Objectives: The present study examined how English proficiency, aspects of social status (education, income, and shifts in subjective social status), and interpersonal support were directly and indirectly associated with variations in depressive symptoms among Chinese immigrant mothers. Method: Individual semistructured interviews and questionnaires were administered to 257 first-generation Chinese immigrant mothers in the United States (Mage = 37.87 years). Participants reported on their English proficiency, perceived shifts in subjective social status, income, education, and levels of interpersonal support. Depressive symptoms were assessed through semistructured individual interviews using a measure previously developed and validated with Chinese American immigrant adults. Results: Path analyses indicated that participants’ perceived upward shifts in subjective social status, higher levels of interpersonal support, and higher annual household income were associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Associations between English proficiency and participants’ depressive symptoms were mediated by shifts in subjective social status, income, and interpersonal support. Conclusion: Chinese immigrant mothers’ perceptions of postmigration changes in subjective social status and the availability of interpersonal support play important roles in their mental health, even accounting for objective indicators of socioeconomic status.
A central theme of acculturative specificity is the heterogeneity of the immigrant experience. This study integrated this application of the Specificity Principle with intergenerational transmission models of selfregulation and identified both common and specific pathways in the self-regulatory development of Chinese American children in immigrant families (N = 169, M age = 9.2 years). Consistent with intergenerational transmission models, results indicated associations between parents' and children's effortful control, with the mediation of these associations via authoritarian parenting. Parental education, family income, and children's bilingual proficiency were also uniquely associated with children's executive function and effortful control. Together, findings provide new directions for research with ethnic minority immigrant families, and underscore the utility of within-group approaches in advancing research on ethnic minority children's development.
A growing body of research examines the experiences of highly skilled individuals who “return” to work in their ancestral homeland, but has tended to overlook the gendered dynamics that shape their decisions. This article fills this gap by analyzing how the gendered local context of China affects the experiences of American-Born Chinese (ABC) migrants. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 52 second-generation ABC professionals in Beijing and Shanghai, I found that both women and men enjoyed comparable career growth and opportunities. Socially, however, men’s foreign citizenship, education, and higher wages transformed them into highly eligible dating and marriage partners, while ABC women were stigmatized as “leftover women” (a social category ascribed to urban, educated single women in China). Thus, ABC women must prioritize either their professional or personal lives, while their male counterparts can enjoy both. By highlighting the personal realm, this case reveals how the trajectories of first-world ancestral homeland migrants are uniquely gendered.
chinese american "satellite babies," raised between two cultures by leslie k. wang By all measures, 25-year-old Lydia embodied the American dream. The Chinese American Harvard grad was simultaneously pursuing a medical degree and a PhD in biology from a prestigious university in New York. In this, Lydia was following in her parents' academic footsteps: they had migrated from China to the United States in the early 1980s to pursue PhDs (her mother in economics, her father in physics). They married in Boston prior to having her, their fi rst and only child.
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