Immigrant Girls: Struggling with Cultural Traditions
A Working Group Report
Report #1, Autumn 2000
The Center for New York City Affairs,
Milano The New School of Management and Urban Policy

A project of The New American Youth Initiative
Sponsored by The New York City Council Youth Services Committee, Councilman Kenneth K. Fisher, Chair. With additional support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

This report was compiled with the assistance of a group of service providers, advocates, community leaders and young people. Its contents were discussed in a group roundtable session at the New American Youth in New York Conference on March 21, 2000, at The New School, and the results of that discussion have been incorporated, along with feedback from many other individuals. Special thanks to Wendy Brennan, Helena Ku and Sayu V. Bhojwani.

While there are significant differences among immigrant communities, the challenges faced by young girls are often strikingly similar. In most cases, the traditional cultures of immigrants' homelands are threatened by the American emphasis on women's rights, individual expression, and rebellious teenage culture. For many parents, the perceived loss of control over their daughters, combined with their unfamiliarity with American life, can lead them to take desperate measures to restrict their daughters' out-of-school activities, education, and careers. For daughters, the taste of a freer lifestyle and the opportunity to pursue their academic and career goals may alienate them from their family and native community.

Each young woman and each family responds to the challenges of acculturation in a different way. In more extreme cases, young girls run away from home or drop out of school in an attempt to escape a restrictive environment. But in most cases immigrant girls and their families struggle through the process of adaptation with limited guidance and support. On the following pages are recommendations for community organizations, schools and government agencies, developed by a group of New York area advocates, service providers, community leaders and young people.

Education

Many immigrant families adhere to home-country cultural traditions. In some cases, these traditions dictate that educational success is more important for sons than for daughters. Thus girls are often raised to be good wives and mothers, not career women. Religious beliefs, too, can in some cases undermine support within the family for a recent immigrant girl's interest in education. These factors can increase the likelihood that young women will drop out of school.

Research also indicates that the level of the parents' education and their socioeconomic background best predicts whether families will emphasize education and consider it a priority for their children, boys and girls alike. However, even the most encouraging immigrant parents tend to have little knowledge about the American public education system and do not always understand the supportive role parents are expected to play in a child's education in the United States.

Recommendations:

• School staff should be trained to recognize and understand the cultural pressures immigrant girls contend with at home. Some young women who aspire to higher education do not receive emotional or other support from their families; school staff and community organizations are often the best source of support to help these young women succeed in school.
  
• Schools and community organizations should train their staff to recognize cultural complexities regarding the traditionally accepted roles of women and girls in some societies. Teachers and counselors must understand that feminism and related topics may be most effectively taught within the cultural context of the students themselves, rather than simply from a Western point of view.
  
• The Board of Education must do more to engage immigrant parents so that they are knowledgeable about the public school system and aware of the educational options available for their children. Some advocates suggest the best way to reach parents is to create partnerships with the Board of Education and local community-based organizations, which can facilitate outreach and help develop linguistically and culturally appropriate materials.

After School Programs

Some immigrant girls are either not allowed to participate in coeducational after school programs or may be required to go home directly after school to assist with household chores and to perform childcare duties. After school programs can, however, offer girls a wide array of opportunities and support that is vital to their development. Providers should make every effort to design programs that facilitate the participation of immigrant girls.

Recommendations:

• Providers of after school programs must devote resources to parent outreach and education.
  
• Some providers find that immigrant girls' attendance rates improve if their programs are offered at the school and include an educational component. This is due to the fact that some parents may not want girls to participate in programs designed purely for recreational or social support purposes.
  
• Youth services providers must consider the needs of immigrant girls in program development and design. Some providers, mindful of the different needs of boys and girls, offer girls-only programming. For example, one provider offered separate computer classes for girls when she realized that the girls were not allowed to participate in co-educational classes.
  
• Child care services should be available to young women who have become caretakers for younger children in their family and extended family, so that these young women can participate in community organization programs and other activities.
  
• Provider organizations should also consider establishing mentorship programs for girls who have recently arrived in this country. Mentors can help foster self-esteem in young girls and make invaluable contributions to their overall development. Girls in particular need exposure to role models from there own communities as well as from other immigrant communities. Mentors, however, must be culturally sensitive and cannot impose their own beliefs on the girls with whom they work. Providers should train mentors to prepare them to work with young immigrant girls.

Domestic Violence Issues

In some immigrant cultures women and girls are viewed as having few or no rights in the household. Such traditional beliefs, in addition to the stress many immigrant parents experience and the loss of supports once provided by extended family and friends who remained in the home country, can have serious consequences for the family and the relationships between parents and girls. Tensions in the household can also increase the incidence of domestic violence.

Recommendations:

• Any attempt to address the impact of domestic violence must be done with tremendous cultural sensitivity. Service providers will not make an impact on families unless they can effectively work within and around traditional cultural structures and norms. Some organizations are attempting to address domestic violence issues through avenues such as the schools, youth programs and the local media. There is also a need for more culturally competent providers able to offer domestic violence services.
  
• Immigrant parents may inflict corporal punishment as a means of disciplining their children, which may be acceptable in their native culture. Some of these practices, however, are viewed as abusive by American standards. Service providers recommend that community-based organizations and the city's Administration for Children's Services form a partnership to educate parents about acceptable American standards of child discipline. This may be done in part through public service announcements on ethnic radio and television, in ethnic newspapers and on subways.

Health and Sexuality

Sex education is controversial for many immigrant families. While issues of sexuality will inevitably surface during adolescence, information about sex is often not available to young girls because of cultural taboos. In addition, girls' health and gynecological needs may not be adequately addressed.

Cultural and religious values may prevent many immigrant girls from engaging in early sexual activity. But early marriages are considered the norm in many cultures around the world, and teenage pregnancy is common within marriage.

Recommendations:

• Programs for girls must carefully incorporate issues of sexuality and girls' health. Specific cultural taboos must be understood and recognized. Developing such programs may prove to be quite challenging because, in some immigrant cultures, not only are parents reluctant to discuss issues of sexuality, but adolescent girls may refuse to discuss these topics as well.
  
• Some early marriages are religious in nature and involve girls under 16 years of age marrying older men. Community-based organizations must develop support programs specifically for married and/or pregnant girls from immigrant families. Their needs often differ from those of American married and pregnant teens.
  
• Community organizations should establish programs that reach out to and educate parents about how to discuss sexual and related health issues with their daughters. These programs can be effectively combined with education about child development, parenting skills, domestic violence and how to access health care services.

Mental Health
Adolescent girls from all cultures may require support to examine issues around self-esteem and body image. Immigrant girls in particular routinely experience additional stress as conflicts arise with parents over the clash between their traditional cultures and more permissive American cultural norms. While many immigrant cultures prize the family unit and demand deep respect for elders, American culture tends to promote independence among young people and more irreverent behavior. For girls who are expected to care for parents and younger siblings, these conflicts can be doubly hard.

Further complicating the issue, members of some immigrant cultures are uncomfortable speaking with outsiders about family problems and are often unwilling to accept counseling services.

Rates of depression, suicide and substance abuse are particularly high among teenage girls in some immigrant and ethnic groups living in the United States.

Recommendations:

• In order to deal with and reduce conflict at home, youth service providers must offer safe environments where girls can talk about problems without the fear that parents will be immediately alerted. School teachers, administrators and counselors also need to recognize the potential mental health consequences of intergenerational conflict within immigrant families and accommodate the needs of teenagers struggling to bridge two cultures.
  
• The city and state should sponsor the expansion of culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services and substance abuse services to meet the needs of immigrant families and their children.
  
• While there are no statistics available on the number of runaway immigrant girls, some youth providers identify this as a concern. Girls unable to cope with the stress of family conflicts (or who face cultural practices such as arranged marriages) may run away from home. Many girls with nowhere else to go end up in city run shelters or group homes. Group homes must have the resources to address linguistic and cultural needs of the immigrant clients they serve.

The following individuals took part in the working group that developed this paper. Their affiliations are included for identification purposes only.

• Jean Andrews-Rosser, Collaboration Specialist, Girls Scout Council of Greater New York
• Josie Atienza, Executive Director, Filipino American Human Services, Inc.
• Rini Banerjee, Program Director, New York Women's Foundation\
• Sayu V. Bhojwani, Executive Director, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA)
• Wendy Brennan, Program Associate, J.M. Kaplan Center for NYC Affairs
• Sally Burry, Program Assistant, Peace Corp Fellows
• Silvia Canales, Teen Coordinator, Manhattan Valley Development Corporation
• Sandra Costen, Human Rights Specialist, New York City Commission on Human Rights
• Maria J. Diaz, Public Health Advisor, US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Services
• Alexandra Dimant, Teen Director, Shorefront YM-YWHA of Brighton Beach Manhattan
• Michele Gittens, Community Coordinator, Planned Parenthood of New York
• Theresa Greenberg, Forest Hills Community House
• Lolita Hart, Aftercare, Social Worker, Inwood House
• Bonnie Harwayne, Director of Guidance, Manhattan Comprehensive Day and Night School
• Helena Ku, Forest Hills Community House
• Aparna Lall, South Asian Youth Action
• Dominique Michel, Family Worker, Wingate High School, Haitian Centers Council
• Kari Nelsestuen, Research Associate, Academy for Educational Development
• Julie Okoniewski, Grand Street Settlement
• Mariana Rotenberg, PhD Candidate, Fordham University
• Carmen Vega-Rivera, Executive Director, East Harlem Tutorial
• Robyn Brown-Manning, Facilitator, Girls' Issues breakout session, New American Youth Initiatives Conference, March 21, 2000

To learn more about the New American Youth Initiative, see our Web site at www.immigranti.org.

Sponsored by New York City Councilman Kenneth K. Fisher.

The Center for New York City Affairs is a program of the Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Please join the J.M. Kaplan Center mailing list! Call 212 229-5418 or send an email to: whitea@newschool.edu.