Abstract
In this qualitative, cultural psychological study of the childrearing beliefs of ten first-generation Asian Indian Hindu parents in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, I sought to understand the socialization goals that these parents value the most as they raise their children. To gain access to parental beliefs and imaginaries, I used caregiver diaries, ecological inventories, repeated in-depth interviews, and participant observations over a one-year period. In the interviews, the parents emphasized independence, family ties, and the cultural and religious goals that they had for their children. Yet this was not as striking as what the parents did not say or what they only voiced peripherally: the importance they attached to their children’s academic achievement. Their reticence around this goal relative to other goals was conspicuous considering the children were remarkably accomplished students, whose daily routines were often built around academic activities. This paper explores the motivations and the meanings underlying this silence.
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Notes
- 1.
My study utilized the methodology of the Baltimore Early Childhood Project (ECP), a longitudinal project undertaken at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from 1993 to 1998 by Serpell, Baker, and Sonnenschein (2005). That study examined child socialization and parental beliefs in different sociocultural environments (African- and Euro-American, middle-income and low-income) and how these variations impact children’s academic performance.
- 2.
Based on iterative readings of the transcriptions, I constructed a detailed listing of parental responses to each of the questions. The list was collapsed into six conceptual categories: personal/individual centered, social/interpersonal, academic, intellectual, moral, and cultural. Three independent coders assessed the credibility of the coding categories. We identified problem items and codes, and delineated decision rules, repeating the process until we reached an inter-coder reliability of 0.87 to 1. Subsequent reanalysis yielded a value of 0.93 for Krippendorff’s alpha. Following coding of all the responses, I generated frequency counts and percentages to identify the most common response domains in different sub-areas from aggregated responses. I also examined individual level data in order to study key phrases or words occurring within the broader context of an individual parent’s unique belief system. I shared tentative interpretations of findings with selected individuals from the Indian American community, and reformulated the interpretations through negotiated dialogue until a consensus was reached.
- 3.
All names are pseudonyms.
- 4.
See writer Rebecca Solnit’s essay (2017) on the synonymousness of silence and power, especially pertaining to women’s powerlessness at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/08/silence-powerlessness-womens-voices-rebecca-solnit
- 5.
Noelle-Neumann’s perspective has been critiqued for various reasons. For instance, she does not consider disinterest, or shyness, or attempts to not embarrass someone with an opposing viewpoint as reasons for people’s silences.
- 6.
Years ago, when my then-elementary school-aged daughter enthusiastically endorsed reading as her favorite hobby, her teacher pronounced that she needed to be “more normal and watch TV.”
- 7.
The term antinomic refers to the holding of a different set of norms than the majority group and that are then offered as an alternative to prevailing norms (Moscovici, 1985).
- 8.
The parents did not say this explicitly; I infer this from my experiences and interactions as an immigrant parent.
- 9.
In the classic Ashramadharma conception, the ideal life cycle is divided into four Ashramas, or stages, with corresponding developmental tasks (Kakar 1979, 1981; Motwani 1958): Brahmacharya (student life, characterized by discipline, celibacy), Grihastha (family life, including making a living, procreation, and childrearing), Vanaprastha (preparation to leave material life by a conscious broadening of perspective through travel/pilgrimage), and Sanyasa (final renunciation of material life for the exclusive pursuit of spirituality; wisdom). Another stage, Balya (childhood, the golden period), with numerous substages, can be found as the first stage in folk versions of the Ashramadharma model. The entry into each stage and substage is announced by a rite of passage, ritual, or sacrament known as a Samskāra (Kakar 1979, 1981). The stages were set up originally to apply only to members of the top three of the four castes, Brahmins, the priestly class; Kshatriyas, the ruling class; and Vaishyas, the merchant class. Other castes adapted the stages to meet their needs. Congruent with a mostly patriarchal societal structure, the Ashramadharma model was prescribed for men only.
- 10.
Due to the increase in the numbers of Indian immigrants who are not highly educated in the U.S. and the concomitant increase in their representation in working class, non-professional occupations, the stereotype of the Indian immigrant as a member of the model minority group has become weaker (Prashad, 2000; Kibria, 2002).
- 11.
The other three parents knew English but were less fluent. They had been educated in private, vernacular language schools in India.
- 12.
As pointed out by Bourdieu, culture is arbitrary in both, its form and content. Furthermore arbitrary powers that are difficult to specify impose and perpetuate it through institutional and social conditions.
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Ganapathy-Coleman, H. (2020). Unspoken Expectations: Children’s Academic Achievement in the Beliefs of Asian Indian Hindu Parents in the United States. In: Ashdown, B.K., Faherty, A.N. (eds) Parents and Caregivers Across Cultures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35590-6_8
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