southeast Asian immigrant parents concerning effective and ineffective parenting practices. The National Extension Parent Education Model (NEPEM), which identifies preferred parenting practices that correlate with positive child development, guided the design of this study. Among the key findings was that the wider the acculturation gap between parent and adolescent, the greater the incidence of intergenerational disagreement. Moreover, parenting practices that had been effective in previous generations, such as scolding and hitting to prevent adolescents from getting into unsafe or unhealthy situations, were no longer effective with adolescents who had grown up or were born in the United States. In these cases, parents appeared to have adapted a practice commonly used to train younger children called “pleasing,” which involves meeting the child’s desires in order to get him or her to behave properly. Study findings also suggested that the meanings participants assigned to NEPEM’s parenting categories were based on their cultural beliefs, family history, and social situations. Family educators seeking to work effectively with Southeast Asian parents need to take into consideration their pre- and post-immigration experiences and their feelings of inadequacy and to reassure them that parent-adolescent conflicts cut across race, culture, and socioeconomic levels.
