CULTURAL DISSONANCE AMONG GENERATIONS: A SOLUTION-FOCUSED APPROACH WITH EAST ASIAN ELDERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Oct 2004 by Lee, Mo Yee, Mjelde-Mossey, LeeAnn

In traditional East Asian cultures, high value is assigned to family harmony and filial piety coupled with the expectation that elders will be honored and obeyed. A lifetime of such expectations shapes how elders perceive their role and status in the family. Problems can arise when younger, less traditional, generations do not share these expectations. This article describes a solution-focused approach that facilitates the family in creating a beneficial harmony in situations of cultural dissonance. Family members are empowered to draw on personal strengths in which multiple worldviews and values of individual members are recognized, incorporated, and negotiated.

Family therapists are increasingly being challenged to work with families from diverse cultural backgrounds. The estimated foreign-born population of the U.S. in 2000 was 28.4 million, up from 9.6 million in 1970. According to the 2000 Census, 11% of the foreign-born people in the U.S. are age d 65 and over, with nearly one-quarter of them coming from Asia (Schmidley, 2001). In response to these changing demographics, openness to diversity and cultural competence when providing family therapy is essential. In the process of developing cultural competence, there could be a tendency for therapists to assume that all generations of a family share the same cultural norms. This assumption of "sameness" may not hold true (Hardy, 1990; Montalvo & Gutierrez, 1990). In an evolving world of migration and acculturation, cultural diversity can, and does, occur within a family and between generations. There can be differing levels of acculturation and adherence to tradition, from one generation to the next, with younger members more likely to adopt Euro-American, middle-class values than their elders. This diversity within families can be conceptualized as cultural dissonance, which may, in some situations, be at the core of their problems (Hong & Ham, 1992; Johnson, 1995). The family therapist must guide the generations to a more sensitive acceptance of each other's culture.

In this article, we discuss the utility of a solution-focused approach for resolving problems of cultural dissonance among East Asian American families. There are discussions in the existing literature regarding the use of a solution-focused approach with Asian American populations (Berg & Jaya, 1993; Song & Moon, 1998). However, previous discussion does not provide a clear description of the clinical application of such an approach nor a specific focus on problems of cultural dissonance that usually involve struggles between families and their elders.

In addition, this discussion focuses on East Asian populations instead of Asian populations as an undifferentiated group because of cultural heterogeneity among East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian cultures and values. Southeast Asian and South Asian populations in the U.S. are distinctively different from East Asian populations because of diverse immigration history as well as religious influences of Hinduism and Islam. East Asian populations primarily include, but are not limited to, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese populations, which comprise 42% of the total Asian American populations in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).

EAST ASIAN FAMILY VALUES

Despite the existence of inter- and intragroup differences among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean populations (Lum, 1998; Sorenson, 1996), most East Asian immigrant families are influenced by the values of family centrality and collective orientation to life that are mostly rooted in Confucian values and ethics. Multi-generation families lived in close proximity sharing a set of cultural values, roles, and expectations that guided their familial relationships (Chu, 1985). It is important to understand the concept of self to understand East Asian family values and practices. The traditional East Asian self, as rooted in Confucianism, existed primarily in relationship to significant others in a collective of extended family and kinship networks (Chu, 1985; Tamura, & Lau, 1992; Triandis, 1995). A male would consider himself a son, a brother, a husband, a father, an heir to the family lineage, but hardly himself. Likewise a female was a daughter, sister, wife, and a mother, but not an independent woman striving for self-actualization (Chan & Leong, 1994). In addition, an individual's self-worth was not measured by what he or she personally achieved, but by the extent to which he or she lived up to the expectations of others as defined by dominant cultural values and norms. In a family situation, these expectations were circumscribed by well-defined roles within a hierarchical structure. In the patriarchal family structure, power was distributed based on age, generation, and gender (Min, 1995). Behaving in an orderly manner within the family was the basis for a harmonious society. In situations involving conflict between individual and family well-being, it was expected than the individual would defer to the group. Family values based on collective existence took the form of solidarity, loyalty, interdependence, filial piety, chastity, integrity, dignity, and obedience (Doi, 1986; Ho, 1993; Min, 1995).