Calibrating Family Acculturation: Healing Across Generations

The California Lunar New Year mass shooting shook Asian communities around the world. It was unthinkable that the culprits were elderly Asian men targeting victims with similar ethnic backgrounds on a culturally symbolic holiday. Many discussions after gun violence circled around mental illness, which contributes only to 4 percent of the violence according to studies.

As an adult and child psychiatrist specializing in minority mental health, I believe we should focus on the mental health of the survivors. For new immigrant families, acculturative stress from adapting to a new culture can lead to struggles with identity formation, family conflicts, and increased mental health and physical health problems. For Asian descents, the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes since the COVID-19 pandemic can link to mood disorders, substance use, self-inflicting injury, and suicide. It has been a vulnerable time for many Asians and Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI).

When the shockwave of the sad news reached me, I was on the opposite side of the globe, visiting my octogenarian parents who survived the wrath of COVID-19 in Hong Kong. It was supposedly the joyous time of the Lunar New Year for them and my two young Asian American boys who have not explored worlds outside of North America. It was hard to fully enjoy the festivity when chaos and tragedies hung in the air.

I have seen the mirror image of the struggles of Asian Americans in my family and friends in Hong Kong. They lived with acculturative stress in silence while embracing China’s vague security laws. When choosing a future for their family, they can stay to help Hong Kong’s post-pandemic recovery, knowing that their opinions are restricted to a piece of white paper in protest. The alternative would be immigrating to a foreign land, suffering different acculturative stress in silence with little mental health resources, and fearing potential hate crimes on the horizon.

Whether it is in the United States or Hong Kong, it is essential to move forward from the wake of the tragedies by calibrating our acculturation, preserving Asian virtues, and fostering collective pride. For me, this trip is full of life lessons to calibrate our family acculturation, granting the “permission to come home” from facing acculturative crisis. This is what we can do for our children and elders:

1. Respect and care for the elders, starting in childhood. Filial piety is the Confucian concept embraced in many East Asian families. Besides an obligated respect and honor toward one's ancestors, it is essential to reciprocate care to one's parents have once given. This can reduce isolation, despair, and even depression in the elderly. Although it may be beyond expectations for young children to practice filial piety, a modified learning of respect and empathy for the parents and elders is still feasible. I noticed my children did not hesitate to share their seats with the elderly in the subway or to hold the hand of their grandmother to comfort her arthritic pain while walking.
2. Introduce history and family stories. Intergenerational narratives help children understand the concept of “Who are you from?” This builds resilience through a sense of self, families, and generations. I shared with them about how our ancestors struggled with poverty and illiteracy as refugees. Some were victims of the “Coolies trade” and China’s Cultural Revolution. At the temple housing the ancestors’ cremations, children learned to “pay respect” to their ancestors and understood the reasoning of how their ancestors passed down kindness, love, and traditions from the past generations to the next.
3. Teach gratitude by living the cultural shock. As children develop a theory of mind, they can take others’ perspectives, feel, and express the emotions of gratitude. Gratitude builds stronger social relationships and positive emotions. Hong Kongers’ homes are on average 480 square feet. With restricted spaces, they were surprised and began to appreciate the abundance of resources they possess. At the dinner table, my children finish their entire plate by “respecting the food” as my father always preached.

Before leaving Hong Kong, we reviewed the family picture album that my father kept for years. Our laughter and tears came all at once. We left Hong Kong packed with a cultural sense of self, love, and pride across generations. Through my work with many AAPI families at Yale Compassionate Home, Action Together (CHATogether), healing can take place from the post-pandemic acculturative crises.