Preface

The relationships between children and their parents are the building blocks for family relationships throughout life. The nature of the parent-child relationship begins with parenting—the practices and strategies that parents engage in as they raise their children. Parenting during childhood sets the stage for parent-adolescent relationships. These relationships make a critical difference during the teenage years: we know that when parent-adolescent relationships are healthy and strong, adolescents are more likely to have high aspirations and achievement, and to make healthier choices when it comes to risk-taking. Most of the research in this field has been based in the United States and has been conducted through studies of European American families. Yet a growing body of research suggests important ethnic differences in styles of parenting and the qualities characterizing the parent-adolescent relationship. In this area of research, most existing studies have examined ethnic and cultural group differences using widely accepted measures and concepts of parenting. Comparative studies assume that dimensions of parenting such as parental warmth or control have the same meaning across cultures; however, given that conceptualizations of adolescent-parent relationships have been developed and tested on samples comprised largely of European Americans, we cannot rule out the possibility that the way we understand parenting has been shaped by the predominantly Westernand U.S.-focused research in this field. Thus, the meanings of relationship qualities that underlie parenting practices and parenting styles in other ethnic/racial populations have rarely been examined, and there is little basis for knowing how well parenting constructs apply in other racial/ethnic groups. Although most of the existing research has been based in the United States and has typically focused on European American families, it is also the case that, due to the growing numbers of non-European Americans in the United States, there are strategic opportunities to study the cultural basis of parenting practices and parentadolescent relationships. For this book, the emphasis on Asian American parenting and parent-adolescent relationships is rooted in two important trends. First, at the population level, Asian Americans are among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. Within this broad ethnic group are diverse ethnic subgroups that, while sharing an Asian cultural origin, have very distinct subcultural identities and histories that have shaped the nature and dynamics of family life. We focus