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teach their children and how they respond to their children’s developmental behaviors and struggles. It is for instance not a surprise to see an immigrant parent experiencing what he or she terms as disrespect from their child, resigning to an explanation that “it is the devil who is trying to attack the family.” The solution then must also be spiritual—pray! If one is not a Christian, some families will begin to wonder if they have done something wrong to their ancestors or families at home to warrant these kind of attacks. Sometime they may even voice these meanings to their children in the heat of the moment and I can only imagine what a child who does not have religion as the reference to explain the world thinks of such response to their struggles. Further insights on the effects of spiritual dissonance among first generation immigrant’s children might be regarded as moral-value issue that affects immigrant teenage identity crises. The phrase moral value in some ways captures the totality of third level identity crisis and its unique characteristics. The difference between how laws, morals and values are transacted in the West and non-western communities, lays the main foundation of critical dissonance that leads to unique identity crisis for the first generation immigrant teen and their families.

      As already discussed in chapter 1, there is a distinction between laws and morals and values as the guiding vehicles of relationships in the Western and non-western communities respectively. In the West, morals and values are transmitted mostly by one’s family. In some cases, institutions such as the church and other faith-based institutions may also influence which morals and values are transmitted. Laws on the other hand are judicial and set apart from morals and values in the West. Laws are written and can be easily referenced, and cited in the judicial system. They apply to all adult members of the society and can be used to coerce required behavior. Because of their power to enforce punishment and consequences, laws in the Western world are powerful in directing behavior.

Among non-western cultures however, morals and values are the guiding standards of normality. In many cases, laws organically spring from morals and values and if a law cannot find a place within the communal moral and value standards, they could very well be dis-regarded as non-functional. They are meant to elicit feeling and emotion, and thus lead to the formation of what psychologist refer to as the super ego. Heinz Kohut recognizes that the formation of the super ego or the moral structure of our being is a transaction of the internal maturity and external impartation of guidance from parents through idealization of the parental system. In other words, the child internalizes the realistic ideals of the parents into the developing psychic structure of the super-ego. In adult personality the super-ego is the important component of our psychic organization that holds up to us our ethical and moral guide—or rather the ideals that hold us accountable to behavior. In Kohut’s words, the super-ego “leads to the building up of those aspects of the super-ego which direct toward the ego, the commands and prohibitions, the praise, scolding and punishment that formerly the parents directed towards the child.”30

      The difference in the communal societies is that such impartation is not just directly from the parental system but rather a wider circle of influencers in the moral formation, including extended family and clan members. Indeed, this wide circle of influencers goes as far as to invoke the spirit world of ancestors long gone but whose heritage remains an influencing factor for the family. It is not new to hear an immigrant parent say to the child, “you must always remember that your grandpa’s spirit lives in you, live up to his name,” or something close in the name of teaching some moral value to the child.

      By guiding standards of normality, morals and values thus determine normal behavior and psychosis. For instance, respecting one’s parents and seniors is one of the shared highest moral standards in the non-western world. Similarly, while the phrase “children are to be seen and not to be heard” is widely accepted in the non-western world, it is often misconstrued in the Western world to mean denying the child a right to voice or freedom. Rather it points to the expectation that the child must show his/her parents due respect. Even if the parents are wrong, the child should still find the most humble way to bring this to their attention but not blurt it out as though in the same social standing as the parent. Similarly, the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” may be conceptually used in the West, but is very practically applied in the non-western world, meaning, children can be corrected and even disciplined by any non-parental adults.

      This moral–value versus legal conflicting worlds are a root for the dissonance experienced by children of first immigrant parents and leads to what we are referring to as the third-level identity crisis. The ensuing paragraphs discuss several features of the third level identity crisis as experienced by children of first generation immigrants. We wish to mention that these aspects are not necessarily exhaustive of the teenage experience since such experience varies from teen to teen and may be further varied by factors like: parental assimilation of western culture; parental adherence of spiritual faith; child’s sibling order; family location in the north America; age of child’s exposure to western world; family proximity and level of interaction with other non-western families; level of parental cultural identity and sense of self.

      Identity Dissonance: Who Am I?

      As stated in the general identity crisis development, one of the major questions that sparks identity crisis is the question “whom am I?” This is the question that ignites teenage exploration of family narrative, personal looks, substance, gender, etc. For the minority teenage in the US, the question has the rider of who am I as an African American, Asian American, Native American? The same rider is rarely an issue for the Caucasian teenager whose ethnicity is the default for the United States. Such questions will generally bear the aspects of race, color and history associated with one’s ancestry. For the teenage child of first immigrant parents, the question bears the third layer rider of “why do my parents (family) behave, believe, and have requirements so different from all my other friends’ parents around me, both parents of color and Caucasian? What does this make me? What makes this or that wrong when we all agree it is not illegal? With whom should I hang out? Why do my parents deter my company of friends just because they do things differently? Why do my parents have “mistrust” of other families who do not look like them? These are all questions rooted in one’s identity according to beliefs and morals that the child is beginning to sort out for themselves.

      The inner crisis is ignited by the fact that when the child looks at him/herself in the mirror they see a likeness of parents, but the feeling inside approximates that of their friends and friends’ parents more than their own. “Who am I?” is a loaded question that points to all kinds of inner turmoil for the child of first generation immigrants and a question that continues to plague them as they negotiate the various stages towards adulthood.

      Living in Two Worlds

      Questions of “who am I?” lead many immigrant children to learn to live in bifurcated worlds. To keep peace at home, they learn the expectations, values and morals of their parents. They follow these as closely as possible and thrive on heaped praise from their parents for exemplifying good character and virtues.

      The journey to this amicable seeming compromise is however long, tedious and painful. In most cases, there have been experiences of painful fallout with parents; arguments, denouncements, warnings and seemingly unfair consequences. Pain of depression and feeling alone is very common. Experiences of feeling different, hating oneself, being ridiculed and failing to fit in are also part of this journey. At the juncture they reach this point of compromise and resignation to follow the ways of the parents, for the child it is most likely a resignation to never be understood, while for the parents it is a manifestation that at last the child can see their way. Hence, it is not necessarily the amicable sense of fulfillment that it seems on the surface. Indeed, this juncture may be characterized by occasional lapses to arguments, and disregard of parental direction. To the parents this is termed as disobedience, and disrespect while to the child it is yet another fling at asserting Western individual freedom. The reality is that while the child has learnt what pleases the parents and cues in to these, he /she also has their foot in the other western world of individuality where what matters most is what he thinks and wants as long as it is not legally violating any one. For instance, many children will not argue with their parents about a certain issue being forbidden as a family value—but they will do it any way behind their parents’

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