When cut up fruit isn’t enough: How South Asian American women navigate parental academic expectations

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 3) Friendship, Parenting and Community Organizing

Abstract

This paper centers South Asian family socialization in an analysis of how South Asian immigrant parenting practices and attitudes shape South Asian American women’s identity development as students and as daughters. Findings indicate that South Asian American women perceive transactional parent-child relationships, where parents do not explicitly express love or pride towards their children. The exception to this rule, however, is within education, where South Asian parents openly praise their daughters in cases of academic excellence. As such, this paper draws upon critical theory and the “immigrant bargain” literature (Smith, 2005; Louie, 2012) to argue that South Asian American women’s academic identity development is shaped by multiple layers of family socialization shaped by colonial histories, and takes form through their continued efforts to earn explicit parental validation through academic and professional accomplishments. Expanding the sociological scholarship in race, ethnicity, gender and education, this study underscores how colonial, sociopolitical structures of oppression both benefit and harm South Asian American women’s academic, career and interpersonal familial experiences.

Author

• Zora Haque, Harvard University