How South Asian American Women’s Experiences With Parental Academic Expectations Reinforce Seeking Out External Validation

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  In Roundtable Session: Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender Roundtable: Asian American Experiences, Resistance, and Justice

Abstract

South Asian American women’s educational experiences are shaped by various institutions, including the family unit. This paper explores South Asian family socialization, specifically how South Asian immigrant parenting practices shape South Asian American women’s identity development as students and as daughters. Key findings indicate that South Asian American women perceive their parents as maintaining transactional parent-child relationships where parents only explicitly express love or pride towards their daughters in cases of academic excellence. This consequently reinforces women’s desire for external validation in their higher education and career experiences. Expanding the sociological scholarship in race, ethnicity, gender and education, this study underscores how colonial, sociopolitical structures of oppression benefit and harm South Asian American women’s academic, career and interpersonal familial experiences.

Author

• Zora Haque, Harvard University