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Group of Immigrants Cabinet of American Illustration

In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine, many came to the U. S. because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. Others came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution, and nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. During the 1870s and 1880s, the vast majority of these people were from Germany, Ireland, and England - the principal sources of immigration before the Civil War. Even so, a relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, when federal law stopped their immigration.

With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, European immigrants and Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. With economic competition came dislike and even racial suspicion and hatred. Such feelings were accompanied by anti-Chinese riots and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result of this pressure was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century.

Immigrants entered the United States through several ports. Those from Europe generally came through East Coast facilities, while those from Asia generally entered through West Coast centers. More than 70 percent of all immigrants, however, entered through New York City, which came to be known as the "Golden Door." Throughout the late 1800s, most immigrants arriving in New York entered at the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration processing center on Ellis Island in New York harbor.

Although immigrants often settled near ports of entry, a large number did find their way inland. Many states, especially those with sparse populations, actively sought to attract immigrants by offering jobs or land for farming. Many immigrants wanted to move to communities established by previous settlers from their homelands.

Once settled, immigrants looked for work. There were never enough jobs, and employers often took advantage of the immigrants. Men were generally paid less than other workers, and women less than men. Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Often stereotyped and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse because they were "different." While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled. The newcomers helped transform American society and culture, demonstrating that diversity, as well as unity, is a source of national strength.

To find other documents in Loc.gov relating to this topic, use such key words as immigration or immigrants, or include the names of specific immigrant or ethnic groups, such as German, Irish, Scandinavian, Swedish, Norwegian, or Chinese.

Documents

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Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900 | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States.

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twenty one pilots - Ride (Official Video)

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The Hazara Genocide and Systemic Discrimination in Afghanistan

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Marginalized communities around the world can learn from each other's experiences and together fight for justice and democracy.

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Undeniably, all communities in Afghanistan have suffered tremendously, but the Hazara minority has suffered disproportionately because of its distinct ethnic and religious identity. As an ethnoreligious minority, the Hazaras of Afghanistan have endured a long history of discrimination and systematic persecution. The Hazara community has suffered from enslavement, mass killings, and forced displacement throughout the modern history of Afghanistan. This suffering has continued into the present, aggravated alarmingly by the Taliban's rise to power.

Since the Taliban took over in mid-August 2021, the situation has deteriorated because the group has not been able to, or is unwilling to, stop the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and other groups from attacking the Hazaras.

Following the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan, ISKP has intensified its operations against the Hazara community. According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of Hazaras have been killed in suicide attacks in education centers, marketplaces, religious places, and on public transportation since the Taliban's takeover. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), have been killed just in the past three months. Besides targeted attacks that ISKP claimed responsibility for, there was also " mysterious targeting of Hazaras " by unidentified and unknown perpetrators, which has added to the complexity of the security crisis. Unclaimed attacks encourage the unknown perpetrators to continue committing crimes without being blamed.

The plight of the Hazara community is worsened by the Taliban's incitement of sectarian violence against them. The regular public incitement of violence and persecution by the Taliban paves the ground for the perpetration and augmentation of more attacks. Top members of the Taliban government have labeled Shia Muslims, such as the Hazaras, as " ." To cite one prominent example, the Taliban governor of Herat, Noor Mohammad Islamjar, wrote in a book that Shia Muslims are " historical collaborators with infidels . " Such pejorative labels not only excuse the persecution of the Shia Hazara community but worsen the situation as committing violence against a persecuted ethnoreligious group is normalized and justified by Afghanistan's de facto authorities.

The Taliban's contribution to inciting violence and fueling systematic hatred has many dimensions. The Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban has ordered private universities to remove books belonging to the Shia sect. Furthermore, the Taliban have banned marriage between Shia and Sunni Muslims in certain regions of the country because marriage with "infidels" is invalid in the Taliban's hardline ideology. When the Taliban ascended to power, for instance, they arrested a Hazara man and his Pashtun wife, who had married 15 years ago . It is obvious that the goal of outlawing marriage to Shia Hazaras is to dehumanize the Hazara population and socially isolate them. Indeed, the Taliban's discrimination against Hazaras further expands the vulnerability of the Hazara community in Afghanistan as they are left unprotected.

The Taliban's incitement of violence against the Hazara community makes their already vulnerable status worse and creates the conditions for more persecution. The Taliban's outright dehumanization and justification of murder against Shia Muslims, particularly the Hazaras, by calling them "infidels" creates perilous rhetoric that can drive violence more commonly in Afghan society. Such divisive rhetoric not only creates a hostile atmosphere but also, by implying that violence against Hazaras is justified, may normalize their targeting in the eyes of other communities in the long run.

Moreover, the Taliban's notorious Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has started extensive arrests of Hazara women and girls from various parts of the country, particularly western Kabul, under the pretext of wearing improper hijabs. Circulating hatred and violence against the Hazara community is not limited to arresting girls and women; some pro-Taliban clerics publicly call for the arrest and torture of Hazara women in mosques.

Openly inciting violence and preaching discrimination against female members of a persecuted group is a two-fold threat as it not only targets them based on their gender, but also because of their ethnic and religious identity. In a global plea regarding the plight of the Hazara community, thousands of citizens of Afghanistan mobilized a global march to appeal for the end of "Hazara genocide" and "gender apartheid."

Even though the Taliban profess to be providing security in Afghanistan, the Hazara community still falls victim to sophisticated attacks, bombings, and suicide attacks. Under the Taliban, the Hazara community in Afghanistan is subjected to extreme violence and systematic dehumanization. As the world community's understanding grows of the plight of Hazaras, it must take action to address the incitement to violence and persecution against the community. In order to preserve the rights of the Hazara community and to possibly avert long-term instability in Afghanistan, the current crisis necessitates prompt international engagement.

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The Plight of Hazaras Under the Taliban Government

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Under the Taliban, the Hazara community in Afghanistan is subjected to extreme violence and systematic dehumanization.

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https://taarinigoyal.medium.com/idolizing-people-and-what-it-means-for-us-3ba33da409f1

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Anyone can father a child, but being a dad takes a lifetime. Fathers play a role in every child's life that cannot be filled by others. This role can have a large impact on a child and help shape him or her into the person they become.

Fathers and Emotional Development

Fathers, like mothers, are pillars in the development of a child's emotional well-being. Children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them. They also look to their fathers to provide a feeling of security, both physical and emotional. Children want to make their fathers proud, and an involved father promotes inner growth and strength. Studies have shown that when fathers are affectionate and supportive, it greatly affects a child's cognitive and social development. It also instills an overall sense of well-being and self confidence.

Fathers Set the Bar for Relationships with Others

Fathers not only influence who we are inside, but how we have relationships with people as we grow. The way a father treats his child will influence what he or she looks for in other people. Friends, lovers, and spouses will all be chosen based on how the child perceived the meaning of the relationship with his or her father. The patterns a father sets in the relationships with his children will dictate how his children relate with other people.

Fathers and Their Daughters

Young girls depend on their fathers for security and emotional support. A father shows his daughter what a good relationship with a man is like. If a father is loving and gentle, his daughter will look for those qualities in men when she's old enough to begin dating. If a father is strong and valiant, she will relate closely to men of the same character.

Fathers and Their Sons

Unlike girls, who model their relationships with others based on their father's character, boys model themselves after their father's character. Boys will seek approval from their fathers from a very young age. As human beings, we grow up by imitating the behavior of those around us; that's how we learn to function in the world. If a father is caring and treats people with respect, the young boy will grow up much the same. When a father is absent, young boys look to other male figures to set the "rules" for how to behave and survive in the world.
So today, don't forget to tell your dad you love him, and thanks for being there! The information and content on our website should not be used as a substitute for medical treatment or advice from your doctor.

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The Importance of a Father in a Child's Life - Pediatric Associates of Franklin

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Fathers play a role in every child's life that cannot be filled by others. This role can have a large impact on a child and help shape him or her into the person they become.

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One's family is the single most important aspect of life in Afghanistan. Afghan culture is very collectivistic and people generally put their family's interests before their own. This means that family responsibilities tend to hold a greater importance than personal needs. Loyalty to one's family also generally supersedes any obligations to one's tribe or ethnicity.

Throughout all of Afghanistan, family matters are kept strictly private. People are often reluctant to share personal issues with non-family members as community knowledge of a family's struggles can bring shame on the household (see Honour in Core Concepts). Women may be slightly more likely to open up to other women about their personal life, but usually family matters are kept within the family.

Household Structure

Afghan households are generally large and multigenerational. It is customary for women to move in with their husbands' family at marriage. Adult children usually live in the family home of their parents or in-laws throughout their life. It is rare for married couples to move out into their own home due to economic circumstances in Afghanistan. In 2010, the average size of a household in Afghanistan was reported to be 7-8 people.1 Traditionally, this is made up of a husband, wife, their unmarried daughters, and their sons and sons' spouse and children.

In extended family households, three or four generations may live together. This may be in walled compounds in which small domestic units (such as couples) have their own room, but the entire extended family shares a courtyard. In these communal living spaces, all the women work together to raise, discipline and educate the children.

Family Dynamics

Family roles vary between ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses and regions. Nevertheless, a traditional patriarchal age hierarchy prevails throughout all. The eldest male has the most authority and decision-making power and usually controls all family spending. Every decision has to be approved by the husband or father.

Men carry the economic burden of the family and often have to single-handedly support the entire household. For a husband and father in Afghanistan, this can mean having to earn enough to support himself, his wife, his children and any parent or in-law living with the nuclear family. Brothers and sons must also help to economically support the family, protect the family honour and discipline any misbehaviour.

Women are largely in charge of the domestic chores, cooking, raising the children, entertaining guests and catering to the needs of the man of the house. It is seen as the woman's duty to ensure guests are properly entertained and catered to in the most hospitable way the household can afford. The senior woman will also be in charge of portioning a family's supply of food for the year.

Children are to show reverence and deference to their parents and elders. Disobedience of an elder's words is seen as extremely disrespectful and punishable behaviour. This expectation of social compliance loosens as people gain adult independence. However, even at a mature age, an Afghan is expected to respect their parents' wishes and take advice from those older than them. The Afghan educational system is limited, especially for those living rurally. Many young children learn entirely from the village mosque and religious leader ( mullah), or their parents (usually the mother while the father works). This supports the cultural idea that parents are to be revered for their wisdom and mothers should be greatly admired.

Gender Roles

Gender roles are highly patriarchal and rigidly defined in Afghan culture. The men are viewed as the main income earners, while women are seen as the homemakers. Husbands are expected to provide economically for their wives and children throughout their lives. Therefore, it is generally believed that a woman does not need to be financially independent, as her husband or father's earning power will support her. Under Islamic inheritance law, females receive exactly half of the wealth that their male relatives receive. This division is based on the idea that it is a man's duty to care for the women in his family.

Broadly, men dominate the public sphere and women only have authority in the domestic realm (over their children and other women). There was some progress towards women's rights during the 20th century that modernised the attitudes of many Afghans. However, when the Taliban came into power, they placed extreme restrictions on women, resulting in their seclusion and exclusion. Many bans were enforced that limited their involvement in the public sphere, tightened their moral code of dress and denied them an education. Such restrictions have eased but remain stricter than what most Afghans desire. However, as they are also founded on a religious and moral basis concerning a woman's role and place in society, they are widely upheld.

According to the religiously based conservative view, a woman should not be available to anyone but her family - meaning generally she can only leave the house if she has a male accompaniment and is completely shielded from the public eye (usually by a burqa, chador or niqab). This depends on family attitudes and is not always adhered to in practice, but it can still create an impassable obstacle for many women who wish to work, study or access health care. Some Afghan men may feel it is their duty to accompany women anywhere in public. Rural villages are usually less strict about this rule, as the burqa often hinders a woman's ability to work and contribute to the domestic economy. Some more progressive families or tribes see females as equally deserving of opportunities (e.g. to get an education or participate in public life). However, women are still likely to be secluded from most public decision-making and are expected to be modest and obedient to their fathers, brothers and husbands. Ultimately, the only male a woman can have true authority over is her son while he is young.

A breach of these expectations of social seclusion is seen as extremely shameful for the woman and reflects poorly on her husband, father or brother's ability to keep her in check. Thus, as a woman's misstep can bring intense shame on her family, she is often seen as the guardian of her family's honour. The senior male of the family has the authority to make decisions that control his female family members' behaviour in order to prevent certain behaviour and preserve the honour. An independent woman that is not quickly submissive to her husband's rules is seen as particularly dangerous. In this sense, many Afghan men may see women as 'powerful' for they can damage family prestige through subtle unconventional behaviours.

Separation of the Genders

Most Afghans observe a public separation of the genders that is legally enforced in some cases. Mixing of males and females only really occurs within families or closely knit village communities. In professional or educational contexts where both males and females may be employed or taught, people are cautious to maintain a physical distance from the other gender. In rural areas, men and women tend to have a closer familiarity with one another as they are often involved in making the same product but contribute in different ways to the production line (e.g. a man shearing the wool off a sheep and the woman spinning it).

Marriage and Dating

Marriage is considered an essential component to life in Afghanistan and all relationships are presumed to lead to marriage. 'Dating' is almost totally limited to getting to know the person one will most likely marry and usually occurs in the company of others (such as family members). Any meetings are usually considered a period of acquaintance prior to engagement. It is rare for an unmarried couple to be permitted time to see one another alone; however, some youth in the cities are pushing these boundaries.

The institution of marriage is seen as the merging of two families. Parents often arrange the marriages of their children to ensure the families are compatible. A couple's attraction to each other is not always an important consideration. Commonly, the relationship between the husband and wife is endogamous (with parallel and cross-cousin marriages preferred). However, while marriage between kin is common, families may also try to marry outside of their family to diversify their assets.

People tend to marry within their tribe or ethnic group. Strong consideration is also given to the prospective spouse's status, network, wealth and family background. Marriage can be a means to broaden a family's access to resources or, in some cases, resolve disputes. Young girls can sometimes be married off to a debtor to satisfy a family debt.

The first contact between a couple is typically made by the male's family. His female family members usually approach the girl discreetly to avoid public dishonour. The female's family rarely approaches a male's family to avoid being perceived as "too desperate". Once the prospective wife's family has agreed, the two households will then negotiate the finances of the couple and the dowry. When the engagement is announced, the two families will celebrate with a big engagement party. The groom's family pays for the wedding celebration. It frequently lasts a night or a day, but can last for three days. During this time, the marriage contract is signed. The bride will then move into her husband's place of residence (which is sometimes with his whole family) at its conclusion.

Polygamy is legal if the man can prove he can economically support all wives, but its practice is less common in modern-day Afghanistan. It usually only occurs if a man's brother dies and his widow is left with no one to support her. In that case, her brother-in-law may marry her into his family (wife inheritance). One may find in families where there is more than one wife that each wife usually has her own room, belongings and perhaps her own kitchen.

Divorce is rare and stigmatised in Afghanistan. Couples that seek to end their marriage usually face huge family and societal pressure to reunite. Female widows and divorcees can easily become economically destitute if her in-laws do not inherit her.

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1 Central Statistics Organization, 2010

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Understand family dynamics, household structures, gender roles and marriage customs

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Guest post by Aixa Perez-Prado, Senior Instruction, Florida International University

I looked around the room in my class last week and asked my students how many were either immigrants themselves, or the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Every single person in the class raised a hand. I work in a university that is known for its diversity and large Hispanic population in the city of Miami that is known for the same. Yet, in this class of immigrants and their descendants, it wasn't obvious to me that we were all so close to being geographically located somewhere else. Basically, if we traveled back in time not too many years, we would all be in a variety of different countries, on different continents, speaking different languages and living different lives. Many of my students would not even exist since their parents, immigrants from different countries themselves would have never met.

The process of immigration has changed us, as it changes all immigrants. When we leave our home language and culture and settle in a new place, we inevitably leave part of who we are behind. We cannot continue to be the exact same person we were because we are faced with different situations, different customs, different words and different expectations. We must grow and change through the process of cultural adaptation and acculturation or we will never be able to fully function in the new environment in a way that makes that environment feel like home. This is easier for some than others.

Can we ever really be at home in a new place? The concept of home is an interesting and complicated one, and one that my students have been exploring. What makes a place a home? Is it a house where we grew up, a country where we were born, is it where the people we love and care about life, or does home move with us wherever we go? I have thought about these issues many times as a childhood immigrant and come up with different answers.

For years I thought that my real home was Argentina and the house where I was born. Yet, I would visit Argentina as a child and teen and be teased for my strange habits and less than Argentine accent. I would struggle to fit in but never really would. To this day when I go there I often feel like the 'other'. The words, the customs, the pace of living and the idea of what is 'normal' are sometimes strange to me. When I don't understand something right away, I am often treated as though I were limited in intelligence rather than unaccustomed to a certain practice or situation. I struggle to communicate with the same level of depth and complexity in vocabulary and grammar as I have in English. It is harder to be 'me' when I am there. Its almost like I have to be a caricature of myself, a less complicated 'me.' I find it frustrating, and sometimes hurtful. I have often thought that I love my native country and want to be a real Argentinian, but that Argentina doesn't really love me back, and has impudently moved on without me.

But then what about the place we childhood immigrants grow up - is that then home? I grew up in Buffalo, New York, a place very different from Buenos Aires in multiple ways. There I learned a new language and way of living, made new friends and became part of a new family when my mother remarried and had two more children. I went to school in Buffalo, learned math, went through puberty, went to college, fell in love and had my first broken heart there. But was it ever really home? I am not sure. I was also 'othered' many times during my snow-capped Buffalo years.

I remember one humiliating experience when a girl in my fifth-grade class found out that I was born in another country, and that I spoke Spanish. She was joking around with me, not really being mean (but kind of) and told me to, "go back to Mexico." When I told her I had never been to Mexico, she told me to "go back to Spain then." When I mentioned I had also never been to Spain she didn't know what to say, and everybody laughed. It was a joke, supposedly, but the message of the joke was clear. I didn't really belong, and never really would. Message received. It hurt. When you're a preteen or a teen you desperately want to belong, but as an immigrant that isn't always possible. So, if I didn't really belong in Buffalo and I also didn't really belong in Buenos Aires, where did I belong? Where was home?

I guess I didn't really have a home, or maybe a better way of looking at it is that I had two homes with neither being quite genuine, neither quite embracing me the way I wanted to be embraced. The thing about immigration is that you can never really go back to exactly where you came from because that place no longer exists once enough time has passed. The culture and the language changes, neighborhoods change, the people and their routines change, even the food tastes different after a while. You may experience these changes like tiny, painful, betrayals because your home went and changed without your knowledge or permission. Going back is like seeing your grandmother doting on another grandchild that you don't even know, instead of doting on you. And you weren't quite ready to grow up yet, but you don't have a choice. Grow up you must, no matter your age, you're on your own.

The other thing about immigration is that the person you were back in that first home also doesn't really exist anymore. Your struggles and your triumphs, your experiences and your age have also changed who you are. That 'you', who once lived in that place that no longer exists, also no longer exists. An immigrant trying to go back home is like a ghost returning to a ghost town. Everything is familiar but somehow different, all of the sights and sounds, the smells and sensations are heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. It's all a little bit creepy.

But what about those immigrants who are displaced people who can never even attempt to go back to where they came from? What about the refugees who have escaped war or famine, persecution or disease? Where are they supposed to go when they are not welcome in a new place? What should they do when their efforts at creating a new home are thwarted at airports, in the court of public opinion and in the media? If it is hard enough for those of us who immigrated by choice, or whose parents did, how much harder is it for those who were forced to flee? If we who immigrated as children struggle with our understanding of who we are and where we belong, how must they feel?

In some ways, we are all immigrants searching for a home. Whether we were born in one country and raised in another, or came over as adults to a new land. Whether our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents made the decision to leave their home, or our very distant ancestors crossed a land bridge thousands of years ago - none of us has an absolute claim to any piece of this earth and yet it belongs to all of us. Why can't we share it, care for it, and create loving homes for ourselves and our neighbors no matter where we end up, what we look like, or what we believe or don't believe?

When no place is home then there is nowhere to feel comfortable, and loved. There is nowhere to belong. Instead of othering how about it if we think about ways of connecting, relating and caring? If we do that then nobody is in danger of being without a place to call home. Let's give everyone a comfortable place to lay their heads and pursue their dreams, no matter where they took their first breath or where they will take their last. Let's help each other in the long immigration of our life journeys by sharing our spaces, our hearts, our kind words and our hopes for a better world. We can all do something today and every day, even if it is just a kind word or a smile. We can each help create a feeling of home in the day of an immigrant who may not be feeling welcome through our actions and our words. Let's do that.

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Guest post by Aixa Perez-Prado, Senior Instruction, Florida International University I looked around the room in my class last week and asked my students how many were either immigrants themselves, or the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Every single person in the class raised a hand.

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Historical Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Though use of the term itself dates only to the 1870s, there is evidence of hostility toward Jews long before the Holocaust-even as far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine.

The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious tolerance, and in the 19th century Napoleon Bonaparte and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one.

Did you know? Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures. Swiss government and banking institutions have in recent years acknowledged their complicity with the Nazis and established funds to aid Holocaust survivors and other victims of human rights abuses, genocide or other catastrophes.

Hitler's Rise to Power

The roots of Adolf Hitler's particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism are unclear. Born in Austria in 1889, he served in the German army during World War I. Like many anti-Semites in Germany, he blamed the Jews for the country's defeat in 1918.

Soon after World War I ended, Hitler joined the National German Workers' Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), known to English speakers as the Nazis. While imprisoned for treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract " Mein Kampf " (or "my struggle"), in which he predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany."

Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the "pure" German race, which he called "Aryan," and with the need for "Lebensraum," or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party's status and rise from obscurity to power.

On January 30, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler anointed himself Fuhrer, becoming Germany's supreme ruler.

Concentration Camps

The twin goals of racial purity and territorial expansion were the core of Hitler's worldview, and from 1933 onward they would combine to form the driving force behind his foreign and domestic policy.

At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists.

Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and later chief of the German police.

By July 1933, German concentration camps ( Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in "protective custody." Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party strength and unity.

In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000-just one percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an "Aryanization" of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients.

Nuremberg Laws

Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were designated Mischlinge (half-breeds).

Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass" in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish home and shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested.

From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear.

Euthanasia Program

In September 1939, Germany invaded the western half of Poland, starting World War II. German police soon forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their confiscated properties to ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as German), Germans from the Reich or Polish gentiles.

Surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, the Jewish ghettoes in Poland functioned like captive city-states, governed by Jewish Councils. In addition to widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger, overpopulation and poor sanitation made the ghettoes breeding grounds for disease such as typhus.

Meanwhile, beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or physical disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945 some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust.

'Final Solution'

Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, the German army expanded Hitler's empire in Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Romani people, were transported to Polish ghettoes.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units of Himmler's SS called Einsatzgruppen would murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting) over the course of the German occupation.

A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler's top commander Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an Endlösung ( Final Solution) to "the Jewish question."

Yellow Stars

Beginning in September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow, six-pointed star, making them open targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR.

Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow, Poland. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust.

Holocaust Death Camps

Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young.

The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz.

From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Amid the deportations, disease and constant hunger, incarcerated people in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up in armed revolt.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from April 19-May 16, 1943, ended in the death of 7,000 Jews, with 50,000 survivors sent to extermination camps. But the resistance fighters had held off the Nazis for almost a month, and their revolt inspired revolts at camps and ghettos across German-occupied Europe.

Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of the camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter.

This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also partly a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale.

'Angel of Death'

At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease.

In 1943, eugenics advocate Josef Mengele arrived in Auschwitz to begin his infamous experiments on Jewish prisoners. His special area of focus was conducting medical experiments on twins, injecting them with everything from petrol to chloroform under the guise of giving them medical treatment. His actions earned him the nickname "the Angel of Death."

Nazi Rule Ends

By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering and Himmler both seeking to distance themselves from Hitler and take power.

In his last will and political testament, dictated in a German bunker that April 29, Hitler blamed the war on "International Jewry and its helpers" and urged the German leaders and people to follow "the strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples"-the Jews.

The following day, Hitler died by suicide. Germany's formal surrender in World War II came barely a week later, on May 8, 1945.

German forces had begun evacuating many of the death camps in the fall of 1944, sending inmates under guard to march further from the advancing enemy's front line. These so-called "death marches" continued all the way up to the German surrender, resulting in the deaths of some 250,000 to 375,000 people.

In his classic book Survival in Auschwitz, the Italian-Jewish author Primo Levi described his own state of mind, as well as that of his fellow inmates in Auschwitz on the day before Soviet troops liberated the camp in January 1945: "We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat."

Legacy of the Holocaust

The wounds of the Holocaust-known in Hebrew as "Shoah," or catastrophe-were slow to heal. Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their entire family and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving across Europe.

In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust's bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims sought restitution of wealth and property confiscated during the Nazi years.

Beginning in 1953, the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of acknowledging the German people's responsibility for the crimes committed in their name.
Sources
The Holocaust. The National WWII Museum.
What Was The Holocaust? Imperial War Museums.
Introduction to the Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Holocaust Remembrance. Council of Europe.
Outreach Programme on the Holocaust. United Nations.

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Holocaust: Definition, Remembrance & Meaning - HISTORY

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The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of millions of Jews, Romani people, political dissidents and homosexuals by the German Nazi regime from 1933-1945.

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As Americans, we are appalled and heartbroken by the death of George Floyd. His name-along with Ahmaud Arbery's and Breonna Taylor's-is among the most recent we have come to know. We mourn them all. And in doing so, we are reminded that many of our fellow citizens have lost their lives to bigotry and racism, and that there are others whose stories we have yet to hear.

Systemic racism is an unacceptable aspect of our culture. It has deep roots. But that does not mean that it cannot be examined, recognized, and addressed.

For decades, we have sought to understand and explain the unique experience of people of color in the United States. In 1995, The Pew Charitable Trusts began funding public opinion surveys designed to examine the trends shaping our nation. Since its establishment in 2004, the Pew Research Center has focused on race and ethnicity as a key variable in explaining the full spectrum of the American experience: economics, family, work, politics, technology, identity, and faith. It has included deep dives into the views and experience of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, and those of mixed racial and ethnic heritage.

We know that the experience of black Americans is different than that of white Americans in many ways. The Center's exploration of issues of discrimination, policing, and online harassment make that clear. In 2019, for example, its "Race in America" report showed that among those who say being black hurts people's ability to succeed, 84% of black Americans- compared with 54% of white Americans-say racial discrimination is a major reason why blacks may have a harder time getting ahead. And African Americans are roughly five times as likely as whites to report having been unfairly stopped by police.

While the Pew Research Center has rigorously documented these and other disparities and experiences, The Pew Charitable Trusts has sought ways to directly address some of the challenges that disproportionately affect people of color, including incarceration, juvenile justice, debt, and access to credit. We will continue to listen, learn, document disparities, and work toward much-needed change.

The protests across the country-many peaceful, some sadly violent-reflect the anxiety, rage, and helplessness that many people feel so acutely at this moment. We hope to contribute to national conversations that are long overdue and seek data-driven solutions to some of the obvious problems our country faces.

First and foremost, as nonprofit leaders devoted to making a difference, we want to hear more from our employees. Building an inclusive, respectful culture is hard work. It begins in our own workplaces and in our own families. It requires solid information and data, but it also requires difficult personal conversations that allow individuals to share their thoughts, experiences, anger, and sadness.

We also intend to deepen our examination of America, what divides us as well as what binds us. There are uncomfortable truths and diverse voices that need to be understood if we are to move forward as a nation. The unique experiences of people of color must be conveyed, in all their pain and strength, in order to be heard and then addressed. We are committed to that goal and stand with our many partners doing the difficult work of confronting racism and working for a better America.
Michael Dimock is president of the Pew Research Center, and Susan K. Urahn is executive vice president and chief program officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

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We are committed to hearing and addressing the experiences of people of color-as well as confronting racism and working for a better America.

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A couple days before the Taliban took over Kabul, Sara Rahmani was sketching in her free time, sitting at her home in California, thousands of miles away from where her heart lies: Afghanistan.

"I just started this painting of (a) beautiful girl as usual, because I love to show the beautiful sides of my people, my culture and our beautiful kids over there," she said. "I started sketching and just painting, and colored the eyes. After a couple days ... they took over Kabul and I had such pain in my heart."

Rahmani and her family came to America four years ago on Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs). Her father was working for an American company. Now Rahmani is going to civil engineering school in the US, and enjoys art as a hobby.

Prior to moving, Rahmani had also been taking civil engineering classes in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, where she lived most of her life."I'm really sorry for my college, and the girls that were working with me over there," she said. "They're really frustrated and really in a bad situation. They don't know what's going to happen to their future."

Rahmani said many of the young women she went to college with were working in offices but are now unemployed and struggling. They have told her they cannot wear what they want and need to be escorted by a man when leaving their homes.

As Rahmani glanced at her painting, her voice was full of emotion.

In the bottom left of the painting she incorporated the colors of Afghanistan's national flag. Two women are pictured wearing traditional dress, with braids and jewelry showing the country's rich culture, Rahmani said. One is performing a traditional dance that Afghans often perform at special events such as weddings, while the other is writing "peace" in Farsi, using the black part of the Afghan flag as a blackboard.

Rahmani then pointed to the girl in the center of the image.

"This is the portrait of the girl that I started, and it really turned sad," she said. "You see the good side, when she has a splinter of light - it's all about the good side of my Afghanistan before the Taliban took over our country. She's a happy girl and she has dirty hands from playing with other kids."

Pointing to the yellow flower at the top, Rahmani said: "And this is a beautiful flower that she's getting from her grandpa." The scarf on the girl's head is green - the color of peace, joy and happiness for Afghans, she explained. "It's a blue sky full of peace, sunny days, happiness and the birds flying instead of army airplanes."

On the right side in gray, however, are depictions of the desperate people who reportedly fell from a US military aircraft during the chaotic evacuation of Kabul. Beneath them are "people waiting at the gate of the airport with the paperwork, and some of them with nothing ... and the guy who is just trying to send his baby (over the fence) to make sure his next generation is in peace," Rahmani said.

Looking up from her pictures, she said: "To be in America, I feel better here. But at the same time it's not your country. You feel strange. Your language is different, your culture. Everything is different, even if you have peace of mind financially ... something is missing in your heart - that is your homeland. Nothing can replace that."

Tears formed and began trickling down Rahmani's cheeks. "I want the world to know that ... there are innocent people who are getting killed. They lose mothers, they lose kids ... when is this going to end?"

Rahmani said she now thinks of her family and friends who remain in the country. "All these ten days, I lost count, we're just focusing to get our families out of Afghanistan. It's horrible over there."

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Young Afghan artist creates haunting image of her homeland's fall to the Taliban | CNN

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A powerful artwork by Sara Rahmani, who fled Afghanistan four years ago, depicts the suffering endured by her compatriots in the wake of the Taliban's takeover.

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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah killed at least nine people, six of them children, hospital authorities said Saturday, as Israel pursued its nearly seven-month offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Israel's war against the Islamic militant group Hamas has led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in the Middle East, notably between Israel and Iran in recent weeks. Now attention returns to Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of about 2.3 million people are sheltering, many displaced by fighting elsewhere.

Relatives sobbed and hugged children's shrouded bodies at al-Najjar hospital. "Hamza my beloved. Your hair looks so pretty," a mourning grandmother said.

The fatalities included Abdel-Fattah Sobhi Radwan, his wife Najlaa Ahmed Aweidah and their three children, his brother-in-law Ahmed Barhoum said. Barhoum lost his wife, Rawan Radwan, and their 5-year-old daughter, Alaa.

"This is a world devoid of all human values and morals," Barhoum told The Associated Press, crying as he cradled Alaa's body. "The only martyrs were women and children."

Israel has insisted for months that it plans a ground offensive into Rafah, where it says many remaining Hamas militants are holed up, despite calls for restraint from the international community including Israel's staunchest ally, the United States.

Some Palestinians left an area of Rafah near the border with Egypt on Saturday after receiving an evacuation alert from the Israeli army. "Guys, they will strike at 3:40. It is happening. What time is it now?" one said. Minutes later, a strike hit. It was not immediately known whether anyone was killed.

Also Saturday, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in the urban refugee camp of Bureji in central Gaza, killing at least one man and injuring two others, according to authorities at the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where an AP journalist saw the casualties.

The war was sparked by an unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups that left about 1,200 people dead, the vast majority civilians, and saw about 250 kidnapped and taken into Gaza. Israel says about 130 hostages remain in Gaza, although more than 30 have died.

Frustration continues among many in Israel, and thousands of anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv again called for new elections and a deal to free remaining hostages. "We don't know what to do anymore, so we are here crying and shouting for help," said one protester, Iris Milnar.

The Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 34,049, with 76,901 wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said, adding that the bodies of 37 people killed by Israeli strikes were taken to hospitals over the past 24 hours. The Hamas-run health authorities do not differentiate between combatants and civilians in their count but say at least two-thirds have been children and women.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, saying it embeds in the population.

The war has sent regional tensions spiraling. On Friday, Israel and archenemy Iran played down an apparent Israeli airstrike near a major air base and nuclear site in central Iran, indicating they were pulling back from what could have become all-out war. A week ago, Iran fired an unprecedented missile barrage on Israel after an alleged Israeli strike killed two Iranian generals at an Iranian consulate in Syria.

Israel continues to face off with Iran's proxies, frequently trading rocket and drone attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group. Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched strikes against merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in what they call solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Tensions also are high in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 12 bodies were taken Saturday from the Nur Sham urban refugee camp, raising the death toll to 13 since an Israeli military operation began in the area Thursday night. It said they were killed "as a result of the occupation's aggression."

The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed the deaths of three members. Another killed was a 15-year-old boy. The Israeli army said its forces killed 10 militants in the camp and surrounding areas while eight suspects were arrested. Nine of its officers and soldiers were wounded, it said.

At least 469 Palestinians from east Jerusalem and the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since October, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, the ministry said an ambulance driver was shot dead near Sawiya town while trying to reach Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli settlers. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Mohammed Musa was shot in the chest. A wave of settler attacks began a week ago after an Israeli teen went missing and was found dead.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Jack Jeffrey in Jerusalem contributed.

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Find more of AP's coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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An Israeli airstrike in Gaza's south kills at least 9 Palestinians in Rafah, including 6 children

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Gaza hospital officials say an Israeli airstrike on a home in the territory's southernmost city of Rafah has killed at least nine people, six of them children.

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Yuko Munakata: The science behind how parents affect child development

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Parents, take a deep breath: how your kids turn out isn't fully on you. Of course, parenting plays an important role in shaping who children become, but psychologist Yuko Munakata offers an alternative, research-backed reality that highlights how it's just one of many factors that influence the chaotic complexity of childhood development.

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Executive Summary

The Survey of Immigrants, conducted by KFF in partnership with the Los Angeles Times during Spring 2023, examines the diversity of the U.S. immigrant experience. It is the largest and most representative survey of immigrants living in the U.S. to date. With its sample size of 3,358 immigrant adults, the survey provides a deep understanding of immigrant experiences, reflecting their varied countries of origin and histories, citizenship and immigration statuses, racial and ethnic identities, and social and economic circumstances. KFF also conducted focus groups with immigrants from an array of backgrounds, which expand upon information from the survey (see Methodology for more details).

This report provides an overview of immigrants' reasons for coming to the U.S.; their successes and challenges; their experiences at work, in their communities, in health care settings, and at home; as well as their outlook on the future. Recognizing the diversity within the immigrant population, the report examines variations in the experiences of different groups of immigrants, including by immigration status, income, race and ethnicity, English proficiency, and other factors. Given that this report includes a focus on experiences with discrimination and unfair treatment, data by race and ethnicity are often shown rather than by country of birth. A companion report provides information on immigrants' health coverage, access to, and use of care, and further reports will provide additional details for other subgroups within the immigrant population, including more data by country of origin.

Key takeaways from this report include:

Most immigrants - regardless of where they came from or how long they've been in the U.S. - say they came to the U.S. for more opportunities for themselves and their children. The predominant reasons immigrants say they came to the U.S. are for better work and educational opportunities, a better future for their children, and more rights and freedoms. Smaller but still sizeable shares cite other factors such as joining family members or escaping unsafe or violent conditions.

Overall, a majority of immigrants say their financial situation (78%), educational opportunities (79%), employment situation (75%), and safety (65%) are better as a result of moving to the U.S. A large majority (77%) say their own standard of living is better than that of their parents, higher than the share of U.S.-born adults who say the same (51%),and most (60%) believe their children's standard of living will be better than theirs is now. Three in four immigrants say they would choose to come to the U.S. again if given the chance, and six in ten say they plan to stay in the U.S. However, about one in five (19%) say they want to move back to the country they were born in or to another country, while an additional one in five (21%) say they are not sure.

Despite an improved situation relative to their countries of birth, many immigrants report facing serious challenges, including high levels of workplace and other discrimination, difficulties making ends meet, and confusion and fears related to U.S. immigration laws and policies. These challenges are more pronounced among some groups of immigrants, including those who live in lower-income households, Black and Hispanic immigrants, those who are likely undocumented, and those with limited English proficiency. Given the intersectional nature of these factors, some immigrants face compounding challenges across them.

Most immigrants are employed, and about half of all working immigrants say they have experienced discrimination in the workplace, such as being given less pay or fewer opportunities for advancement than people born in the U.S., not being paid for all their hours worked, or being threatened or harassed. In addition, about a quarter of all immigrants, rising to three in ten of those with college degrees, say they are overqualified for their jobs, a potential indication that they had to take a step back in their careers when coming to the U.S. or lacked career advancement opportunities in the U.S.

About a third (34%) of immigrants say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English since moving to the U.S., and a similar share (33%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from." About four in ten (38%) immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in a store or restaurant, in interactions with the police, or when buying or renting a home. Some immigrants also report being treated unfairly in health care settings. Among immigrants who have received health care in the U.S., one in four say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a doctor or other health care provider because of their racial or ethnic background, their accent or how well they speak English, or their insurance status or ability to pay for care.

Immigrants who are Black or Hispanic report disproportionate levels of discrimination at work, in their communities, and in health care settings. Over half of employed Black (56%) and Hispanic (55%) immigrants say they have faced discrimination at work, and roughly half of college-educated Black (53%) and Hispanic (46%) immigrant workers say they are overqualified for their jobs. Nearly four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have been treated unfairly by the police and more than four in ten (45%) say they have been told to "go back to where you came from." In addition, nearly four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a health care provider. Among Hispanic immigrants, four in ten (42%) say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English.

Even with high levels of employment, one third of immigrants report problems affording basic needs like food, housing, and health care. This share rises to four in ten among parents and about half of immigrants living in lower income households (those with annual incomes under $40,000). In addition, one in four lower income immigrants say they have difficulty paying their bills each month, while an additional 47% say they are "just able to pay their bills each month."

Among likely undocumented immigrants, seven in ten say they worry they or a family member may be detained or deported, and four in ten say they have avoided things such as talking to the police, applying for a job, or traveling because they didn't want to draw attention to their or a family member's immigration status. However, these concerns are not limited to those who are likely undocumented. Among all immigrants regardless of their own immigration status, nearly half (45%) say they don't have enough information to understand how U.S. immigration laws affect them and their families, and one in four (26%) say they worry they or a family member could be detained or deported. Confusion and lack of information extend to public charge rules. About three quarters of all immigrants, rising to nine in ten among likely undocumented immigrants, say they are not sure whether use of public assistance for food, housing, or health care can affect an immigrant's ability to get a green card or incorrectly believe that use of this assistance will negatively affect the ability to get a green card.

About half of all immigrants have limited English proficiency, and about half among this group say they have faced language barriers in a variety of settings and interactions. About half (53%) of immigrants with limited English proficiency say that difficulty speaking or understanding English has ever made it hard for them to do at least one of the following: get health care services (31%); receive services in stores or restaurants (30%); get or keep a job (29%); apply for government financial help with food, housing, or health coverage (25%); report a crime or get help from the police (22%). In addition, one-quarter of parents with limited English proficiency say they have had difficulty communicating with their children's school (24%). Working immigrants with limited English proficiency also are more likely to report workplace discrimination compared to those who speak English very well (55% vs. 41%).

Who Are U.S. Immigrants?
The KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants is a probability-based survey that is representative of the adult immigrant population in the U.S. based on known demographic data from federal surveys (see Methodology for more information on sampling and weighting). For the purposes of this project, immigrant adults are defined as individuals ages 18 and over who live in the U.S. but were born outside the U.S. or its territories.

According to 2021 federal data, immigrants make up 16% of the U.S. adult population (ages 18+). About four in ten immigrant adults identify as Hispanic (44%), over a quarter are Asian (27%), and smaller shares are White (17%), Black (8%), or report multiple races (3%). The top six countries of origin among adult immigrants in the U.S. are Mexico (24%), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (5%), El Salvador (3%), and Vietnam (3%) although immigrants hail from countries across the world.

The immigrant adult population largely mirrors the U.S.-born adult population in terms of gender. While similar shares of U.S.-born and immigrant adults have a college degree, immigrant adults are substantially more likely than U.S.-born adults to have less than a high school education. About four in ten (40%) immigrants are parents of a child under 18 living in their household, and a quarter (25%) of children in the U.S. have an immigrant parent.

Slightly less than half (47%) of immigrant adults report having limited English proficiency, meaning they speak English less than very well. Regardless of ability to speak English, a large majority (83%) of immigrants say they speak a language other than English at home, including about four in ten (43%) who speak Spanish at home.

A majority (55%) of U.S. adult immigrants are naturalized citizens. The remaining share are noncitizens, including lawfully present and undocumented immigrants. KFF analysis based on federal data estimates that 60% of noncitizens are lawfully present and 40% are undocumented.

See Appendix Table 1 for a table of key demographics about the U.S. adult immigrant population compared to the U.S.-born adult population.
Key Terms Used In This Report
Limited English Proficiency: Immigrants are classified as having Limited English Proficiency if they self-identify as speaking English less than "very well."

Immigration Status: Immigrants are classified by their self-reported immigration status as follows:

Naturalized Citizen: Immigrants who said they are a U.S. citizen.

Green Card or Valid Visa: Immigrants who said they are not a U.S. citizen, but currently have a green card (lawful permanent status) or a valid work or student visa.

Likely Undocumented Immigrant: Immigrants who said they are not a U.S. citizen and do not currently have a green card (lawful permanent status) or a valid work or student visa. These immigrants are classified as "likely undocumented" since they have not affirmatively identified themselves as undocumented.

Race and Ethnicity: Data are reported for four racial and ethnic categories: Hispanic, Black, Asian, and White based on respondents' self-reported racial and ethnic identity. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race but are categorized as Hispanic for this analysis; other groups are non-Hispanic. Results for individuals in other groups are included in the total but not shown separately due to sample size restrictions. Given that this report includes a focus on experiences with discrimination and unfair treatment, we often show data by race and ethnicity rather than country of birth. Given variation of experiences within these broad racial and ethnic categories, further reports will provide additional details for subgroups within racial and ethnic groups, including more data by country of origin.

Educational Attainment: These data are based on the highest level of education completed in the U.S. and/or in other countries as self-reported by the respondent. The response categories offered were: did not graduate high school, high school graduate with a diploma, some college (including an associate degree), university degree (bachelor's degree), and post-graduate degree (such as Master's, PhD, MD, JD).

Country of Birth: "Country of birth" is classified based on respondents' answer to the question "In what country were you born?" In some cases, countries are grouped into larger regions. See Appendix Table 2 for a list of regional groupings.

Why Do Immigrants Come to The U.S. And How Do They Feel About Their Life in the U.S.?

Immigrants cite both push and pull factors as reasons for coming to the U.S. For most immigrants, their major reasons for coming to the U.S. are aspirational, such as seeking better economic and job opportunities (75% say this is a major reason they came to the U.S.), a better future for their children (68%), and for better educational opportunities (62%). Half of immigrants say a major reason they or their family came to the U.S. was to have more rights and freedoms, including about three-quarters of immigrants from Central America (73%). Smaller but sizeable shares say other factors such as joining family members (42%) or escaping unsafe or violent conditions (31%) were major reasons they came. The share who cites escaping unsafe conditions as a major reason for coming to the U.S. rises to about half of likely undocumented immigrants (51%) and about six in ten (59%) immigrants from Central America.
In Their Own Words: Reasons for Coming to the U.S. from Focus Group Participants Stories focus group participants told of why they came to the U.S. reflect the survey responses. While many pointed to economic and educational opportunities, some described leaving harsh economic and unsafe conditions in their home countries.
"I came to the U.S. hoping that my children will have better educational opportunity." - 58-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in California

"[My husband] came here, and I followed him. So, he came, and I came with the kids afterwards...so we could have a better life. It's not easy...we wanted to have...better opportunities for our children, for ourselves." - 46-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"The thing is that there are more opportunities, and the standard of living is much better. We can make ends meet even through manual labor. That is not possible in Vietnam." - 33-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in Texas

"Then, my mom had to make a decision because the gangs took control of her place. They started asking for rent, extorting her life. If she didn't pay the extortion, the rent, they were going to take me, or my siblings, or her. ...since I was the oldest, she brought me, making the sacrifice of leaving behind my two siblings." - 25-year-old Salvadorian immigrant man in California

"Actually, it wasn't my decision to come. I left when I was 13 years old, fleeing from my country because I had a death threat, along with my eight-year-old sister. I didn't want to come." - 20-year-old Honduran immigrant woman in California

"Because of the earthquake, you know, I lost my house, and I wanted to go to a country with more opportunities and I came here." - 30-year-old Haitian immigrant man in Florida

Most immigrants say moving to the U.S. has provided them more opportunities and improved their quality of life. When the survey asked immigrants to describe in their own words the best thing that has come from moving to the U.S., many similar themes arise: better opportunities, a better life in general, or a better future for their children are top mentions, as are education and work opportunities.
In Their Own Words: The Best Thing That Has Come From Moving To The U.S. In a few words, what is the best thing that has come from you moving to the U.S.?
"Educational opportunities, economic opportunities, political and human rights, housing, food and basic needs, neighborhood safety, lower crime rates"- 28 year old Mexican immigrant woman in Nebraska

"Best education for my kids. Professional job. Healthy environment. Good system. The opportunities everywhere!" - 67-year-old Nepalese immigrant man in Maryland

"Better job, education, and economic opportunities" - 48-year-old Indian immigrant woman in North Carolina

"Education and improved quality of life in terms of obtaining basic needs" - 39-year-old Dominican immigrant woman in New Jersey

"Stability, freedom, better finance[s], having the opportunity to have a family" - 32-year-old Venezuelan immigrant man in New York

"Educational and employment opportunities for myself and my children" - 60-year-old Filipino immigrant woman in California

Most immigrants feel that moving to the U.S. has made them better off in terms of educational opportunities (79%), their financial situation (78%), their employment situation (75%), and their safety (65%). Safety stands out as an area where somewhat fewer -though still a majority-immigrants say they're better off, particularly among White and Asian immigrants. A bare majority (54%) of Asian immigrants and fewer than half (42%) of White immigrants say their safety is better as a result of moving to the U.S., while about one in five in both groups (17% of Asian immigrants and 21% of White immigrants) say they are less safe as a result of coming to the U.S.
In Their Own Words: Safety Concerns In The U.S. From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, some participants pointed to concerns about guns, drugs, and safety in the U.S., particularly in their children's schools.
"Sometimes when you see on the television and they're talking about shooting and these types of things. In Ghana we don't have that-it's safe, you walk around, you're free." - 38-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"I take my kids to school because, really, you have to go to school. But if I could have them at home and homeschool them, I'd do it. I wouldn't let them go because I don't feel safe anymore." - 51-year-old Salvadorian immigrant man in California

"I'm from Mexico, and over there, you have to struggle to get a gun. Here, you can buy a gun like you're buying candy at Walmart or somewhere." - 37-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Texas

"Because in my children's school, there are a lot of drugs found in its restrooms. ...There is so much temptation for drugs here. It is not that safe." - 49-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

Most immigrants say they are better off compared with their parents at their age, and most are optimistic about their children's future. When asked about their standard of living, three quarters (77%) of immigrants say their standard of living is better than their parents' was at their age. This is substantially higher than the share of U.S.-born adults who say the same (51%). Many expect an even better future for their children. Six in ten immigrants believe their children's standard of living will be better than theirs is now, with much smaller shares saying they think it will be worse (13%) or about the same (17%). Most immigrant parents also have positive feelings about the education their children are receiving. About three in four (73%) immigrant parents rate their child's school as either "excellent" (35%) or "good" (38%), with a further one-sixth (17%) saying the school is "fair," and 3% give it a "poor" rating.
In Their Own Words: Hopes For Their Children's Future From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, many participants described hopes and dreams for their children's futures, which often center on improved educational and job opportunities. Some pointed to sacrifices they were making in their own lives for the future benefit of the children.
"I am old, so I came here for my children. That is the thing- We must pay dearly for it when we first came here, but since then, we have seen that life here is wonderful." - 59-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in California

"I want my daughter to achieve what I couldn't...I want her to be better, so she doesn't have to go through what I went through" - 32-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

"...I will not change anything for my kids or for myself. I think it didn't work out like I expected to do, but I don't regret it because my kids have the better chance to have a better education system." - 42-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in California

"These children, they were born there; they have the opportunity; they get the opportunity, they go to school for free; they get food when they get food; they don't have these problems. I can say yes, their lives are better than before the life I had." - 48-year-old Haitian immigrant woman in Florida

How Are Immigrants Faring Economically?

Like many U.S. adults overall, immigrants' biggest concerns relate to making ends meet: the economy, paying bills, and other financial concerns. When asked in the survey to name the biggest concern facing them and their families in their own words, about one-third of immigrants gave answers related to financial stability or other economic concerns. No other concern rose to the level of financial concerns, though other common concerns mentioned include health and medical issues, safety, work and employment issues, and immigration status.
In Their Own Words: Biggest Concerns Facing Immigrant Families Are Economic In a few words, what is the biggest concern facing you and your family right now?
"Low income, hard to survive as day to day cost of living is going up" - 65 year old Colombian immigrant man in Texas

"There are a lot of expenses. Groceries and gas prices are at a high price. It gets overwhelming with all the bills and trying to save money in this economy right now." - 50-year-old Pakistani immigrant man in California

"High prices for rents and new homes" - 55-year-old Congolese immigrant man in Florida

"Retirement- will I need to keep working until I die?" - 64-year-old Dutch immigrant man in Colorado

"Biggest concern is with the inflation. It's hard to keep up with buying groceries, gas paying the bills paying the mortgage and trying to live paycheck to paycheck worrying about if you're gonna be able to afford paying the next bill." - 35-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Nevada

"The house payment. The interest. Everything is really expensive. The food and the university for my son." - 51-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

One in three immigrants report difficulty paying for basic needs. About one in three immigrants (34%) say their household has fallen behind in paying for at least one of the following necessities in the past 12 months: utilities or other bills (22%), health care (20%), food (17%), or housing (17%). The share who reports problems paying for these necessities rises to about half among immigrants who have annual household incomes of less than $40,000 (47%). The shares who report facing these financial challenges are also larger among immigrants who are likely undocumented (51%), Black (50%), or Hispanic (43%), largely because they are more likely to be low income. Additionally, four in ten immigrant parents report problems paying for basic needs.

Beyond having trouble affording basic needs, a sizeable share of immigrants report they are just able to or have difficulties paying monthly bills. Nearly half (47%) of immigrants overall say they can pay their monthly bills and have money left over each month, while four in ten (37%) say they are just able to pay their bills and about one in six (15%) say they have difficulty paying their bills each month. Affordability of monthly bills varies widely by income as well as race and ethnicity. For example, only about a quarter (27%) of lower income immigrants say they have money left over after paying monthly bills compared with eight in ten (80%) of those with at least $90,000 in annual income. About six in ten immigrants who are White or Asian say they have money left over after paying their bills each month compared with four in ten Hispanic immigrants and one-third (32%) of Black immigrants, reflecting lower incomes among these groups.

Despite these financial struggles, close to half of immigrants say they send money to relatives or friends in their country of birth at least occasionally. Overall, about one in three (35%) immigrants say they send money occasionally or when they are able. Much smaller shares report sending either small (8%) or large (2%) shares of money on a regular basis, and overall, most immigrants (55%) do not send money to relatives or family outside the U.S.

Similar shares of immigrants report sending money to their birth country regardless of their own financial struggles. About half (49%) of those who have difficulty paying their bills each month say they send money at least occasionally, as do 44% of those who say they just pay their bills and the same share of those who have money left over after paying monthly bills. Two-thirds (65%) of Black immigrants say they send money to their birth country at least occasionally, while about half (52%) of Hispanic immigrants and four in ten Asian immigrants (42%) report sending money. A much smaller share (24%) of White immigrants say they send money to the country where they were born.

What Are Immigrants' Experiences In The Workplace?

Two-thirds of immigrants say they are currently employed, including nearly seven in ten of those under age 30, about three quarters of those between the ages of 30-64, and a quarter of those ages 65 and over. The remaining third include a mix of students, retirees, homemakers, and few (6%) unemployed immigrants. A quarter of working immigrants say they are self-employed or the owner of a business, rising to one-third (34%) of White working immigrants and nearly three in ten (27%) Hispanic working immigrants. Jobs in construction, sales, health care, and production are the most commonly reported jobs among working immigrants. KFF analysis of federal data shows that immigrants are more likely to be employed in construction, agricultural, and service jobs than are U.S.-born citizen workers.

About a quarter of working immigrants feel they are overqualified for their job, rising to half of college-educated Black and Hispanic immigrants. A majority of working immigrants overall (68%) say they have the appropriate level of education and skills for their job, while about a quarter (27%) say they are overqualified, having more education and skills than the job requires. Just 4% say they are underqualified, having less education and skills than their job requires. In an indication that some immigrants are unable to obtain the same types of roles they were educated and trained for in the countries they came from, the share who feel overqualified for their current job rises to 31% among immigrants with college degrees. It is even higher among college-educated Black (53%) and Hispanic (46%) immigrants.
In Their Own Words: Work Experiences From Focus Group Participants
In focus groups, many immigrants expressed a desire to work and willingness to work in industries like construction, agriculture, and the service sector, which are often physically demanding. Some also described taking jobs that required less skills and education compared to those they held in their country of birth.

"We are the ones that work on the farms. We are the ones that cannot call out. We are the ones that even if our kids are sick, we can't call our boss and say I can't make it to work." - 38-year-old Nigerian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"Yes, we have to put our effort in. It is more demanding. My hands and feet are sore. In exchange, I have a satisfactory level of income." - 49-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"...in Mexico, I was a preschool teacher. Being undocumented, obviously, you can't work in the area you studied in, so now, I do cleaning." - 36-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in Texas

"I used to work a white-collar job, now I do manual labor. My major used to hurt my mind, now it's my arms and legs." - 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"My job entails picking up trash and cleaning toilets. I don't like doing that. Who likes cleaning toilets? Who likes picking up other people's trash, right? I don't like it, but I'm in this job out of necessity." - 20-year-old Honduran immigrant woman in California

"I only had [one] job back in Vietnam. Here I need to do four: a nanny, a maid, a house cleaner and a main job." - 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"The work in the field is hard. When it's hot out, it gets up to 100 or 104. People work with grapes, so they pick the grapes. They work in the sun. There's no air.... Snakes come out. Whatever comes out, you just keep picking with the machine. Snakes, mice, whatever. So, it's hard. It's hard." - 32-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

Overall, about half of employed immigrants report working jobs that pay them by the hour (52%), one third say they are paid by salary (32%), and 15% report being paid by the job. However, these shares vary by income, immigration status, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity. Compared to immigrants with higher incomes, immigrants with lower incomes are more likely to be paid by the hour (63% of immigrants with annual household incomes of less than $40,000) or by the job (24%) than receive a salary (13%). Immigrants who are likely undocumented (30%) are about twice as likely as those with a green card or visa (14%) or naturalized citizens (12%) to report being paid by the job, and about half as likely to report being paid by salary (17%, 32%, and 36%, respectively). Immigrants with a college degree are more than three times as likely as those without a college degree to hold salaried jobs, (57% vs. 16%). Black and Hispanic immigrants are more likely to report working hourly jobs (69% and 60% respectively) than their White (42%) and Asian (40%) counterparts. Conversely, among those who are employed, almost half of Asian immigrants and more than four in ten White immigrants report being paid by salary compared with a quarter or fewer Black and Hispanic immigrants.

About half of working immigrants report experiencing discrimination at work. About half (47%) of all working immigrants say they have ever been treated differently or unfairly at work in at least one of five ways asked about on the survey, most commonly being given fewer opportunities for advancement (32%) and being paid less (29%) compared to people born in the U.S. About one in five working immigrants say they have not been paid for all their hours or overtime (22%) or have been given undesirable shifts or less control over their work hours than someone born in the U.S. doing the same job (17%). About one in ten (12%) say they have been harassed or threatened by someone in their workplace because they are an immigrant.

Highlighting the intersectional impacts of race, ethnicity, and immigration status, reports of workplace discrimination are higher among immigrant workers of color and likely undocumented immigrants. Majorities of Black (56%) and Hispanic (55%) immigrant workers report experiencing at least one form of workplace discrimination asked about. More than four in ten (44%) Asian immigrant workers also report experiencing workplace discrimination compared to three in ten (31%) White immigrant workers. About two-thirds (68%) of likely undocumented working immigrants report experiencing at least one form of unfair treatment in the workplace, with about half of this group saying they have been paid less or had fewer opportunities for advancement than people born in the U.S. for doing the same job. Undocumented immigrant workers often face even greater employment challenges due to lack of work authorization, which increases risk of potential workplace abuses, violations of wage and hour laws, and poor working as well as living conditions.

Limited English proficiency is also associated with higher levels of reported workplace discrimination. A majority (55%) of working immigrants who speak English less than very well (rising to 61% of Hispanic immigrants with limited English proficiency) report experiencing at least one form of workplace discrimination. In particular, immigrants with limited English proficiency are more likely than those who are English proficient to say they were given fewer opportunities for promotions or raises (38% vs. 27%) or were paid less than people born in the U.S. for doing the same job (34% vs. 24%).

Do Immigrants Feel Welcome In The U.S.?

Most immigrants feel welcome in their neighborhoods. Overall, two-thirds of immigrants say most people in their neighborhoods are welcoming to immigrants. Just 7% say people in their neighborhood are not welcoming, while one in four say they are "not sure" whether immigrants are welcome in their neighborhood. When it comes to the treatment of immigrants in the state in which they live, about six in ten immigrants say they feel people in their state are welcoming to immigrants, but 15% say their state is not welcoming and another one in four say they are "not sure." When asked about whether they think most people are welcoming to immigrants outside of the state in which they live, about half (48%) of immigrants say they are "not sure" about this, which could reflect lack of experiences in other places.

Immigrants in Texas are much less likely than those in California to feel their state is welcoming to immigrants. Immigrants living in California and Texas, the two most populous states for immigrants, are about equally likely to say immigrants are welcome in their neighborhood. However, immigrants living in California are about 30 percentage points more likely than are immigrants living in Texas to say they feel people in their state are welcoming to immigrants (70% vs. 39%). Further, immigrants in Texas are more than three times as likely as those in California to say they feel their state is not welcoming to immigrants (31% vs. 8%).

What Are Immigrants' Experiences With Discrimination And Unfair Treatment In The Community?

Despite feeling welcome in their neighborhoods, many immigrants report experiencing discrimination and unfair treatment in social and police interactions. About four in ten (38%) immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in at least one of the following places: in a store or restaurant (27%), in interactions with the police (21%), or when buying or renting a home (17%). In addition, about a third (34%) of immigrants say that since moving to the U.S., they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English, and a similar share (33%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from."

Reports of discrimination and unfair treatment are more prevalent among people of color compared to White immigrants, illustrating the combined impacts of racism and anti-immigrant discrimination. For example, about one-third of immigrants who are Black (35%) or Hispanic (31%) and about a quarter (27%) of Asian immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in a store or restaurant, all higher than the share among White immigrants (16%). Notably, four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in interactions with the police, and almost half (45%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from." Among Hispanic immigrants, about four in ten (42%) say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English.
In Their Own Words: Experiences With Discrimination In The Community From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, many immigrants shared their experiences with discrimination in the community.
"Sometimes, when you talk, the way some people will laugh. They'll laugh at you, you say one word, they'll be laughing, laughing, laughing. ...I'm so very ashamed. I'm so ashamed, so you don't want to talk." - 46-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"I speak English, but obviously, I don't speak it fluently. I have my accent, and you can tell that I'm Mexican. I've seen people make faces at me or whatnot." - 37-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Texas

"We have our business around the corner. I left the house one day to go pick up my daughter, and my husband called me. There was a White guy yelling at my husband 'Get out of my country.' I said, 'Tell him that it's your country, too.'" - 36-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

"The guy was like...you guys should go back to your country. He used different words for us. Then he called the cops, and when the cops came, they didn't listen to us. I was like, this is unfair. You could have listened to both sides." - 38-year-old Nigerian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"But my son when he first came here, he did not know English. When he went to school, his classmates said, 'You do not study well, you should go back to your country.'" - 54-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in California

One in four immigrants report being treated unfairly by a health care provider. In addition to discrimination at work and in community settings, a sizeable share of immigrants say they have been treated unfairly by a doctor or health care provider since coming to the U.S. Overall, among immigrants who have received health care in the U.S., one in four (rising to nearly four in ten Black immigrants) say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a doctor or other health care provider because of their racial or ethnic background, their accent or how well they speak English, or their insurance status or ability to pay for care. For more details about immigrants' health and health care experiences, read the companion report here.

What Language Barriers Do Immigrants With Limited English Proficiency Face?

Over half of immigrants with limited English proficiency report language barriers in a variety of settings and interactions. Overall, about half of all immigrants have limited English proficiency, meaning they speak English less than very well. Among this group, about half (53%) say that difficulty speaking or understanding English has ever made it hard for them to do at least one of the following: receive services in stores or restaurants (30%); get health care services (31%); get or keep a job (29%); apply for government assistance with food, housing, or health coverage (25%); or get help from the police (22%).

Language barriers are amplified among those with lower levels of educational attainment as well as those with lower incomes. Among immigrants with limited English proficiency, those who do not have a college degree are more likely to report experiencing at least one of these difficulties than those who have a college degree (57% vs. 39%). Similarly, lower income immigrants (household incomes less than $40,000) with limited English proficiency are more likely to report facing language barriers compared to their counterparts with incomes of $90,000 or more (61% vs. 38%).

Immigrant parents with limited English proficiency also face challenges communicating with their children's school or teacher. Among immigrant parents with limited English proficiency (52% of all immigrant parents), about one in four (24%) say difficulty speaking or understanding English has made it hard for them to communicate with their child's school or teacher.

How Do Confusion And Worries About Immigration Laws And Status Affect Immigrants' Daily Lives?

About seven in ten (69%) immigrants who are likely undocumented worry they or a family member may be detained or deported. However, worries about detention or deportation are not limited to those who are likely undocumented. About one in three immigrants who have a green card or other valid visa say they worry about this, as do about one in ten (12%) immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Some immigrants report avoiding certain activities due to concerns about immigration status. Fourteen percent of immigrants overall, rising to 42% of those who are likely undocumented, say they have avoided things such as talking to the police, applying for a job, or traveling because they didn't want to draw attention to their or a family member's immigration status. In addition, 8% of all immigrants say they have avoided applying for a government program that helps pay for food, housing, or health care because of concerns about immigration status, including 27% of those who are likely undocumented.

More than four in ten (45%) immigrants overall say they don't have enough information about U.S. immigration policy to understand how it affects them and their family. Lack of immigration-related knowledge is strongly related to one's immigration status. Nearly seven in ten (69%) immigrants who are likely undocumented say they don't have enough information, while immigrants with a valid green card or visa are split, with one half saying they have enough information and the other half saying they do not. Being a naturalized U.S. citizen doesn't completely diminish immigrants' confusion about U.S. immigration policy, as nearly four in ten (39%) immigrants who are naturalized citizens also say they don't have enough information. Beyond immigration status, the groups who are more likely to say they do not have enough information to understand how immigration policy affects them and their families include immigrants with limited English proficiency, those who have been in the U.S. for fewer than five years, have lower household incomes, and/or have lower levels of education.

Across immigrants, there is a general lack of knowledge about public charge rules. Under longstanding U.S. policy, federal officials can deny an individual entry to the U.S. or adjustment to lawful permanent status (a green card) if they determine the individual is a " public charge" based on their likelihood of becoming primarily dependent on the government for subsistence. In 2019, the Trump Administration made changes to public charge policy that newly considered the use of previously excluded noncash assistance programs for health care, food, and housing in public charge determinations. This policy was rescinded by the Biden Administration in 2021, meaning that the use of noncash benefits, including assistance for health care, food, and housing, is not considered for public charge tests, except for long-term institutionalization at government expense. The survey suggests that many immigrants remain confused about public charge rules. Six in ten immigrants say they are "not sure" whether use of public programs that help pay for health care, housing or food can decrease one's chances for green card approval and another 16% incorrectly believe this to be the case. Among immigrants who are likely undocumented, nine in ten are either unsure (68%) or incorrectly believe use of these types of public programs will decrease their chances for green card approval (22%).

What Are Immigrants Plans And Hopes For The Future?

Six in ten immigrants say they plan to stay in the U.S. However, about one in five immigrants say they want to move back to the country they were born in (12%) or to another country (7%), and about one in five (21%) say they are not sure. The desire to stay in the U.S. varies by immigration status as well as by race and ethnicity. Nearly two in three immigrants who are naturalized citizens say they plan to stay in the country, compared to about half of immigrants who have a green card or valid visa (54%) or immigrants who are likely undocumented (52%). Black immigrants are somewhat more likely than immigrants from other racial or ethnic backgrounds to say they plan to leave the U.S. (28%). This includes 17% who say they want to move back to their country of birth and 11% who say they want to move to a different country.

Three in four immigrants say they would choose to come to the U.S. again. Asked what they would do if given the chance to go back in time knowing what they know now, three in four immigrants (75%) say they would choose to come to the U.S. again, including large shares across ages, educational attainment, income, immigration status, and race and ethnicity. While most immigrants share this sentiment, overall, about one in ten (8%) immigrants say they would not choose to move to the U.S. and about one in five (17%) say they are not sure whether they would choose to move to the U.S.
In Their Own Words: Focus Group Participants Say They Would Choose To Come To The U.S. Again In focus groups, many participants said that despite the challenges they face in the U.S., life is better here than in their country of birth. When asked whether they would choose to come again, many said yes and pointed to how they have more opportunities for themselves and their children to have a better standard of living.
"So I will not change anything for my kids or for myself. I think it didn't work out like I expected to do but I don't regret it because my kids have the better chance to have a better education system"-42-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in California

"I can say from my experience, it was really hard. God made everything right now because I have my papers. But I agreed to stay here for my children, so that they have a better life tomorrow. Because home is worse." - 48-year-old Haitian immigrant woman in Florida

"Of course, I would still come to America. When I compare my current state with that of my old neighbors, who are my age as well, this place is a far cry from it." - 40-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in Texas

"We're happy because we have a better life, even though we always miss our homeland. But it's better." - 35-year-old Mexican immigrant man in California

"I can say that America gives me many options, many opportunities, so far I like it. The only thing I don't like is how the bills are here, they come fast when you make a small amount of money many times it goes through the bill." - 30-year-old Haitian immigrant man in Florida

Conclusion

Immigrants represent a significant and growing share of the U.S. population, contributing to their communities and to the nation's culture and economy. Immigrants come to the U.S. largely seeking better opportunities and lives for themselves and their children, often leaving impoverished and sometimes dangerous conditions in their country of birth. For many, this dream has been realized despite ongoing challenges they face in the U.S.

Many immigrants recognize work as a key element to achieving their goals and are willing to fill physically demanding, lower paid jobs, for which some feel they are overqualified. Immigrants are disproportionately employed in agricultural, construction, and service jobs that are often essential for our nation's infrastructure and operations.

Despite high rates of employment and, for many, an improved situation relative to their county of birth, many immigrants face serious challenges in the U.S. Finances are a top challenge and concern, with many having difficulty making ends meet and paying for basic needs. Moreover, although most immigrants feel welcome in their neighborhood, many face discrimination and unfair treatment on the job, in their communities, and while seeking health care. Fears of detention and deportation are a concern for immigrants across immigration statuses, sometimes affecting daily lives and interactions, particularly among those who are likely undocumented.

Some immigrants face more challenges than others, reflecting the diversity of the immigrant experience and the compounding impacts of intersectional factors such as immigration status, race and ethnicity, and income. Black and Hispanic immigrants, likely undocumented immigrants, immigrants with limited English proficiency, and lower income immigrants face disproportionate challenges given the impacts of racism, fears and uncertainties related to immigration status, language barriers, and financial challenges. Many immigrants lack sufficient information to understand how U.S. immigration laws and policies impact them and their families. This confusion and lack of certainty contributes to some immigrants avoiding accessing assistance programs that could ease financial challenges and facilitate access to health care for themselves and their children, who are often U.S.-born.

As the immigrant population in the U.S. continues to grow, recognizing their contributions and challenges of immigrants and addressing their diverse needs will be important for improving the nation's overall health and economic prosperity.

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Understanding the U.S. Immigrant Experience: The 2023 KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants - Findings - 10217 | KFF

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Executive Summary The Survey of Immigrants, conducted by KFF in partnership with the Los Angeles Times during Spring 2023, examines the diversity of the U.S. immigrant experience. It is the largest and most representative survey of immigrants living in the U.S. to date.

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Stripped of their rights, under constant threat of violence, Afghan women and girls are relentlessly carrying on with their lives. For some, that means forming new civil society groups to address community needs; for others, it means re-opening their businesses and going back to work. For all, it is an act of unseen, unheard bravery.

One year after the takeover, we're sharing stories of women in Afghanistan today, written in their own words. These mostly anonymous first-hand accounts capture the fear, anger, and profound sense of loss that pervade the daily lives of Afghan women-as well as the resilience with which they continue to live them.

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In focus: Women in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban takeover | UN Women - Headquarters

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One year ago, on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul and captured control of the country. Over the past 12 months, human rights violations against women and girls have mounted steadily.

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"When the World Sees Refugees, We see Waymakers"

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"When the World Sees Refugees, We see Waymakers"

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Claim Thoughts:

The stereotype that Refugees are “broken” and are therefore not vakuabe is a fallacy. As even our own nation was built on the backs of hard-working immigrants, they are a valuable part of any nation & their economy. But most of all, they’re people trying to make a living and exist in a place that welcomes them, which is not what they get to experience living in nations that detest them.

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Timothy Buxton: When the world sees Refugees, we see Waymakers

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Arriving in Iraq on the same day ISIS took Mosul in 2014, Tim Buxton looked at his young family (his children were 3yrs, 1yrs & 9 weeks) and wondered what he had done. The region had changed overnight. Slaughter, torture, and slavery were imminent for ethnic and religious minorities - unless they could escape.

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Understanding and Supporting Kinship Caregivers  | Angela Tobin | TEDxOhioStateUniversity

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I arrived home as my wife, son, and daughter were already sitting down at the dinner table. The air was filled with tension. None of the usual small talk or "getting dinner on the table" chatter broke the silence.

"What's up?" I asked, after the prayer as we started to fill our plates. I looked at my wife for an answer or an explanation for this tension.

"You want to tell him, Ben?" she responded, looking at my son. Surprised, I shifted attention to my son.

This was rare. Ben was a first child, and in a lot of important ways he fit the stereotypical first child mold.

He followed the rules.

It was Ben who got up on time without our help. Ben who went to bed when he was told. Ben who grew impatient if my daughter Ellie, two years younger, was not ready to leave on time for school. He was quiet and thoughtful.

Once he had a clean breakaway in soccer, yards in front of other players, and he stopped running at the midline. He let the ball dribble down the field as other players passed him and someone else took the shot for a score. Why? His coach had once told him that, as a defender, he wasn't allowed to cross the midline.

That's him: he followed the rules even in the excitement of a sporting event.

So when there was tension at our house, it was seldom his fault. Who am I kidding? It was never his fault. Until tonight.

He looked down at his plate and mumbled something. A casual listener might have made out "trouble" and "bus", but they were not clearly formed. His words came out in the sing-songy way that words come out when they are trying not to be sobs. He was starting to cry.

Seeing his struggle, my wife intervened. "The bus driver asked to talk to me when he dropped them off," she explained. "It seems that Ben threw his water bottle at someone on the bus and the bus driver is mad at him."

I turned my head to look at Ben, and his refusal to meet my gaze confirmed at least some of the story.

My wife added, "and he's not allowed back on the bus."

Ben and Ellie had recently started riding the bus when their school started a rebuilding phase. They were temporarily attending school in a building a few more miles away, so riding the bus was relatively new to them.

Still, as a longtime teacher myself, I knew that a situation had to be pretty bad to get kicked off the bus. I knew the driver didn't think it was an accident at all.

I needed to know the whole story.

"Ben?" I asked gently. I knew that I could save time by gently coaxing the story out of him, rather than getting him into a full cry. He nodded almost imperceptibly. "Ben, I need you to look at me and tell me what happened."

"Okay," he started. "I dumped my water on Brian, but ..." once the words started, they flooded out in much the same way the water likely poured from his water bottle. "He deserved it he was being really mean to Terri on the way back home today and we asked him to stop and everyone was saying to stop and she's just a kid like Ellie and but he's my age and he kept doing it and he does it every day and he says mean things and I warned him and then I held up my water bottle and shook it at him and he still wouldn't stop and so I didn't know what to do and ..."

Ellie interrupted the flow of words, "He was being really mean. Brian was. And we all told him to stop."

Ben looked at her, grateful to not have to say it all out loud.

A few more questions revealed the full story. An older boy on the bus, who was in Ben's grade, had been teasing a younger girl on and off for weeks. The girl was Ellie's age. He was calling her silly names, like "Terri-Berry" at first, then recently it escalated to something more offensive and annoying. At first it made her angry. "You can't make me stop, Terri-Berry." It wasn't profanity or anything that sounded wrong, but it was persistent pointless name calling, and he kept it up even after she started to cry. Several people, including Ben and Ellie, had asked him to stop.

When he wouldn't, Ben brandished his half-full nalgene water bottle, lifting it menacingly over his head. Ben hadn't intended to throw it, really. He hadn't even secured the lid to the mouth of the bottle. Ben gave Brian one last warning and then, when the taunting continued, he stood up. With full intention, Ben threw his water bottle at Brian from two bus seats back.

Nalgene bottle ... of justice? Photo by Madalyn Cox on Unsplash

Water spiralled from the bottle on the way, and then the butt of the bottle connected squarely with the crown of Brian's head. The sudden change in trajectory sent a large slosh of water forward toward the driver, and the water bottle fell at a right angle to the seat and then thudded against the rubber floor mat in the aisle of the bus. More water poured out as the bottle rolled to rest against a seat leg.

Brian let out a hurt and angry howl, bending over, holding his head. In the silent bus, someone near the back murmured, "That's what you get." Soon other students were excitedly telling their seatmates what had happened.

Hearing the howl of pain and the sudden change of energy in the bus, the driver asked what had happened. In his mirror he could see a boy crouched in a seat holding his head, and a water bottle on the floor.

His mirror revealed pandemonium. Some kids standing, one howling in pain, a couple of wet seats and a draining water bottle on the floor.

At our stop he relayed his decision to my wife: Ben had done something wrong and needed to be removed from the bus.

***

At the dinner table, I could understand the driver's frustration in that moment. I have been in that situation, where you see the results of what happened, but they don't tell you much about what really happened. I understand the investigation phase, asking what happened, and who did it.

Ben explained what happened next. "The driver asked what happened and Brian said 'Ben hit me.' And when he asked me, I told him I did it."

Our dinner was getting cold. I was the only one who had taken a bite of it. The energy of the story had ebbed, and as the words slowed to a trickle, I took stock of the situation.

I broke a pregnant pause. "Ben, I am feeling two things right now. Do you know what they are?"

He looked up at me and took his first guess. "Angry?"

This might not have been the word, but close enough. "I am a little disappointed in your choices, yes. But I am feeling something else that is more important right now, or at least equally important."

"Mad?" he guessed.

I'm not going to lie, as an English teacher I debated whether to scold him for wasting his second guess on a word that clearly meant the same thing as his first guess. I realized this was not the time for an impromptu English lesson. He got those all the time.

"No, son. I'm proud." Suddenly everyone at the table was looking at me instead of at him. "You stood up for someone else who was not able to stand up for themselves."

My wife interjected, "but he got kicked off the bus!"

"No, no he didn't." I said.

My family, all of whom had heard the driver kick Ben off the bus, all argued with me at once. I wasn't there, they argued. I didn't hear what he said, they told me. "He definitely got kicked off the bus," Ellie insisted.

A lot of bullying happens on school buses and other poorly supervised places. PEople need to stand up for each other. Photo by Yan Berthemy on Unsplash

"Look, I hear you. I know what he said. He did get kicked off the bus. But unless I hear differently from the school tonight, you're getting on that bus."

"But," I added, "you have to apologize."

Now there was a new uproar. My family's voices were once again unified against me in this new injustice.

They were right.

"Apologize ... to the driver!" I clarified. "It wasn't his fault he had to clean up his bus."

"You don't have to apologize to Brian, of course. He was wrong. But you didn't give the driver a chance to solve the problem."

I thought about our already chaotic morning schedules. "Besides, we need you to be able to ride that bus."

"Here's what you need to say," I added, and we worked out the details over dinner. I wanted to help Ben apologize to the right person - the bus driver - while letting the driver know about the bigger problem.

***

The next day they boarded the bus as usual. Ben handed the driver a note that said this:
Dear Mr. Bus driver. I am sorry I threw my water bottle at Brian and spilled water all over your bus. Brian was being mean to Terri and we all asked him to stop. When he kept doing it, I got mad because I did not know what else to do. He does this every day.
This met my criteria - he took responsibility, and he informed the bus driver what was happening on his bus.

My wife and I had made plans for what we would do if Ben was not allowed on the bus, but they were not necessary. After Ben handed the note to the driver, he went to his assigned seat, next to Ellie.

We never heard anything else from the school or the driver about the incident.

And, as near as I know, the bullying stopped. My son stopped it.

And I am proud.

***

There are rules for standing up to a bully.

The first is to tell them what they are doing is wrong. Terri, Ben, Ellie, and apparently several other riders had done that, but the bully continued.

The second step is to try and remove yourself from the situation, or make sure you and others are safe. In a bus with assigned seats, and strict rules from parents over years about not getting up on a moving vehicle, I could understand why children on a bus would feel they could not do this.

Jack Jose and his son Ben, in a recent selfie. Photo by author.

The third, and hardest rule, is to figure out the right way to stop their behavior. Some part of that involves letting the person in authority know about the bullying. Ben didn't have control over his classmate, but the driver did. Ben chose to throw a water bottle at the bully's head. The driver was never given a chance to intervene on his own bus. This is why I had Ben apologize to him, but not to Brian. This brings up rule 4.

A final rule is that the person who has been bullied should never be asked to apologize to the bully. I asked Ben to fix the step he missed, but not to apologize to the person he hit. He might choose (or offer) to apologize for going too far, but should not be made to do that. Bullying involves an imbalance of power, and when the person in authority asks others to apologize to the bully, it rewards the bully's behavior.

Standing up to bullies the right way is an important lesson in all of our lives, and I realized too late I hadn't given my children direct instruction in how to do it. I was especially proud that my son stood up to someone else's bully. It is normal to stand up against your own bully, but developing an empathy for others and standing up for them is, in my mind, the best use of our skills and strengths.

Jack Jose at the American Sign Museum. Photo by Jack Jose.

Jack Jose is an educator and author in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Stand Up Aggressively To Bullies - The Best Words

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Former high school principal Jack Jose regularly asserts that his students and children taught him far more than he ever taught them.

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Afghanistan: what is life like for children since the Taliban takeover? | Save the Children International

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A year on from the Taliban takeover, read the stories of children and their families living in Afghanistan.

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Gender norms are deeply ingrained in our society and can significantly impact individuals, particularly children. Restrictive gender norms often limit children's potential and opportunities, affect their self-esteem and mental health, and shape their relationships with peers.

Gender norms can be particularly detrimental to those living in poverty, as well as the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) population, as gender norms perpetuate cycles of inequality and limit access to resources and opportunities. For instance, according to the 2023 ALICE Reports, single mothers in the United States are more likely to live in poverty due to gender discrimination and limited access to affordable childcare. We must challenge harmful gender norms to create a more equitable and inclusive world for future generations.

What Are Gender Norms?

Gender norms are societal expectations and rules regarding how men and women should behave, express themselves and interact with others according to their gender. Media, socialization and culture contribute to the development of gender norms and they differ across time and place.

Gender socialization is one of the primary ways gender norms affect children. Gender socialization refers to how children learn the appropriate behavior, appearance and attitudes for their gender. For example, boys learn to be assertive, competitive and independent, while girls are encouraged to be nurturing, emotional and compliant. These gendered messages can shape children's self-concept, beliefs and expectations about themselves and others.

Research suggests that adherence to gender norms can negatively influence a child's mental health, social development and academic performance.

For instance, boys who feel pressured to conform to traditional masculine standards may be less likely to seek help for emotional problems or engage in prosocial behaviors. On the other hand, girls who internalize restrictive feminine norms may experience lower self-esteem and limited leadership opportunities.

Examples of Gender Norms in Society

Gender norms are pervasive in society and are identifiable in various aspects of our lives, including media, education and family. Here are some examples of gender norms in each of these areas:

Media:

Many TV shows and movies feature predominantly male protagonists who are strong, dominant and aggressive while portraying female characters as emotional, dependent and sexualized.

Commercials and advertisements often use gendered stereotypes to sell products, such as associating men with sports and outdoor activities, and women with beauty and domesticity.

In video games, male characters are heroic and violent, while female characters are hypersexualized and serve as objects of male desire.

Education:

Teachers may inadvertently reinforce gender norms by calling on boys more often, praising girls for being quiet and compliant or discouraging boys from communicating their feelings.

Textbooks and other reading materials often portray men as inventors and leaders, while women are absent or assume passive roles.

Sports programs in schools often prioritize male athleticism and show less attention to girls' teams.

Family:

Parents may have separate expectations and rules for their sons and daughters, such as encouraging boys to pursue careers in STEM fields and girls to prioritize raising a family and nurturing relationships.

Gendered household chores are typical, such as girls being responsible for cooking and cleaning while boys do yard work and repairs.

Children may bully their siblings who do not conform to gender norms, such as boys who like dolls or girls who prefer sports.

These are just a few examples of how gender norms operate in society and can shape our beliefs and behaviors. Recognizing and challenging these norms can help us create a more equitable and inclusive world for everyone.

How Gender Norms Affect Children

Gender norms can significantly impact a child's development, affecting his or her self-esteem and opportunities for growth. Restrictive gender norms often discourage children from pursuing interests that are "inappropriate" for their gender, limiting their potential and opportunities for exploration.

For example, girls may feel discouraged from pursuing careers in STEM fields or leadership positions, while boys face ridicule for expressing interest in traditionally feminine activities like dancing or cooking. The pressure to conform to gender norms can also negatively influence children's mental health, leading to anxiety and depression. If boys feel that they cannot communicate their emotions or seek help, they may begin to feel stressed and isolated. Girls who feel the need to prioritize appearance and social status may experience eating disorders or body dissatisfaction.

Children who do not conform to gender norms may experience lower self-esteem and negative self-concept, as they are made to feel like they don't fit in or are "abnormal." Boys perceived as weak or feminine may face bullying and social exclusion, while girls who are not conventionally feminine may feel pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards.

Gender norms can also affect a child's relationships with their peers, as they may face pressure to conform to societal expectations. Additionally, these norms can influence children's future career choices and opportunities, as they may face gender inequity or bias in traditionally gendered fields. For example, girls may be discouraged from pursuing careers in politics or law enforcement, while boys may face stigma for choosing caregiving professions like nursing or teaching.

Gender Roles

Gender roles are the social and cultural expectations for how people should behave according to their assigned gender. These roles shape the behaviors, attitudes and responsibilities considered appropriate for men and women.

Gender roles evolve over time but still trend toward traditional and stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. Gender roles can limit and restrict people's choices and prospects based on their gender, perpetuating gender inequality.

Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are beliefs or assumptions about characteristics, traits, behaviors and roles of people based on their gender. These stereotypes are created and reinforced by gender norms and can lead to biased judgments and discrimination against individuals who do not conform to them. Gender stereotypes can be positive and negative, but they tend to fit rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity.

How to Break Gender Norms

Breaking down gender norms can be difficult, but it is essential for creating a more inclusive and fair society that supports children's well-being and growth. Here are some strategies for challenging gender norms:

Parenting

Parents can challenge gender norms by avoiding stereotypes and encouraging children to pursue their interests and passions, regardless of gender. For example, instead of relegating activities and toys according to gender norms, parents can provide a wide range of things to do without limiting them based on gender stereotypes.

Parents should also foster an environment that encourages open communication and allow their children to express themselves in their preferred way without judging or criticizing them. By being mindful of their own biases and challenging them, parents can create a home for their children that encourages them to express themselves emotionally, regardless of gender.

Educators

Educators play a critical role in contesting gender norms and promoting inclusion and diversity in the classroom. Creating an inclusive and equitable learning space can help students feel valued and supported, regardless of gender identity or expression. Teachers should avoid using gendered language or stereotypes in the classroom. Instead, educators should strive to create opportunities for all students to participate in all activities and subjects.

One way to create an inclusive learning space is by introducing diverse books and resources representing all gender identities and expressions. Teachers can also encourage students to explore their interests and pursue non-traditional paths, breaking away from gender stereotypes that limit potential and opportunities. Additionally, educators can provide opportunities for open discussions on gender and identity and promote respectful communication and understanding among students.

Media

The media we consume plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions and beliefs about gender, making it essential for creators to develop diverse and inclusive representations of gender in their work. By avoiding harmful stereotypes and tropes that reinforce gender norms, media creators can take significant steps toward promoting gender equality. For instance, instead of relying on traditional expectations, creators can develop characters that challenge these norms, allowing viewers to see beyond the confines of rigid gender categories.

To create authentic and respectful representations of gender, media creators must work collaboratively with experts and members of marginalized communities. Consulting with these individuals can help creators further understand the problems regarding gender, which can inform their work and promote inclusivity. Furthermore, providing a positive representation of nonbinary and gender nonconforming individuals can help to reduce the discrimination they struggle with.

Creating a Gender-Equal World

Creating a gender-equal world is essential for the well-being and development of all children. We can create a more equitable society where everyone will thrive if we unite to break down restrictive gender norms and promote inclusivity. Each one of us has a part to play in the movement toward gender equality.

One way to take action is by challenging gender norms in our own lives, whether it's by breaking down gender stereotypes in the media we consume, encouraging children to pursue their interests and dreams, or creating an inclusive place to learn in schools. We can also support organizations that work toward gender equality, such as the ALICE Lives Here initiative, which seeks to support families living in poverty and break down the barriers to upward mobility.

It's important to remember that taking action to create a gender-equal world is a collective effort, and it requires ongoing work and education. By staying informed, raising awareness and actively working toward gender equality, we can create a better future for all children.

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Gender Roles & Gender Norms: Definition & Examples | United Way NCA

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Gender norms outline how children are expected to act, speak, dress, groom, & conduct themselves based on assigned sex. Learn more in our blog.

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Claim: Does Baba Veiw Amir as a burden/ does Amir view Hassan's son as a burden?

Author: Child Aid Uganda

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Shemena Johnson, Psychotherapist | Los Angeles

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Mothers play a vital role in the development of their son's perception of what it is to be a "man." A popular belief regarding the mother-son dynamic that influenced psychoanalytic theory during the 20th century-the Oedipus complex-is no longer an accepted concept. However, I don't doubt that there are some children who wish to be more closely aligned with their opposite sex parent and feel antagonistic toward the one who is viewed as a threat to them.

Psychologists today understand that mothers can impact their son's ability to connect to their emotional (relational) side in healthy or unhealthy ways. Mothers who are frequently absent, unable to show affection towards their son, mentally ill or suffering a personality disorder often raise sons who feel threatened by commitments, fail to develop intimate relationships, fear independence from their mothers or engage in superficial promiscuity. With societal pressure constantly dominating a man's childhood (i.e., the pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes), how a mother raises her son will powerfully influence his relational skills as an adult.

Why Some Men Fear Commitment

Committing to an intimate relationship involves two people who love each other and want to spend, presumably, the rest of their lives together. But what would cause a man to act like he wants to invest in a long-term relationship and then suddenly and inexplicably back away when things become too "real"?

Overprotective Mothers

Overprotective mothers may think they are being "good" mothers by not allowing their sons to get physically or emotionally hurt. However, interfering and controlling their son's lives does not allow boys to cultivate the sense of self-confidence, self-worth and independence they need to mature into relational men secure in their masculinity and emotional intelligence. Sons raised by overprotective or domineering mothers may be psychologically weak, overly dependent on anyone entering his orbit and passive-aggressive due to feelings of unresolved anger and resentment.

Emotionally Absent Mothers

Children need physically and emotionally present mothers to develop a solid sense of self-esteem and security. When a mother neglects a son emotionally, he may suffer "insecure attachment" issues involving avoidance of close relationships, general fearfulness of being abandoned (again) and reduced ability to experience genuine happiness in relationships. In fact, longitudinal studies show that boys who never bonded with their mother or other caregivers are at a higher risk for being diagnosed with oppositional defiant or antisocial disorder as an adult. Exacerbating relational problems affecting sons of unloving mothers is the perpetual stereotype of masculinity-silent, unemotional, stoic and uncompassionate.

Mothers of Relational Men

Mothers who raise sons to be emotionally intelligent encourage them to express their feelings and empathize with others. Relational men are confident in their own skin and readily resist buying into masculine stereotypes. They grow up to understand you don't have to act "tough" to prove who you are, nor is it wrong to show empathy and compassion towards women with which they are in relationships. They seek rather than avoid commitment with someone they love and want to spend their lives with. Relational men are authentic.

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Mothers play a vital role in the development of their son's perception of what it is to be a "man." A popular belief regarding the mother-son dynamic that influenced psychoanalytic theory during the 20th century-the Oedipus complex-is no longer an accepted concept. However, I don't doubt that there are some children who wish to be [...]

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This relates to the idea of theft because keeping that big of a secret from your loved ones is taking away the truth from them. It is ironic because theft of any kind was one of Baba’s biggest beliefs. In all American, the friends do not know how to react to their father and feel betrayed for not knowing the truth, just like Amir. This shows the father and son relationship with one another and how there is more lies than one would think between families.

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This relates to the idea of theft because keeping that big of a secret from your loved ones is taking away the truth from them. It is ironic because theft of any kind was one of Baba’s biggest beliefs. In all American, the friends do not know how to react to their father and feel betrayed for not knowing the truth, just like Amir. This shows the father and son relationship with one another and how there is more lies than one would think between families.

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"All We Got"

Written By

Robert D. Doty & Lorna Osunsanmi

" All We Got" is the fifth episode of the first season of All American. It premiered on November 14, 2018.

WORLDS COLLIDE - Spencer's worlds come together to celebrate his birthday in Beverly Hills. But mixing the dysfunctional families - with the dash of an unexpected guest - ends in disaster. Olivia and Jordan, on a mission to uncover a family secret, discover a missing link to their father's past. Meanwhile, Coop and Patience struggle to define their blossoming romance.

To Be Added

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"All We Got" is the fifth episode of the first season of All American. It premiered on November 14, 2018. WORLDS COLLIDE - Spencer's worlds come together to celebrate his birthday in Beverly Hills. But mixing the dysfunctional families - with the dash of an unexpected guest - ends in disaster.

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Key points

Many parents feel anxiety about the welfare of adult children and become directive by giving unwanted advice.

The cornerstone of improved connection with your adult child is empathy.

Being patient and demonstrating your commitment to being understanding helps repair the relationship.

When I write posts about struggles between parents and adult children, I am grateful to say that many readers share positive reactions to my posts. Thanks so much to all those who have taken the time to write me heartfelt, positive feedback.

With that said, on rare occasions, a few haters, unfortunately, reach out to me through nasty emails. I understand that emotions run hot and high when parents and adults struggle with longstanding hurts and disappointments. There are very frustrated parents of adult children or adult children who are highly upset with their parents.

Taking Sides Takes Hearts and Souls

An article in the New York Times discusses how some adult children disconnect from their parents because feel they have to live with the legacy of an abusive childhood. The parents often, in turn, feel rejected by the person they love most in the world, their child, and they are powerless to do anything about it.

There's anger, grief, and depression on both sides. While this article referenced American families, my coaching of parents across the world has shown me the ubiquitousness of the problem of torn families facing similar issues.

My intent is not to side with parents or adult children when there are struggles in their relationships. There are no sides, nor winners when family relationships suffer. Rather, I try to encourage all-around empathy and healthy communication from both parents and adult children. With that in mind, today's post provides strategies for parents who want to reconnect with their adult children.

With Empathy, There Is No Such Thing as False Hope

If adult children are estranged, there is no quick fix to change these types of sad situations. Yet I have observed many reconciliations between parents and their adult children. For those parents who do currently have some contact with their angry, distanced adult children, the following is intended to help bridge the gap and hopefully get closer. In my parent coaching practice, I have seen first-hand parents and adult children who have worked through differences and become much closer in their relationships using these strategies.

The cornerstone of reconnection is empathy. Based on my coaching parents of adult children for more than 30 years, I can tell you that no adult children complain that their parents are too empathetic. And no parents are upset that their adult children try to be understanding as well.

Steps to Connect With Your Adult Child
1. Lower your emotional reactivity.
As I describe in my book, 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child, adult children need their parents to be calm, firm, and noncontrolling. Being calm, firm, and noncontrolling helps bypass both the parent's and adult child's emotional reactivity. An example of a calm, firm, noncontrolling parental soundbite is "I value your opinion yet disagree. We both seem to feel strongly about how we see this differently. Would you agree that us having a calm, constructive conversation is going to more likely help us feel better than continuing to argue?"
2. Validate their feelings.
Many parents feel anxiety over the welfare of their adult children, and they consequently give unsolicited (and unwanted advice ) in a controlling manner. Instead, show empathy and validate your child's emotions. Let them know that their feelings are important and that you understand why they might be angry. Validating their emotions doesn't mean you have to agree with their perspective, but it helps create a safe space for communication.
3. Take inventory of your behavior.
Start by reflecting on your actions and behavior. Consider whether there have been any conflicts, misunderstandings, or mistakes on your part that might have contributed to your child's anger. Taking responsibility for your actions can set the foundation for open and honest communication.

4. Apologize and mean it.

If you have made mistakes that contributed to your child's anger, sincerely apologize for your actions. Take responsibility for your behavior and show genuine remorse. Making amends might involve changing your behavior, making reparations, or finding ways to rebuild trust.
5. Show consistent effort.
Rebuilding trust takes time and consistency. Be patient and demonstrate your commitment to repairing the relationship. Follow through on your promises, respect boundaries, and continue to show love and support for your adult child.
6. Seek professional help if needed.
If the anger and conflict persist or if you're struggling to communicate effectively, consider seeking the help of a family therapist or counselor. A neutral third party can facilitate discussions, provide guidance, and help both parties understand each other better.

Final Thoughts

No matter what your adult child's age is, being willing to learn from setbacks and mistakes is the best way to get to a better place in your relationship. Be aware of your behavior and how it may be affecting your child's emotional well-being. If you continue to find it difficult to connect with your adult child, seek the help of a coach, therapist, or counselor. They can help you work through any underlying issues that may be contributing to stubbornly problematic issues that you and your adult child are facing.

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Reconnecting With Your Disconnected Adult Child

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Leading with supportive understanding instead of giving unwanted advice.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wXJ57bYvvU

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About childhood trauma and how it affects children 

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About childhood trauma and how it affects children 

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Children whose families and homes do not provide consistent safety, comfort, and protection may develop ways of coping that allow them to survive and function day to day. For instance, they may be overly sensitive to the moods of others, always watching to figure out what the adults around them are feeling and how they will behave. They may withhold their own emotions from others, never letting them see when they are afraid, sad, or angry. These kinds of learned adaptations make sense when physical and/or emotional threats are ever-present. As a child grows up and encounters situations and relationships that are safe, these adaptations are no longer helpful, and may in fact be counterproductive and interfere with the capacity to live, love, and be loved.

Complex trauma can affect children in a multitude of ways. Here are some common effects.

Attachment and Relationships

The importance of a child's close relationship with a caregiver cannot be overestimated. Through relationships with important attachment figures, children learn to trust others, regulate their emotions, and interact with the world; they develop a sense of the world as safe or unsafe, and come to understand their own value as individuals. When those relationships are unstable or unpredictable, children learn that they cannot rely on others to help them. When primary caregivers exploit and abuse a child, the child learns that he or she is bad and the world is a terrible place.

The majority of abused or neglected children have difficulty developing a strong healthy attachment to a caregiver. Children who do not have healthy attachments have been shown to be more vulnerable to stress. They have trouble controlling and expressing emotions, and may react violently or inappropriately to situations. Our ability to develop healthy, supportive relationships with friends and significant others depends on our having first developed those kinds of relationships in our families. A child with a complex trauma history may have problems in romantic relationships, in friendships, and with authority figures, such as teachers or police officers.

Physical Health: Body and Brain

From infancy through adolescence, the body's biology develops. Normal biological function is partly determined by environment. When a child grows up afraid or under constant or extreme stress, the immune system and body's stress response systems may not develop normally. Later on, when the child or adult is exposed to even ordinary levels of stress, these systems may automatically respond as if the individual is under extreme stress. For example, an individual may experience significant physiological reactivity such as rapid breathing or heart pounding, or may "shut down" entirely when presented with stressful situations. These responses, while adaptive when faced with a significant threat, are out of proportion in the context of normal stress and are often perceived by others as "overreacting" or as unresponsive or detached.

Stress in an environment can impair the development of the brain and nervous system. An absence of mental stimulation in neglectful environments may limit the brain from developing to its full potential. Children with complex trauma histories may develop chronic or recurrent physical complaints, such as headaches or stomachaches. Adults with histories of trauma in childhood have been shown to have more chronic physical conditions and problems. They may engage in risky behaviors that compound these conditions (e.g., smoking, substance use, and diet and exercise habits that lead to obesity).

Complexly traumatized youth frequently suffer from body dysregulation, meaning they over-respond or under-respond to sensory stimuli. For example, they may be hypersensitive to sounds, smells, touch or light, or they may suffer from anesthesia and analgesia, in which they are unaware of pain, touch, or internal physical sensations. As a result, they may injure themselves without feeling pain, suffer from physical problems without being aware of them, or, the converse - they may complain of chronic pain in various body areas for which no physical cause can be found.

Emotional Responses

Children who have experienced complex trauma often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and may have limited language for feeling states. They often internalize and/or externalize stress reactions and as a result may experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger. Their emotional responses may be unpredictable or explosive. A child may react to a reminder of a traumatic event with trembling, anger, sadness, or avoidance. For a child with a complex trauma history, reminders of various traumatic events may be everywhere in the environment. Such a child may react often, react powerfully, and have difficulty calming down when upset. Since the traumas are often of an interpersonal nature, even mildly stressful interactions with others may serve as trauma reminders and trigger intense emotional responses. Having learned that the world is a dangerous place where even loved ones can't be trusted to protect you, children are often vigilant and guarded in their interactions with others and are more likely to perceive situations as stressful or dangerous. While this defensive posture is protective when an individual is under attack, it becomes problematic in situations that do not warrant such intense reactions. Alternately, many children also learn to "tune out" (emotional numbing) to threats in their environment, making them vulnerable to revictimization.

Difficulty managing emotions is pervasive and occurs in the absence of relationships as well. Having never learned how to calm themselves down once they are upset, many of these children become easily overwhelmed. For example, in school they may become so frustrated that they give up on even small tasks that present a challenge. Children who have experienced early and intense traumatic events also have an increased likelihood of being fearful all the time and in many situations. They are more likely to experience depression as well.

Dissociation

Dissociation is often seen in children with histories of complex trauma. When children encounter an overwhelming and terrifying experience, they may dissociate, or mentally separate themselves from the experience. They may perceive themselves as detached from their bodies, on the ceiling, or somewhere else in the room watching what is happening to their bodies. They may feel as if they are in a dream or some altered state that is not quite real or as if the experience is happening to someone else. Or they may lose all memories or sense of the experiences having happened to them, resulting in gaps in time or even gaps in their personal history. At its extreme, a child may cut off or lose touch with various aspects of the self.

Although children may not be able to purposely dissociate, once they have learned to dissociate as a defense mechanism they may automatically dissociate during other stressful situations or when faced with trauma reminders. Dissociation can affect a child's ability to be fully present in activities of daily life and can significantly fracture a child's sense of time and continuity. As a result, it can have adverse effects on learning, classroom behavior, and social interactions. It is not always evident to others that a child is dissociating and at times it may appear as if the child is simply "spacing out," daydreaming, or not paying attention.

Behavior

A child with a complex trauma history may be easily triggered or "set off" and is more likely to react very intensely. The child may struggle with self-regulation (i.e., knowing how to calm down) and may lack impulse control or the ability to think through consequences before acting. As a result, complexly traumatized children may behave in ways that appear unpredictable, oppositional, volatile, and extreme. A child who feels powerless or who grew up fearing an abusive authority figure may react defensively and aggressively in response to perceived blame or attack, or alternately, may at times be overcontrolled, rigid, and unusually compliant with adults. If a child dissociates often, this will also affect behavior. Such a child may seem "spacey", detached, distant, or out of touch with reality. Complexly traumatized children are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as self-harm, unsafe sexual practices, and excessive risk-taking such as operating a vehicle at high speeds. They may also engage in illegal activities, such as alcohol and substance use, assaulting others, stealing, running away, and/or prostitution, thereby making it more likely that they will enter the juvenile justice system.

Cognition: Thinking and Learning

Children with complex trauma histories may have problems thinking clearly, reasoning, or problem solving. They may be unable to plan ahead, anticipate the future, and act accordingly. When children grow up under conditions of constant threat, all their internal resources go toward survival. When their bodies and minds have learned to be in chronic stress response mode, they may have trouble thinking a problem through calmly and considering multiple alternatives. They may find it hard to acquire new skills or take in new information. They may struggle with sustaining attention or curiosity or be distracted by reactions to trauma reminders. They may show deficits in language development and abstract reasoning skills. Many children who have experienced complex trauma have learning difficulties that may require support in the academic environment.

Self-Concept and Future Orientation

Children learn their self-worth from the reactions of others, particularly those closest to them. Caregivers have the greatest influence on a child's sense of self-worth and value. Abuse and neglect make a child feel worthless and despondent. A child who is abused will often blame him- or herself. It may feel safer to blame oneself than to recognize the parent as unreliable and dangerous. Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a poor self-image are common among children with complex trauma histories.

To plan for the future with a sense of hope and purpose, a child needs to value him- or herself. To plan for the future requires a sense of hope, control, and the ability to see one's own actions as having meaning and value. Children surrounded by violence in their homes and communities learn from an early age that they cannot trust, the world is not safe, and that they are powerless to change their circumstances. Beliefs about themselves, others, and the world diminish their sense of competency. Their negative expectations interfere with positive problem-solving, and foreclose on opportunities to make a difference in their own lives. A complexly traumatized child may view himself as powerless, "damaged," and may perceive the world as a meaningless place in which planning and positive action is futile. They have trouble feeling hopeful. Having learned to operate in "survival mode," the child lives from moment-to-moment without pausing to think about, plan for, or even dream about a future.

Long-Term Health Consequences

Traumatic experiences in childhood have been linked to increased medical conditions throughout the individuals' lives. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a longitudinal study that explores the long-lasting impact of childhood trauma into adulthood. The ACE Study includes over 17,000 participants ranging in age from 19 to 90. Researchers gathered medical histories over time while also collecting data on the subjects' childhood exposure to abuse, violence, and impaired caregivers. Results indicated that nearly 64% of participants experienced at least one exposure, and of those, 69% reported two or more incidents of childhood trauma. Results demonstrated the connection between childhood trauma exposure, high-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, unprotected sex), chronic illness such as heart disease and cancer, and early death.

Economic Impact

The cumulative economic and social burden of complex trauma in childhood is extremely high. Based upon data from a variety of sources, a conservative annual cost of child abuse and neglect is an estimated $103.8 billion, or $284.3 million per day (in 2007 values). This number includes both direct costs-about $70.7 billion-which include the immediate needs of maltreated children (hospitalization, mental health care, child welfare systems, and law enforcement) and also indirect costs-about $33.1 billion-which are the secondary or long-term effects of child abuse and neglect (special education, juvenile delinquency, mental health and health care, adult criminal justice system, and lost productivity to society).

A recent study examining confirmed cases of child maltreatment in the United States found the estimated total lifetime costs associated with child maltreatment over a 12-month period to be $124 billion. In the 1,740 fatal cases of child maltreatment, the estimated cost per case was $1.3 million, including medical expenses and productivity loss. For the 579,000 non-fatal cases, the estimated average lifetime cost per victim of child maltreatment was $210,012, which includes costs relating to health care throughout the lifespan, productivity losses, child welfare, criminal justice, and special education. Costs for these nonfatal cases of child maltreatment are comparable to other high-cost health conditions (i.e., $159,846 for stroke victims and $181,000 to $253,000 for those with Type 2 diabetes).

In addition to these costs are the "intangible losses" of pain, sorrow, and reduced quality of life to victims and their families. Such immeasurable losses may be the most significant cost of child maltreatment.

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Children whose families and homes do not provide consistent safety, comfort, and protection may develop ways of coping that allow them to survive and function day to day. For instance, they may be overly sensitive to the moods of others, always watching to figure out what the adults around them are feeling and how they will behave.

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Why the Hazara people fear genocide in Afghanistan

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With a long history of persecution, the Hazaras fear the worst under Taliban rule.

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This article talks about how a child and parent react after a traumatic experience.This connects to the Kite Runner because after Sohrab goes through trauma, he won’t talk, interact, or try to play with any of the new toys Soraya had prepared for him. In the article, it states “One person may withdraw and need time to themselves, while the other needs company and wants to talk about it” (Better Health Article). This shows Sohrab and Soraya’s relationship because Sohrab is not ready to open up to her, and all she wants is a happy child to raise and be a mother figure for. Their relationship is very conflicting and difficult, because Soraya finds it hard to maintain patience with Sohrab, so after time she stops trying and waits for him to open up.

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It is normal to have strong emotional or physical reactions following a distressing event. On most occasions though, these reactions subside as part of the body's natural healing and recovery process. Family members who experience a shared distressing event often become closer and appreciate each other more.

A traumatic experience is any event in life that causes a threat to our safety and potentially places our own life or the lives of others at risk. As a result, a person experiences high levels of emotional, psychological, and physical distress that temporarily disrupts their ability to function normally in day-to-day life.

Examples of potentially traumatic experiences include natural disasters such as a or , experiencing violence in the community, having a serious car accident, or being assaulted.

Reactions to trauma

In a family, each member will react to the traumatic event in their own way, depending on role, age, and personality style. If family members don't understand each other's experience, then misunderstandings, communication breakdowns and other problems can result.

Even if you cannot understand exactly what another member is going through, being aware of common reactions and their effect on family life can help everyone cope better in the long run.

Examples of common reactions to trauma are:

feeling as if you are in a state of 'high alert' and are 'on watch' for anything else that might happen

feeling emotionally numb, as if in a state of 'shock'

feeling detached and disconnected from everyone

becoming emotional and upset

being very protective of others including family and friends

not wanting to leave a particular place for fear of 'what might happen'.

Also, it is important to remember that despite the above traumatic reactions, many families look back and see that crises have actually helped them to become closer and stronger. However, don't hesitate to seek professional help if you are uncertain or think your family is struggling to recover.

Family life following the event

Every family is different but, generally speaking, common changes to family life soon after the event include:

Parents may fear for each other's safety and the safety of their children away from home.

Family members may experience nightmares or upsetting dreams about the event.

Fear of another distressing experience happening may affect family life.

Family members may feel overwhelmed by insecurity or lack of control, or at the thought of having so much to do.

Family members may not know how to talk to each other. Each person is struggling to understand what has happened and how they feel about it. If talking makes people upset, they will often avoid it.

Impatience, misunderstandings, arguments over small things and withdrawal from each other can all impact on family life and relationships.

Disruption to family relationships

Family relationships can also be affected by a traumatic event - for example, parents may feel unsure about how to help their children after the crisis.

Communication breaks down as each family member struggles in their own way to come to terms with what has happened.

Children don't want to go to school.

Parents don't want to go to work.

Household schedules tend to lapse - for example, chores are missed, regular mealtimes are disrupted or recreation is neglected.

The usual arrangements for household responsibilities change. Children may cook meals for a time, parents may feel unable to do tasks, or children may not want to be alone.

People react differently to trauma

It is important to remember that it is normal for people to respond in different ways to distressing events. However, sometimes people's responses can clash. One person may withdraw and need time to themselves, while the other needs company and wants to talk about it. Although this can seem quite confusing at times, giving a person the necessary space to work through their own reaction can be extremely helpful.

With families, common reactions may include:

Physical symptoms - include , nausea, stomach ache, , , , changed appetite, and trembling, aches and pains, or a worsening of pre-existing medical conditions.

Thinking is affected - include difficulties with concentrating or thinking clearly, short-term memory problems, difficulty planning or making decisions, inability to absorb information, recurring thoughts of the traumatic event, thinking about other past tragedies, pessimistic thoughts or an inability to make decisions.

Family life - weeks or months later

Family relationships may change weeks or even months after the event. Because time has passed, family members sometimes don't realise how changes are directly linked to the event.

Every family is different but, generally speaking, common changes in the weeks or months after the event include:

Family members may become short-tempered or irritable with each other, which can lead to arguments and friction.

They may lose interest in activities or perform less well at work or school.

Children may be clingy, grizzly, demanding or naughty.

Teenagers may become argumentative, demanding or rebellious.

Individuals may feel neglected and misunderstood.

Some family members may work so hard to help loved ones, they neglect to look after themselves.

Individual family members may feel less attached or involved with one another.

Parents may experience emotional or sexual problems in their relationship.

Everyone feels exhausted and wants support, but cannot give much in return.

Family life - years later

Sometimes, the response to a distressing or frightening event may take a long time to show. In some cases, it may take years for problems to surface. This can happen if the person is very busy helping others or dealing with related issues, such as insurance, rebuilding, relocation, legal processes or financial problems. When things have returned to normal, their reactions may show up.

Every family is different but, generally speaking, changes to family dynamics can include:

The experience may be relived when faced with a new crisis.

Problems may seem worse than they are and be more difficult to handle.

Changes to family life that occurred in the days, weeks or months after the event may become permanent habits.

Family members may cope differently with reminders of the event. Some may want to commemorate the anniversary or revisit the scene of the event, while others may want to forget about it.

Conflict in coping styles can lead to arguments and misunderstandings if the family members aren't sensitive to each other's needs.

Helpful strategies for recovery from trauma

Some things you can do to reduce complications and support family recovery include:

Remember that recovery takes time. Prepare the family members to go through a period of stress and cut back on unnecessary demands to conserve everyone's energy.

Don't just focus on the problems. Make free time to be together and relax, or else the stress will not subside.

Keep communicating. Make sure each family member lets the others know what is going on for them and how to help them.

Plan regular time out and maintain activities you enjoyed before - even if you don't much feel like it. You probably will enjoy yourself if you make the effort. Enjoyment and relaxation rebuild emotional energy.

Keep track of your family's progress in recovery and what has been achieved. Don't just keep thinking about what is still to be done.

Stay positive and encouraging, even if at times, everyone needs to talk about their fears and worries. Remind yourself that families get through the hard times and are often stronger.

Seeking help from a health professional

Traumatic stress can cause very strong reactions in some people and may become chronic (ongoing).

You should seek professional help if you:

are unable to handle the intense feelings or physical sensations

don't have normal feelings, but continue to feel numb and empty

feel that you are not beginning to return to normal after three or four weeks

continue to have physical stress symptoms

continue to have disturbed sleep or nightmares

deliberately try to avoid anything that reminds you of the traumatic experience

have no one you can share your feelings with

notice the communication in the family is changed and not recovering

continue to feel left out or detached

find that relationships with family and friends are suffering

are becoming accident-prone and using more alcohol or drugs

cannot return to work or manage responsibilities

keep reliving the traumatic experience

feel very much on edge and can be easily startled.

If at any time you are worried about your mental health or the mental health of a loved one, call Lifeline on .
Information in your language

Where to get help

Your , mental health specialist, such as a , , or

Your local community health centre

General telephone counselling services can provide advice:

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When a family is affected by trauma, everyone will react in a different way.

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UCF Global Perspectives and International Initiatives

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Afghan woman pushed back into the 1990s: The Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan - UCF Global Perspectives and International Initiatives

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After two decades out of power, The Taliban has reinstated its control over Afghanistan, creating a motif of their past tyrannical policies implemented to marginalize religious minorities, women and girls. Around its initial inception, the Taliban is one of the biggest Sunni Islamist national movements in modern history (National Counterterrorism Center). They established the Islamic […]

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How life in Afghanistan has changed two years after Taliban takeover - BBC News

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Introduction

All throughout our lives, it seems as if we are constantly being fed gender stereotypes. 'Women belong in the kitchen. Men should do hard labor. Little girls should play with baby dolls. Little boys should like cars and fighting.' These stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in US society that women are strongly encouraged to go into healthcare, early education, and domestic (HEED) fields, while men are encouraged to go into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. This gender stereotyping goes further than the workforce, though. Men are shunned from expressing emotions and showing vulnerability, while women are pushed away from showing strength or confidence (Rudman & Phelan, 2010). This kind of emphasis on certain gender stereotypes stems from traditional gender norms in which women are submissive, vulnerable types, while men are strong, unemotional boulders. One meta-analysis conducted by Koenig (2018) actually found that the gender roles enforced on children are dynamic to the behaviors shown in early childhood, meaning that young children will have gender roles enforced on them according to their play styles and physical appearances. This highlights how deeply gender stereotypes are enforced within society.

Young children are especially susceptible to being shaped by enforced gender stereotypes. Looking from a view of developmental psychology, it is a main form of socialization in their very early developmental stages. Even before birth, gender stereotypes like the colors for their rooms, clothes, and decor are already decided. Children as young as two years old are able to notice these previously-mentioned traditional gender norms and use them to shape their understanding of identity and are even able to identify their own gender from their shaped understandings (Wang, Fong, & Meltzoff, 2021). They often shape these views of gender off of their primary caregivers and closest relationships, even understanding their gender group before they can vocalize or label what their gender is. Young children then use this group to mirror their behaviors and perceptions and correct others that do not align with their shaped understandings (Hughes & Seta, 2003). In a society where traditional, and possibly harmful, gender stereotypes are enforced as early as toddler years, it begs the question of why they are so easily accepted and enforced.

The inherent acceptance of these stereotypes can be illustrated in the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, written by John Gray in 1992. This book outlined the 'differences' between men and women in order to better communicate between the two genders. It suggested that men should be cold, domineering, providers, while women are takers, vulnerable and volatile in their emotions (Gray, 1992). This is an outdated perception of gender in society, and social psychology surrounding gender has grown past these ideas. In Doing Gender, by Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987), they suggest an alternative as to why these behaviors exist. The main idea pushed in this book is 'obliged heterosexuality', a claim that gender perceptions and structures are laid out the way that they are under the pretense that femininity is lesser, and seen as homosexual behavior when males engage with it (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Though this book is older than Gray's, it provides a more empirical background to why people behave the way they do and suggests that rather than being a gender, people perform a behavior to get by in life.

These gender stereotypes that have been so normalized in US society have become a social schema to many. In social psychology, a social schema is defined as a structure that helps individuals to organize information about the world around them (Clemans & Graber, 2013). They can be considered shortcuts that the brain takes in order to understand and process the world faster. Hughes and Seta (2003) found that memory is better when these gender stereotypes are performed, as they are usually seen as a social schema. Social schemas are heavily enforced, so much so that going against one will place someone in an out-group from the rest of their social settings, meaning that they will be more easily identified as 'other' or 'different'. Wang, Fong, and Meltzoff (2021) found that young children categorize people in these in-groups and out-groups, especially in relation to their gender, when structuring their lives and developing their understanding of the world. They even prefer their own gender in-groups, learning from them and understanding themselves more relationally through the actions of the group.

In attempts to break through gender norms that classify in-groups and out-groups, one US study found that a sample of 75 thirty-year old women tended to feel more comfortable in their assigned gender norms when primed with images of women in traditionally feminine jobs. However, when shown pictures of women in non-traditionally feminine roles, such as doctors and CEOs, the women in the study felt decreased feelings of leadership within themselves, relative to the control groups (Rudman & Phelan, 2021). This may seem like a strange reaction, but it suggests that these gender norms and stereotypes are so tightly weaved into society that being faced with people breaking them makes individuals uncomfortable, and less likely to break the norms themselves. Rather, seeing a break of a norm will cause these women to retreat back into the safety of the current gender norms enforced on them.

It is not only adult women that feel more likely to confine themselves to their assigned gender norms within their career aspirations. One study examined the ways that being shown non-traditional gender roles (such as women in the workplace) affected the beliefs and future career aspirations of young girls between the ages of eight and ten. The researchers determined that they could only temporarily shift the views of young girls, but it was difficult to have them internalize these counter-norms (Olsson & Martiny, 2018). Just like the Rudman and Phelan (2021) study on adult women, children do not wish to break the social norms and leave their assigned in-groups to explore the alternative options available to them.

Straying away from career aspirations, the way that young children regard other people in life is also swayed by these social norms. Thanks in part to the efforts that women have made in feminism to fight for gender equality, children do not expect 'compensatory behavior' from a woman that does not align herself with traditionally feminine behavior. Compensatory behavior, as defined by Hughes and Seta (2003), is a corrective action to realign with the gender in-group after performing an action outside of it. Children, however, expect men to perform this compensatory behavior after acting outside of the traditionally masculine behavior. This study suggests that young girls are not exclusively confined to their gender roles, but men are, and children have internalized this fact and hold others to that standard, even by the age of ten years old.

The lessened expectations of women to perform their gender roles might be due in part to the history of feminism. Women have made remarkable efforts in fighting the patriarchy and paving a path of rights and freedoms. Womens' right to vote was established in 1920, thanks to the works of first-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism brought women's rights in the workplace, and third-wave feminism is still fighting for positions of equal power within workplaces (Rampton, 2008). Efforts in fighting traditional gender norms for men have been slower, and less documented, though there has been some acknowledgement in recent years of the way that traditional gender and social norms are harming men's mental health. Even from the aforementioned articles, we have seen some progress in looking at the way that gender stereotyping affects the future aspirations of children. However, there is still a missing category in the fight for gender equality: young children and their mental health.

There is a mental toll to enduring the enforcement of traditional gender norms. For those that do not conform to traditional gender norms, the toll negatively impacts their lives and mental health (Thorne & Luria, 2003). However, there is little research available on these impacts in children. We know that young children internalize concepts far quicker than adults, so there is some unknown consequence to enforcing gender roles on a young child that must be examined. However, there is little research done on the mental effects of enforcing these gender roles. One of the drawbacks noted in the Olsson and Martiny (2018) study was the inability to examine internalized gender norms in early childhood and conduct testing at that point in life. This highlights the need for research to be conducted on young children from the ages of three to eleven to examine this specific area of social and developmental psychology. This thesis will review relevant literature to the main themes of this topic, and based on the literature review, propose an applied research study on young children to examine their perceptions of self-worth based on primed gender stereotypes, especially examining the mental health of those that do not conform to traditional gender norms versus those that do.

Literature Review

Introduction

The current research that has been conducted allows us to look at the ways in which we reinforce gender stereotypes at both the individual and structural levels. From these, we can also see how the perceptions individuals have of themselves or others is affected by gender stereotypes. This research is important in creating a foundation of knowledge to better look at the way that gender stereotypes affect the mental health and self-perceptions that individuals hold. With regard to the self-perceptions and mental health of young children who have traditional gender stereotypes enforced on them, this research (Hughes & Seta, 2003; Blakemore, 2003; Arrighi, 2001) is immensely helpful in determining a plan to enact a research study.

Reinforcement of Gender at the Individual Level

We see gender reinforcement most prominently at the individual level in society. It may seem sometimes that all interactions have some underlying gender expectations. West and Zimmerman (1987) have posed the notion that people internalize and enforce gender stereotypes in a dynamic way over the course of life. Gender is not a 'thing', but rather, a daily task that shifts and progresses as we do, that we must work to achieve socially. Because of this, everyone is upholding the reinforcement of gender against those in their lives (West & Zimmerman, 1987).

On a relational basis, gender is most often seen reinforced by peers and family. Thorne and Luria (2003) explore the ways in which elementary age children (ages 8-11 approximately) reinforce gender with their peers. This study, though short term-only taking place during a few school days, monitored the interactions that children had between genders, as well as the way that gender was reinforced by their teachers. It was found that behaviorally, key differences emerge very early in development. Young girls interact in smaller groups, focusing on emotions and intimacy, while young boys interact in large groups, developing a hierarchy and sharing power roles (Thorne & Luria, 2003). Teachers also seemed to not enforce rules as strictly for boys because of their group dynamics. Thorne and Luria (2003) suggested that adults tended to find groups of boys less likely to assign blame within their group and more likely to argue punishments as compared to girls, who believed in rules more strongly and would hold their friends accountable. This justification on the part of the teachers reinforces the gender stereotype that boys are rowdy and unable to be managed, while girls are expected to maintain standards.

In a similar vein, Hughes and Seta (2003) argue that gender stereotype reinforcement on an individual level allows for our social environments to seem stable and predictable. Our memory of events is better when stereotypes are followed, and these stereotypes are highly resistant to change. When the stereotype that boys cannot follow the rule is enforced by a teacher, the child will learn it and have a difficult time unlearning it over the course of their life. The street is not one way, however. Hughes and Seta (2003) also suggest that once a child learns gender stereotypes, they will enforce it on adults as well. In fact, they observed that children will expect compensatory behavior from an adult that does not behave in line with their gender stereotypes and will reinforce the stereotypes that they learned. However, this observation was most noted in men, and women were not expected to perform compensatory behaviors (Hughes & Seta, 2003). Jackson, Bussey, and Myers (2021) also noted that young girls feel a pressure for gender nonconformity, which suggests that there is little reinforcement of feminine gender roles at the individual level. This may be due to the common linkage between gender and social status, and the belief that women are lesser than men.

Arrighi (2001) also examined this concept through interviewing elementary through high school-age boys and suggested that the reinforcement of gender at an individual level is closely linked to status. Arrighi states, "by chastising boys for engaging in female-identified behaviors, both girls and boys become cognizant of the second class status of females in society" (2001, p. 157). At the individual level, we reinforce these beliefs through both our actions and reactions to others. We have far stricter expectations for men because their nonconformance to gender signifies a drop in social status.

At the individual level, gender reinforcement is seen from family, peers, and teachers in a two-way exchange. Once gender stereotypes are learned, they are enforced on everyone in a person's social circle. While we do enforce gender stereotypes to both men and women, we see enforcement on women less often because of the lower social status of femininity. When a woman behaves masculinely, they are behaving above their social status, and when a man behaves femininely, they are behaving below their social status, resulting in harsher repercussions.

Reinforcement of Gender at the Structural Level

At the structural level, gender is enforced on a more subliminal frame. These structures can be more tangible, like workplaces and education, or more intangible, like general concepts that society follows. Career fields, a basic structure, tend to be the most common instance in which gender is reinforced. Rudman and Phelan (2010) examined the ways in which women perceived their self worth and career aspirations after viewing primed images of women in traditionally feminine jobs versus non-traditionally feminine jobs. The researchers discussed the ways in which gender reinforcement was affecting career aspirations and feelings of leadership in the self. Women, who have been systematically removed from positions of power and pushed out of the workforce, feel less inclined to work in a position of leadership, even if they see other women doing it (Rudman & Phelan, 2010). This phenomenon might occur because of how heavily gender stereotypes are ingrained in our lives. When a woman sees another woman behaving in a gender non-conforming manner, they react negatively and secure themselves deeper in their own gender stereotypes and beliefs.

This idea is not just present in adults. In a similar study, Olsson and Martiny (2018), found that young girls have similar feelings when presented with images of women in the workplace and asked what kinds of jobs they want to have in the future. Some girls were able to reach a temporary shift in their gender perceptions, but a notable limitation of this study was that there were no identifiable long-term effects on young girls' gender perceptions. Despite these limitations, we are able to identify the effect that structural gender stereotyping has on eight to ten-year old girls.

While Thorne and Luria (2003) looked closely at the individual level of gender reinforcement, there was an acknowledgement that there was some structural enforcement as well. In schools, the structure of education is based on the concept that women are better at childcare, so they often get hired as early education providers (Thorne & Luria, 2003). Thorne and Luria (2003) also present the concept of the 'institution of heterosexuality' as a driving factor in the reinforcement of gendered behaviors. The institution of heterosexuality combines the designation of a status to the genders with the belief that straying from gender stereotypes implies homosexuality, which is lesser than both genders (Thorne & Luria, 2003, West & Zimmerman, 1987) Just as careers and education are structures that enforce gender reinforcement, society is driven by the concept of institutional heterosexuality. While not a tangible structure, heterosexuality is the pushed and enforced driver for our gender interactions (West & Zimmerman, 1987).

Perceptions of Self and Others

How do these reinforcements of gender at the individual and structural level affect our self-perceptions and perceptions of others? Rudman and Phelan (2010) found from the responses that women had to seeing women in non-traditionally feminine jobs, that non-traditional primers lead to decreased feelings of self-perceived leadership. This translates over time to a general decrease in self-perception. While seeing women in traditionally feminine jobs led to increased implicit gender stereotypes, there was really no preferred option for decreasing gender stereotypes and increasing leadership self-perception (Rudman & Phelan, 2010).

There is a very fine line that women struggle with in terms of self-perception. Because of the designation of female as lesser than male, women feel discouraged from embracing femininity, and some young girls even feel more push to behave in a gender non-conforming manner (Jackson, Bussey, & Myers, 2021).

Struggles with self perception are not limited to girls. Boys, in their highly restrictive gender stereotypes, also struggle with their feelings of self-perception with regard to gender. As an added disadvantage, boys tend to view the disclosure of their emotions to others as weakness (Thorne & Luria, 2003), which discourages them from talking about what they are feeling and managing their emotions in a healthy manner. This leads to a more internalized struggle with identity and feelings of self-perception, an issue that has yet to be addressed in the present research. Blakemore (2003) agrees with the concept that boys' self-perceptions are heavily affected by the idea that feminine behavior is rated more negatively.

With regard to perceptions of others, Koenig (2018) found that our gender perceptions and expectations of others are dynamic and shift over the span of our lives. Koenig (2018) examined the perceptions of toddlers, adolescents, adults, and older individuals. It was found that toddlers are perceived in a gendered manner and are expected to behave according to their gendered groups, while old people have the most leniency in their gender perceptions, possibly due to their experience with gender over the course of their life. Clemans and Graber (2013) also found that children tend to perceive their peers differently if they do not adhere to gender stereotypes.

Conclusions

From these articles, it is safe to say that the reinforcement of traditional gender stereotypes leads to a more negative self-perception and perception of others (Koenig, 2018; Jackson, Bussy & Myers, 2021; Rudman & Phelan, 2010). We struggle to feel positively about ourselves when we are struggling to adhere to the gender stereotypes that are enforced on us. When we also consider the structural creation of a hierarchy in gender, women are disadvantaged to always feel inadequate for their gender, while men are disadvantaged in not being allowed any freedom in their expression or behaviors. It is a lose-lose on all fronts.

The reinforcement of gender stereotypes happens at all ages, and once a stereotype is learned, it is incredibly difficult to alter that belief. This leads to a gap in our research, however. There is yet no research looking at the long term effects of shifting gender reinforcement on children.

Applied Research Proposal

As mentioned in the introduction and literature review, there is a gap in the research surrounding the self-perception of children with regard to gender enforcement. There have been short-term studies conducted that examine the self-perception of young children after being primed with stereotypical and counter stereotypical gender roles (Olsson & Martiny, 2018), but one of the notable limitations of the study was that there was no way to measure the long-term changes to the participants' feelings of self-worth based on their primed groups. In order to truly measure how priming children with certain gender stereotypes or counter stereotypes affects their feelings of self, a longitudinal study is needed, which has yet to be conducted.

We can attribute the need for a longitudinal study in this field to developmental psychology. It has been found that childhood experiences strongly influence the development of the child into adolescence and adulthood (Codd, 2022). However, longitudinal studies are very involved, requiring great amounts of research, work with participants, materials, time, and money, in order to be effective. Because of these factors, there have been very few longitudinal studies focusing on gender, especially with children. This research proposal aims to conduct a longitudinal study.

The proposed applied research study is modeled on a longitudinal test conducted by McCurdy (2022). McCurdy examined 733 families with children, beginning when they were 4.5 years old, and testing them at 1st grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade for levels of anxiety based on their family dynamics and age. The children were interviewed to rate their anxiety scores, and the results were gathered to test for differences between the years (McCurdy, 2022). A latent change score model was used to assess the anxiety levels of children in each grade level, and a multigroup analysis was conducted to analyze any differences between boys and girls during testing.

The main aim of this proposed research study is to follow 140 families with three year old children, conducting regular testing yearly until the children reach eleven years of age. The decision to work with children in this age range is due to the previous readings and the development of social skills throughout this time frame (Wang, Fong, & Meltzoff, 2021; Hughes & Seta, 2003). The children will be gathered from daycares all over the country, by reaching out to the parents with an incentive to encourage participation. The parents that agree to participate will receive a stipend of $1,500 a year, to go toward childcare and education. Participants will be assigned to one of two groups; the first group will follow stereotypic conditions, and the second group will follow counterstereotypic conditions. For the rest of this paper, I will refer to these groups as group A for the stereotypic conditions, and group B for the counterstereotypic conditions. To assign families to groups, they will be asked to fill out a census-like survey to identify key traits of the household, such as family dynamics and feelings about gender stereotypes. They will also be given the informed consent and risks and benefits of the study at this point, which will allow them to opt out if they choose to. From the results of these surveys sent out nationwide, we will gather 70 families that best fit group A and group B, for a total of 140 families participating in the study.

Group A will consist of the traditional families that are participating: those that can be considered nuclear families, or families with a working father and stay-at-home mother. This group will be composed of the families that identified that they aligned more with traditional gender norms, including in how they raised their children. They will continue to raise their children with these mindsets, without the influence of the researcher.

Group B will consist of non-nuclear families: working mothers, stay-at-home fathers, two mothers households, two father households, or any other circumstances in which the child might be exposed to something other than a working father and stay-at-home mother. This group, as with group A, will be composed of families that self-identified as aligning with the counterstereotypic gender norms. This group will also not receive any sort of intervention or influence from the researcher.

Since both groups will be identified through their already-held beliefs, this research proposal will be a quasi-experimental design. This is because there are too many ethical implications to consider by forcing individuals to adhere to either a stereotypic or a counterstereotypic gendered atmosphere. To avoid this ethical implication, we will simply stick to the already-held beliefs of individuals.

There is little ability to control gendered environments outside of home, therefore this study will focus exclusively on how children feel about gender and self-perception when at home. While it is impossible to remove them from school or shape their schooling and social life around whichever group they have been assigned to, only engaging with them while they are at home might focus their attention on their feelings while in a home environment. This is not to say that their experiences in school will not affect their outcomes during testing, but it might alleviate some of the effects.

To test their self-perception, feelings of self-worth, and beliefs about gender, I will interview the parents at the end of every year they are participating in the study. I will conduct interviews with the families, asking likert-scale questions to rate their children. The questions are inspired by three tests, all of which ask participants to self-rate their feelings to certain prompts regarding self-worth, gender, sexuality, and self-perception (Crocker et al., 2003; Hentschel, Heilman, & Peus, 2019; Gebhard et al., 2018). Since these tests used self-reporting to gather results, and the children involved in this study will be beginning at the age of three, they are not yet at the mental capacity to self-report complicated feelings. Therefore, we will ask the parents to report on behalf of their children until the age of seven. By the age of seven, the children will receive a simplified version of the self-reporting test, and will have a tester available to explain things if they need additional support during the interview. They will use a smiley-face version of the likert scale (Fig 1) to assist with their understanding of how to respond. Their parents will continue to report on behalf of the children as well, and the results will be collated for each participant.

Similar to McCurdy (2022), results will be analyzed yearly against the previous data, as well as between-groups. Group A and group B will be analyzed against one another yearly, but the most important data groups will be the preliminary testing at the beginning of the first year, and the final test when all children are eleven years of age. These two groups of data will showcase the difference in self-perception before and after being placed in either group.

The importance of this longitudinal study lies in filling in the gaps mentioned in the literature review for a more in-depth understanding of how gender stereotypes affect children in US society. Young children are easily influenced and learn gender norms as early as two years old (Wang, Fong, & Meltzoff, 2021). By intercepting children at the age of three and influencing their perceptions of gender norms in society throughout their formative years, we can gather a better understanding of the true long-term effects that gender stereotyping has on children, and introduce the potential for life-long studies about gender perception in individuals.

One of the biggest strengths of this applied research study is the in-depth analysis that can be garnered from these families. We can analyze various facets of home life and gender enforcement, looking at how any number of variables can shape a child's self-perception. Another strength of this study is the potential for children in group B to learn a counterstereotypic view of gender and apply it positively to their own lives.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, one of the main limitations is that children in group A will only be able to learn stereotypic gender norms and will not get the opportunity to explore counterstereotypic gender norms. As mentioned in the introduction, this may pose a threat to the well-being of children's mental health, and can lead to a more negative self-perception and feeling of leadership in adulthood (Koenig, 2018). However, the benefits of learning about how gender stereotyping can affect the mental health of children all across the US is great, so the risk is outweighed.

The results and information gained from this applied research study will be disseminated to other developmental and social psychologists. Notably, this information should be shared to individuals who work with young children. It is anticipated that children in group B will develop a better self-perception than those that are in group A, which would support the principle of educating children on counterstereotypic gender norms in society. This information can also be shared to upper-level educators, such as middle and high school teachers. While children in these age ranges are not developing an understanding of gender anymore, they are still enforcing the ideas and norms that they have been taught. By educating them on the importance of understanding a counterstereotypic gender norm, they might learn that enforcing what they have previously been taught and enforced could be detrimental to others, and slowly start to shift their perspectives on gender norms in the United States.

Discussion

The aim of this thesis was to discuss the current problem of enforcing gender norms on children in the United States. While social psychology and developmental psychology seem to fall under the radar for many individuals, they are a crucial aspect to understanding why individuals behave the way they do. This includes the ways that gender norms and enforcement in society affect our behavior, perceptions, and attitudes toward both ourselves and others.

The focus on gender has long been focused on women and feminism in America. The feminist movements, starting in the 1800s with early feminist movements, and continuing even today, have made extensive leaps in the rights of women in America (Rampton, 2008). However, these historical movements focus on mostly adult women. There has been a very recent acknowledgement of the importance of masculinity and the mental health of men in society, as well as a new focus on educating children on gender in a more counterstereotypic manner, but there have not been enough strides in the particular focus on young children and their mental health surrounding these gendered enforcements. This thesis aimed to focus on this aspect and research it further.

One of the main themes derived from the literature is the enforcement of gender at both the individual and structural level. At the individual level, it was found that gender is most commonly enforced by peers and family members (Thorne & Luria, 2003). Children, especially elementary-aged children, tend to more heavily enforce gender norms that they have been taught, and do not hesitate to point out when other children, or even adults, are not adhering to the norms (Hughes & Seta, 2003). This could be in part due to the fact that they witness this enforcement on a smaller scale from family members and guardians, as well as their early exposure to gender norms that causes it to feel almost inherent (Wang, Fong, & Meltzoff, 2020).

At the structural level, we concluded that gender tends to be most heavily reinforced in careers, schools, and overarching societal standards (Rudman & Phelan, 2010; Olsson & Martiny, 2018; Thorne & Luria, 2003). These structures of society that everyone must face at some point in their life designate how a specific gender should act, what actions are acceptable, and what actions will result in the loss of social status. On a more abstract level, West and Zimmerman (1987) argued that the structure of heterosexuality was the basis for stereotypic gendered behavior and that gender is a daily performance or task that individuals are encouraged to achieve if they wish to maintain their status in society. This kind of structural enforcement of gender pushes the notion that 'female' is lesser than 'male' (West & Zimmerman, 1987; Jackson, Bussey, & Myers, 2021).

These kinds of beliefs and enforcements of gender at the structural level led to the final main theme from the literature review: the perceptions of selves and others. It was determined that the continual enforcement of gender stereotypes led to the dismissal of femininity in both men and women (Jackson, Bussey, & Myers, 2021; Thorne & Luria, 2003; Blakemore, 2013). It also forced the enforcement of gender into a cycle: individuals reinforced the structural level, and the structural enforcement of gender encouraged the enforcement at the individual level. This cycle is daunting, and leads to individuals not wishing to break these norms, as it is so heavily followed and natural to what they have been taught (Rudman & Phelan, 2010).

There were notable gaps in the literature, however. One of the most prevalent gaps was the lack of longitudinal research in this area. While there had been some studies conducted to see if being exposed to counterstereotypic images of women in the workplace would affect the self perception of women and children (Rudman & Phelan, 2010; Olsson & Martiny, 2018), there were no long-term studies found that examined how prolonged exposure to these kinds of prompts would affect the mental health or self-perceptions of individuals.

My applied research proposal aimed to fill this gap. I proposed conducting a longitudinal quasi-experimental study that would follow children from the ages of three to eleven in two distinct groups: those that are being taught stereotypic gender norms, and those that are being taught counterstereotypic gender norms. The main strength of this study lies in how it fills the gap: such a long-term study would provide masses of information and variables to examine against one another in looking at the results of the data gathered. This is also a unique factor to this study- longitudinal studies are rare, due to the amount of resources they consume and the unpredictability of the sample size.

This study is not free of limitations, however. One of the biggest limitations of this study, and possibly an ethical consideration, is that one group will be limited to only the stereotypic gender norms. Though this will be based on pre-existing beliefs that their parents hold, this might limit the children in what they are able to learn about gender. Another limitation of the study is that it is limited to US children, though there might be societal differences in the way gender is taught and enforced in other countries. A final limitation is the cost of the study. Though this is a hypothetical proposal, it is still a costly and resource-consuming one. This limits the chance to enact this study.

This applied research proposal opens the door for future developmental and social psychologists to extend information to schools on how to better educate children about gender. If significant results are found, this information can be shared with the public to hopefully reinforce more counterstereotypic beliefs about gender and shift the US perspective on men and women. There are further research opportunities as well, looking at the differences in gender education in boys and girls, or examining the way that cisgender children perceive themselves when taught gender norms versus the way that gender non-conforming or transgender children perceive themselves when taught gender norms. This field is vast and mostly unexplored, all it requires is a dedicated researcher to start exploring.

References

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Blakemore, J. E. O., (2003). Children's beliefs about violating gender norms: Boys shouldn't look like girls, and girls shouldn't act like boys. Sex Roles, 48 (9/10). 0360-0025/03/0500-0411/0

Clemans, K. H., & Graber, J. A., (2013). Young adolescents' gender-, ethnicity-, and popularity- based social schemas of aggressive behavior. Youth and Society, 48 (3) 303-317. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X13484479

Codd, E. L. (2022). A longitudinal analysis of adverse childhood experiences on internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 83 (1-A)

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Deutsch, F. M., (2007). Undoing gender, Gender & Society, 21 (1) 106-127. DOI: 10.1177/089243206293577

Gebhard, K. T., Cattaneo, L. B., Tangney, J. P., Hargrove, S., & Shor, R. (2018). Masculinity and Shame Questionnaire, PsycTESTS. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/t69722-000

Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships. HarperCollins.

Hentschel, T., Heilman, M. E., & Peus, C. V. (2019). Gender stereotypes scales, PsycTESTS. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/t711506-000

Hughes, F. M., & Seta, C. E., (2003). Gender stereotypes: Children's perceptions of future compensatory behavior following violations of gender norms. Sex Roles, 49 (11/12) 685-691. 0360-0025/03/1200-0685/0

Jackson, E. F., Bussey, K., & Myers, E., (2021). Encouraging gender conformity or sanctioning nonconformity? Felt pressure from parents, peers, and the self. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 50, 613-627. DOI: 10.1007/s10964-020-01387-8

Koenig, A. M., (2018). Comparing prescriptive and descriptive gender stereotypes about children, adults, and the elderly. Frontier Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01086

McCurdy. (2022). Relations between parental autonomy support and child anxiety symptoms across elementary school in two-parent families, University of North Carolina.

Olsson, M., & Martiny, S. E., (2018). Does exposure to counterstereotypical role models influence girls' and women's gender stereotypes and career choices? A review of social psychological research. Frontier Psychology, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02264

Rampton, M. (2008). Four waves of feminism, Pacific Magazine. https://www.pacificu.edu/ magazine/four-waves-feminism

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Rudman, L. A., & Phelan, J. E., (2010). The effect of priming gender roles on women's implicit gender beliefs and career aspirations. Social Psychology, 41 (3) 192-202. DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335-a000027

Thorne, B., & Luria, Z., (2003). Sexuality and gender in childrens' daily worlds. Down to Earth Sociology. 162-174.

Wang, Z., Fong, F. T., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2020). Enhancing same-gender imitation by highlighting gender norms in Chinese pre-school children, The British Psychological Society. 39, 133-152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12356

West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H., (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1 (22) 125-151.

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"Boys Don't Cry: The Problem of Enforcing Traditional Gender Norms on Children" by TJ Arnold

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Magnificat, April 2022 Introduction All throughout our lives, it seems as if we are constantly being fed gender stereotypes. 'Women belong in the . Click here to learn more.

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The Power of Truth Telling | Christine Carter | TEDxThacherSchool

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UN article on the ruins of homes left behind by refugees

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UN article on the ruins of homes left behind by refugees

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It illustrates the part of the immigrant experience of abandoning your old life.

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What do a disease-fighting epidemiologist (retired) and an up-and-coming social psychologist have in common? They're both fascinated by the unseen social problems hidden behind the word "inequality." Beyond the lack of access to money and power - what does inequality do to us as human beings?

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson (TED Talk: How economic inequality harms societies) spent his career studying chronic health problems - with the growing realization that most health issues are caused, or worsened, by poverty and inequality. This awareness led him to co-found the Equality Trust and co-write the book The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone). Meanwhile, social psychologist Paul Piff (TED Talk: Does money make you mean?) studies the psychological effects of wealth - and what happens when you, say, rig a Monopoly game.

In this freewheeling conversation, Wilkinson and Piff find their common ground - and go from there. A lightly edited version of their conversation follows:

Paul Piff: Richard, maybe we could begin with a description of where you started, and some of your basic findings and how that converges with mine.

Richard Wilkinson: Well, I got into studying inequality from, really, studying health inequality, the huge social-class differences in death rates between rich and poor, between well-educated and badly educated, between people in rich and poor areas, and so on. In most of our countries, people in richer areas live anywhere from 5 to 12 or even 14 years longer than people in poor areas, and that's always seemed to me like the biggest human-rights abuse you could imagine, worse in a way than locking people up without trial. And people around the world were doing research on the causes of these health differences, and I focused particularly on income, trying to see if health was responsive to changes in income, and from there thinking that the death rates of the poor are more responsive to changes in income than the death rates of the rich were. I thought maybe countries with greater equality - with the rich less rich and the poor better off - would have better overall health. And I found that was much truer than I would have imagined. The relationships I looked at first, I'm talking about the mid-1980s, were much closer than I imagined. With each step up the inequality ladder, bigger income differences between rich and poor, the worse a country did in terms of life expectancy. Very striking relationships.

PP: Yours is some of the work that best shows how inequality shapes people's individual lives. It sheds light on how inequality shapes the very fundamental outcome of someone's life, like their health, the physical symptoms of a person's body. The broad agenda of my research, and it really dovetails with yours, is how inequality and differences in people's levels of wealth shape the mind, shape the way people see the world and behave towards one another. I'm a social psychologist, and I'm really interested in how status, inequality, stratification, shape the basic things people do, like their tendencies to feel compassion, their tendencies to cooperate with others. These are fundamental questions in psychology. What is it that drives people to band together versus prioritize themselves? One of the broader lessons we've been learning over the last 10 years of research is that, in lots of really interesting ways, a person's levels of wealth, and their status relative to others in their society, shape their tendencies to prioritize themselves, feel entitled, to cooperate versus behave in self-interested ways, across a variety of different domains of social life.

RW: Yes, it sounds like you got into the psycho-social effects of status and inequality from the beginning. But in health, we started off imagining that differences in rates of disease had entirely material causes. And then gradually it looked as if there were psycho-social factors mediated by chronic stress, which acted as general vulnerability factors in health - in a way looking like the effects of more rapid aging, making you more vulnerable to a whole range of diseases. But the most important stressers seem to be things to do with social relationships. For instance, friendship seems highly protective of health, and things to do with low social status are very damaging. The other part of that picture is that a difficult early childhood, stress in early life, seems to cast a long shadow forward. The picture of the importance of these psycho-social things is now really strong, so that in the rich, developed countries, psycho-social factors look like among the most important influencers in population health.

PP: I was curious, when you mentioned psycho-social factors, I just wanted to know a little bit more about the kinds of psycho-social factors you were referring to.

RW: Well, the biology of chronic stress, I suppose, is fairly similar across a wide range of mammals. And in human beings, we had always regarded classification by social class as simply a proxy for the real determinants of health that we saw, that we imagined were material factors - like diet and what you're working with and what you're exposed to at work and maybe housing, air pollution, things like that. But gradually, it started looking more and more like social status itself was a really important determinant of health, and that was really confirmed when we became aware of people doing work on non-human primates, macaques and baboons, looking at some of the psycho-social, the stress effects of social status in those animals, and seeing remarkable parallels between what came out of experiments in animals. You could manipulate social status by moving animals between groups, and you could give them the same material conditions and feed them the same diets, and you saw that the social status changes under those conditions had remarkably similar effects to what we were observing associated with social status in human beings. But I suppose I regard social status, ranking systems, as almost the opposite of issues to do with friendship. I think the fundamental issue is whether we fight each other for access to basic necessities, or whether we recognize each other's need and share access, and one is about status and power and the other is about friendship and reciprocity. Inequality pushes us away from the reciprocity towards competitive striving for personal, individual advantage, not recognizing the other's needs.

The fundamental issue is whether we fight each other for access to basic necessities, or whether we recognize each other's need and share access.

PP: Inequality gets reflected in a fraying, if you will, of the social bonds, of social cohesion. It leads to, in many ways, a dissolution of the trust that emergent groups and strong, cooperative groups rely on. One of the things that's striking to me, and you mentioned work in health and in health psychology, is that for many years, a lot of the research on health and inequality gave rise to this understanding that it's really the people who feel subjectively lower on the social ladder or who are objectively poorer, who experience all the negative outcomes, whether it's higher rates of obesity, or increased cardiovascular disease, or higher rates of depression.

Inequality is genuinely bad for those on the bottom, and there are a lot of really intuitive reasons to think about why that might be: They have less control over their own lives. They have less access to resources. They get less respect in the scene, in their social groups. But one of the emerging insights out of our work - and I think your work, Richard, also points to this - is that inequality isn't just bad for a certain subsection of the population. It's not just bad for the people on the bottom. It's actually bad for the group as a whole. In our work, we're finding that there are these really interesting social costs associated with wealth, in a sense. Wealth shapes behavior in some potentially counterintuitive but certainly pernicious ways and causes people to abandon certain kinds of ethics, to prioritize their own interests over the interests of other people, to behave in ways that are potentially less trustworthy, less honorable. They become more competitive, less compassionate, less moral in certain ways. And your work also suggests that there are costs associated with inequality that resound across all strata of society and not just among those on the bottom, and I wondered if you could say a little bit more about why that would be. Why is it that inequality is costly potentially for everyone and not just those on the receiving end?

RW: We find the biggest effects of inequality are lower down in the social ladder, but it looks to us as if the vast majority of the population is adversely affected by increases in inequality. Simply, people on the bottom of the social ladder are affected more than people further up. And I think that's because inequality changes the whole social milieu, if you like. It leads to more status competition, more status insecurity. Status becomes more important, you know. Some people are incredibly important, while some of the people at the bottom seem almost worthless - but we all become more worried about where we are. Think of this as an evolved sensitivity to social ranking systems - if we're in a social environment where rank is important, we are very sensitive to that. We know how to play games to do with status and how to be snobbish and so on, put people down, build ourselves up. But we also know how to develop friendships on the egalitarian basis of friendship. Those are two different ways in which people can come together, and I think the nature of the material differences between us tells us what kind of game we have to play in our society, whether it's about reciprocity, recognition of each other's needs, or whether it's everyone for themselves.

And ranking systems, I think your work shows that very clearly, ranking systems are about self-interest, and the sense of entitlement. Further up, it looks to me very much like the dominant baboon. He's able to see off the subordinates and can basically do what he likes, rather the way these people with big bonuses have been doing with the runaway top incomes. I've been interested in some papers showing that bullying in schools is much more common in unequal societies, because I think that, in a way, hierarchies, certainly in animals, are about bullying relationships. Ranking systems are rankings based on power, and the dominants can see off the subordinates, and whether that's a nice place to sit in the shade or whether that's eating first, the dominants have it. Although we don't have good measures of bullying amongst adults, internationally comparable measures, we do for bullying amongst children, and I think to see those bullying relationships coming out even amongst children among more unequal societies is quite remarkable.

PP: It would suggest that the markers, the effects, the consequences of inequality on the vigilance to status, the anxiety about status, the vying for status, that you see emerge in groups, in societies with increasing levels of inequality, is found not only among the adults, who have already formed an understanding of where they stand in relation to others, but it's also reflected in the behavior of children, suggesting that the signs of inequality, the manifestations of status anxiety and concern about where one stands in relation to others, emerges very, very young, and is something that people begin to carry around with them or that shapes a person's life very, very early on.

RW: I'm quite sure that's true. The very life influence is, I think, powerful and probably includes epigenetic effects, epigenetic responses, ways in which the early environment switches genes on and off, changes gene expression. So, brought up in one environment, you will develop differently than if you were brought up in another environment, and I think family relationships, whether you have a depressed parent or you have a lot of domestic conflict or parents too exhausted to have time for you, all of those things affect your development and lead to being less fully socially developed, compared to if you're brought up with parents who have a lot of time for you, get used to a lot of eye contact, interaction, handling, physical contact, all that kind of sharing develops you in a much more social way. So I think these things feed into, again, whether you are being prepared to live in a society where we have to fight for what we can get, learn not to trust others because we're all rivals, or whether we are being prepared for a world in which we will depend on reciprocity and cooperation, where empathy is important. And those are very different developmental trajectories, but I would imagine that you as a psychologist would know more about those kinds of developmental patterns.

PP: Yeah, and it's interesting that you bring that up. In our work and the work of sociologists and ethnographers studying different kinds of families and parenting patterns as a function of status and wealth, it yields this understanding that the values that children grow up with are often a function of their family's socioeconomic status. So for instance, the kinds of things that parents value and stress as being of value to their kids often vary as a function of income, often vary as a function of wealth. For instance, whether the family stresses personal achievement, the expression of your individual talents and desires, standing out from the pack - seems to be more a value of individuals in families of upper socioeconomic standing, relative to the values of families that emerge out of lower socioeconomic groups, which really stress the community, relating to others, valuing the well-being of others, and not standing out from the pack but rather fitting in. And it's interesting to think about how those values might play into the kinds of things you prioritize in your daily life, what kind of jobs you would go for, and also the emergence of exacerbating levels of inequality over time because of what one socio-economic group may or may not value relative to another socio-economic group.

RW: Yes, I agree those patterns are important. I should have said, behavioral outcomes like violence or teenage births or drug abuse. There's a paper by Sheri Johnson, who you may know, writing about what she calls the dominance behavioral system, showing that there are psychological responses to status differentiation. If you're in a status hierarchy, then there will be amongst some people a struggle to avoid subordination, or an acceptance of subordination, or a struggle for dominance, and those all contributing to a range of, I suppose, mental illnesses and personality disorders, and I think she mentions things in particular like depression and schizophrenia and antisocial personality issues, all perhaps exacerbated by issues to do with dominance and subordination in our societies.

PP: Yeah, and I think that work is really compelling. In your own book The Spirit Level you talk about not only these kinds of outcomes, for instance incarceration rates, but also various kinds of psycho-social outcomes or consequences of inequality and rising levels of inequality. For instance, we talked about social trust, and did you find, for instance, growing rates of depression in societies with greater levels of inequality?

RW: Other people have. It's not our work, but there are several papers showing that tendency, for depression to be more common in more unequal societies. There's another paper showing the same of schizophrenia, and I think Sheri has just completed a paper on psychotic symptoms, which seem more common in more unequal societies. So there are a number of ways in which issues to do with being better or worse than other people, superior or inferior, intrude on social relationships and affect us very deeply. It's extraordinarily destructive of good social relationships that are so essential to human wellbeing. We all know what we most enjoy is sitting around chatting and joking with friends we are at ease with. It's damaging to that kind of fellowship.

PP: Yeah. I absolutely agree with that. In our own work, when we ask people to reflect on those things in their lives that they found the most meaningful, people rarely point to individual achievements and the things that they did to outperform and outcompete others. Now, those things are important to well-being. It's important to think you have done things that are worthy and valued by others. But far more often, people refer to those episodes where they were embedded with a community, those experiences where they really connected with others, connected with loved ones, felt valued, trusting of others, felt like others were respecting of them, like they were actually reaching some deep connection with their social relationships. And I think that's a really important insight into what it is, both in terms of psychological values but even what the human nervous system, people's physiological systems, health systems are wired to value and prioritize. It's really social relations, cooperation, interdependence in many ways. And so social inequality and a constant vigilance towards status and anxiety about where you stand in relationship to others, which you would argue and I would agree is exacerbated in groups with lots of inequality - well then, those are the very things that undermine the social relationships, the trust, the embeddedness, those things that we as individuals care about deeply and that deeply and significantly contribute to our well-being and ultimately to our satisfaction with our lives.

when we ask people to reflect on things in their lives that they found the most meaningful, people rarely point to individual achievements and the things they did to outperform others.

RW: When societies become more fearful, less trusting, less empathetic, you see this more punitive approach to crime. I mean, that's why imprisonment is more common in more unequal societies, much more common. In unequal societies, perhaps 10 times as high a proportion of the population is imprisoned as in more equal societies. And that is not mainly more crime, it's mainly about longer sentences. And that is a sign of something going badly wrong with the quality of social relations.

PP: Right. Right. Yeah. As I think about it, this is just a caricature of the work in certain ways, or a generalization, but it's such an important point, and it makes sense that with inequality emerges an increased awareness and increased incidence of those things that separate people. So with increased inequality come increased markers of status. Your differences, the differences between people become ever salient, and with those factors, whether it's differences in material well-being, differences in the kinds of cars people drive or the homes they live in, the jobs they have, if those things become increasingly disparate in society, with growing inequality in society, then so too is the decline of trust, those things that you see as making you similar to other people or that are essential to forging relationships and forging independence, people's relationships become increasingly frayed. Trust will go down. Those perceived similarities between yourself and others will go down, and so too then would the other effects sort of ricochet and resound, like incarceration rates, and this is obviously patterns that emerge over time, over long periods of time, this isn't something that happens from A to B to C to D in seconds. It's really an unfolding cascade of effects, but I think it's a really compelling point to think about how all of this emerges out of the fraying of the social fabric that is a consequence of rising rates of social inequality.

Here's one of the questions that comes to my mind. I think you, Richard, have encountered criticism of your work or of related work, and I know a lot of our research and other research on the psycho-social effects of inequality has been met with criticism, and it brings to mind an interesting question: Why is it that some people have a resistance to discussing inequality? It's there, people are aware of it, but why is economic inequality such a controversial, intractable topic in conversation?

RW: I often think it's because people misunderstand some important causal connections. The common view I suppose is, if you're bright, you move up the social hierarchy, and if you're not, you move down, and people feel their position is a reflection of their ability, and we judge each other's ability by our position in the social hierarchy, and that's why it's so hurtful in a way. We take external wealth as an indication of social worth. But the causality, I think, goes mainly in the opposite direction, that differences in ability are much more of a result of the position in the social hierarchy in which you are born and brought up, with fewer opportunities or perhaps less education, a whole range of things like that. I don't know if you know the stereotype threat experiments, which show that being made to feel inferior in one way or another, how powerfully those affect performance. So rather than your position in the social hierarchy being a reflection of your innate ability, as we learn more about the malleability of the human brain in early life, it becomes clear that the causality is the other way around.

PP: Right. Right. Right.

RW: And I think that's really crucial.

PP: I think that's really well put, and in American society, I think talking about inequality, as important as it is, it's an anxiety-provoking issue, and I've been thinking recently about the range of reasons, the myriad reasons why that might be the case, because certainly talking about an important issue is an important step towards being willing to make changes or take efforts toward rectifying whatever that issue might be, including the issue of economic inequality. And it seems to me like the issue of inequality, and certainly the issue of deservingness, comes up once you start talking about social mobility, which itself is sort of a hallmark of the American Dream. American society, in many ways, is built on this explicit idea that if you work hard, because of your individual talents and efforts you can rise in the ranks and attain those things we value so much as individuals. If we begin finding that social mobility isn't actually randomly distributed across society, that it's actually concentrated in a particular subgroup, and in particular it's concentrated among those who are already fairly high up in the hierarchy, well then, that could be a problem, because it suggests that this meritocracy, this society that we want to believe is really premised on individual deservingness where people get what they work for and get what they deserve, well, that's not the entire story, and that's a dissonant, threatening thing to accept.

RW: Yes, I remember we published some data suggesting that social mobility is lower in more unequal societies, and we published it when there was very little comparable international data on social mobility, but since then there have been several more demonstrations of that tendency toward lower social mobility in more unequal society using independent data, including one study by Alan Krueger, who is I think chair of Obama's economic advisory committee, and what inequality does is I suppose strengthen the ability of the wealthy to pass on their advantages to their children, but I also think it strengthens what I also call downward social prejudices. The prejudices, whether it's class or ethnicity or prejudices against women, prejudice against any weaker group, I think is strengthened by greater inequality, because inequality is about dominance and looking after yourself, often at other people's expense.

PP: Richard, you mentioned dominance hierarchies among non-human primates or even other mammalian species beyond primate societies or primate groups. So there is reason to think that dominance hierarchies, status, not necessarily social status per se, but dominance and stratification, are a part of life, are in certain ways a fundamental part of how mammals come to be in existing groups. In certain ways, dominant hierarchies can be efficient. They help coordinate action. They help coordinate group life. They help coordinate who does what. And so I don't know that we could eradicate them even if we wanted to, or that it would even be wise to argue for the eradication of inequality or dominance hierarchies.

RW: The sort of income differences we have in the United States and Britain are twice as big, and if you compare as we do the income going to the top and bottom 20% of the population, the gap between the top and bottom 20% is twice as big in countries like the United States and Britain as it is in some of the Scandinavian countries. And so there's no doubt where we can have societies with very different levels of inequality. But I think also it's worth remembering that throughout most of the human existence, prehistoric existence, as hunters and gatherers, you know, we typically lived in very egalitarian societies. I don't know if you know Christopher Boehm's recent book Moral Origins, and I think it's extraordinary. He's now put together electronically searchable data on I believe 200 hunting-and-gathering societies showing this pattern of remarkable equality. Inequality begins in these terms relatively recently with agriculture, the beginnings of agriculture, in the last few thousand years. And so I think it's clear human beings have lived in everything from the most egalitarian societies to the most hierarchical, and I don't think we should regard ourselves as fixed in any way. And indeed, if you think of our closest relatives, non-humans, chimps and bonobos, one, the chimp, is fairly hierarchical, and the bonobo much more egalitarian. The bonobos, I believe the females are smaller than the males, as often happens, but the females eat first, and their social structure is very different. I think it's important to recognize, as humans, our culture determines how we behave. But our evolved psychology means there are particular aspects of our environment that we are sensitive to, and again and again it seems to me this issue of friendship and reciprocity versus dominance and the pursuit of self-interest.

it's clear human beings have lived in everything from the most egalitarian societies to the most hierarchical, and I don't think we should regard ourselves as fixed in any way.

PP: Yeah. And I really like the point that you raised about human nature not being fixed and that people really are in many ways quite malleable and sensitive to changes in the external environment, changes in culture, and that the ways in which behavior emerges and manifests itself are really quite malleable. And in our work, if it's the case, as we've been finding, that wealthy people and less well-off people behave differently, well, it's also the case, as we've been finding, that, for instance, the empathy gap that we often document between those that have and those that don't, isn't in any way fixed. It's not the case at all that wealthy people are characteristically bad and that there's no way in any way to change their behavior to the positive ends of the spectrum -rather that little behavioral nudges, little reminders of more egalitarian social values, or little bursts of compassion, can have these really interesting and important effects, which would suggest that the effects of inequality, at least on a social, behavioral level aren't irreversible at all but are really rather quite sensitive to even subtle changes to people's environments and people's values.

RW: And in relation to that, what can you say about whether high-status people that you've shown behaving badly in a number of ways, whether they've been selected with those characteristics, or whether it's their high status that makes them in some ways more anti-social?

PP: So this is the question, it's a good question, is it one of causation versus correlation?

RW: Well, it's easy to imagine people who are out for themselves are dominant.

PP: There's reason to believe that that's at least in part what's going on. I know that there's other work outside of ours that suggests that people who value individual achievements more are going to be slightly more likely to rise in the ranks of an organization and potentially in groups. But it's also the case that we've been finding a bi-directional thing happening, such that self-interested people over time may be more likely to aggregate resources and become more dominant, although there's work on Machiavellianism and people who get demoted in groups which suggests that the antisocial people are not those who maintain positions of dominance and leadership but may be more likely to rise over time. But our work would suggest that there is also another arrow flowing from being dominant, being in a position of power, high status, and wealth, that actually causes you to be more entitled or to become more self-focused and self-interested, and in fact, in a lot of our studies, and this is work that's been shown in other laboratories, is that when you make people, even those who are actually in their real lives not all that high status at all, not that dominant at all, when you bring those people into the lab and make them feel, even temporarily, better off than others, or make them feel more powerful, or make them feel subjectively higher in status or higher in rank, all of a sudden they begin to behave as if they're actually wealthier or more high status. So this subjective perception of where you stand in relation to others, in particular feeling like you're better off than others, actually makes you more entitled, more prioritizing of your self-interest, and, in our studies, sometimes more unethical, more likely to even be willing to break the rules.

RW: Does your work suggest that high-stakes people treat everyone badly or just their subordinates badly?

PP: That may be part of what's going on. We often study the behavior of people towards strangers, so situations are absent cues about who the person is you might be helping, but by default, it might be that wealthier, higher-status individuals just naturally think that they're going to be interacting with someone who is a subordinate. So it might be in a lot of cases what we might be doing is measuring behavior of high-status individuals toward people that they presume or believe are lower in status. And in fact this is an issue we're exploring right now, it's not data that's out yet, but we're actually finding that although in general it's true that higher-status individuals are less socially engaged, less considerate of the needs of others, in general, when it comes to peers or particularly individuals that are even higher status than them, you see a slight reversal in their behavior. Whereas initially they were, say, more self-interested toward a subordinate, when it's a peer or someone who is in their social group, or someone that they hold in higher esteem than themselves, their values reverse a bit. They become a little bit more cooperative, a little bit more respectful, almost as if they're becoming a subordinate, taking on some of the characteristics of a slightly poorer person. They become more agreeable, more compassionate, more socially engaged, more socially considerate.

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What does inequality do to our bodies and minds? A social psychologist and an epidemiologist discuss

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Does money make you mean? Does lack of money make you sick? Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson and social psychologist Paul Piff discuss the human effects of economic and social inequality.

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What is racism, really? And how do we end it?

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We all know that racism is a HUGE problem around the world. But have you ever thought critically about where racism comes from & how it differs from culture to culture? Drawing on lessons from hundreds of interviews, Brother Jeff offers 4 steps to get from racism to eracism in your own life.

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Positive relationships between parents and children: why they're important

Children learn and develop best when they have strong, loving, positive relationships with parents and other carers.

That's because positive relationships with parents and carers help children learn about the world - whether the world is safe and secure, whether they're loved, who loves them, what happens when they cry, laugh or make a face, and much more.

You can build a positive relationship with your child by:

being in the moment with your child

spending quality time with your child

creating a caring environment of trust and respect.

There's no formula for getting your parent-child relationship right. But if your relationship with your child is built on warm, loving and responsive interactions most of the time, your child will feel loved, safe and secure.

Being in the moment: why it's good for parent-child relationships

Being in the moment is about tuning in and thinking about what's going on with your child. It shows your child that you care about the things that matter to them, which is the basis for a strong relationship.

Here are ideas for being in the moment with your child:

Show acceptance, let your child be, and try not to give directions all the time. If your child wants to pretend the building blocks are people, that's OK. You don't have to get your child to use them the 'right' way.

Notice what your child is doing and encourage it without judgment. For example, 'Are the big blue blocks the shopkeepers? And is the little red block going shopping?'

Listen to your child and tune in to their feelings. For example, if your child is telling you a long story about what happened during the day, they might really be saying that they had a happy day.

Stop and think about what your child's behaviour is telling you. For example, if your teenage child is hanging around in the kitchen but not talking much, they might just want to be close to you. You could offer a hug or let them help with dinner, without needing to talk.

Part of being in the moment with your child is giving your child opportunities to take the lead. For example:

Let your child lead play by watching your child and responding to what your child says or does. This is great for younger children.

Support your child's ideas. For example, if your older child decides to plan a family meal, why not say yes?

When your child expresses an opinion, use this to learn more about your child's thoughts and feelings, even if they're different from yours.

Repeating or rephrasing your child's words, smiling and making eye contact tells your child you're paying attention when you're talking or spending time together. These expressions of warmth and interest help your child feel secure and build confidence.

'Quality time': why it's important in positive relationships

Positive relationships between you and your child are built on quality time. Time together is how you get to know about each other's experiences, thoughts, feelings and changing interests. This shows that you value and appreciate your child, which is great for your relationship.

Quality time can happen anytime and anywhere, in the middle of ordinary days and situations. It can be a laugh when you're bathing your toddler or a conversation in the car on the way to basketball with your teenage child. These moments give you the chance to communicate positive messages with smiles, laughter, eye contact, hugs and gentle touches.

You can make the most of time together by minimising disruptions and distractions. This can be as easy as putting away your phone or work. It helps your child know that you're keen to spend uninterrupted time with them.

There might be times in your family life when it's not possible to have a lot of time with your child every day. But planning some regular one-on-one time with your child can help you make the time count.

Your child learns and develops through spending time and interacting with you and other carers. For example, the time you spend talking with your child in the first 3 years of life helps your child learn language.

Trust and respect: how to nurture it in positive relationships

Trust and respect are essential to a positive parent-child relationship.

In the early years with your baby, developing trust is important. Your baby will feel secure when they learn they can trust you and other main carers to meet their needs. This sense of safety and security gives your child confidence to explore the world.

Trust and respect become more mutual as your child gets older.

You can nurture trust and respect in your relationship. For example:

Be available when your child needs support, care or help. This might be picking up your toddler when they fall or picking up your teenage child when they call you after a party. This helps your child learn to trust that you'll be there when they need you.

Stick to your promises, so your child learns to trust what you say. For example, if you promise that you'll go to a school activity, do everything you can to get there.

Get to know your child and value them for who they are. If your child loves football, cheer on your child or ask about the best players. Showing respect for your child's feelings and opinions encourages your child to keep sharing them with you.

When your child expresses different opinions from yours, listen without judging or getting upset. This sends the message that you'll listen and help your child with difficult issues in the future.

Allow the relationship to evolve as your child develops, and your child's needs and interests change. For example, your pre-teen child might no longer want you around at the park with their friends, even though your child used to love playing there with you.

Set up some firm but fair family rules. Rules are clear statements about how your family wants to treat its members. They can help your child trust that you'll treat them fairly and consistently.

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Positive relationships for parents and children: how to build them

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Positive relationships between parents and children are key to child development. These relationships are about being in the moment, quality time and trust.

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Restrictions on women's rights, freedom of the media and freedom of expression increased exponentially. Institutions designed to support human rights were severely limited or shut down completely. Peaceful protesters faced arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearance. The Taliban conducted extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and unlawful detention of perceived opponents with impunity, creating an atmosphere of fear. Extreme poverty increased, exacerbated by drought and other natural disasters. Public executions and floggings were used as punishment for crimes such as murder, theft, "illegitimate" relationships or violating social norms. Women's rights continued to be attacked, and women's participation in public life was severely limited. Afghanistan was the only country in the world where girls were banned from attending secondary school. Almost all institutions set up to address gender-based violence under the former government were shut down by the Taliban.

Background

Already a poor country, Afghanistan plunged deeper into poverty due to its international isolation and the economic upheaval brought on by the Taliban takeover in 2021. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 97% of Afghans were living in poverty, up from 47% in 2020. The lack of social protections led families to resort to measures including child marriage and the selling of organs. The level of humanitarian assistance did not meet the population's needs. The economy continued to be seriously hampered by the freezing of Afghan foreign reserves and the cutting of development assistance, steps taken by the international community following the Taliban takeover. The aid received by Afghanistan in 2022 was mostly humanitarian assistance, aimed at preventing starvation, but not contributing to other social needs. As a result, access to healthcare, employment and education continued to suffer. The exodus of doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and government officials left those sectors severely under-resourced.

The increasing humanitarian crisis was made worse by drought, flash flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters, some exacerbated by climate change.

The Taliban Supreme Leader ordered the Taliban judges to impose sharia law - Islamic law - in November, and thereafter public executions and floggings began.

Extrajudicial executions

Under the Taliban, extrajudicial executions of people associated with the former government, members of armed groups such as the National Resistance Front (NRF), Islamic State of Khorasan Province (IS-KP) and those allegedly not following the Taliban's rules appeared to be widespread and systematic. This included Afghans associated with the former government or former security forces. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded at least 237 extrajudicial executions between the Taliban takeover on 15 August 2021 and 15 June 2022. In December, the UN reported at least another 69 extrajudicial killings primarily of NRF members, 48 of of which had occurred between 12 and 14 September in Panjshir province.

In one incident in Ghor province on 26 June, the Taliban attacked the home of a man associated with the former government, killing six Shia Hazaras: four men, a woman and a girl. Three of the men killed were members of the former anti-Taliban groups known as the People's Uprising. Following the extrajudicial killings the Taliban claimed that they were rebels, despite the fact that all those killed were civilians. In September, fresh videos and pictures of extrajudicial killings by the Taliban of people associated with the NRF in Panjshir province appeared on social media. The attacks clearly constituted a war crime. The Taliban Ministry of Defence announced an investigation into the incident, but no findings were made public. Media reported that civilians in the area were evicted and their homes taken over to be used as police and military installations. The Taliban authorities also tortured to death civilians in Panjshir province, according to media reports. On 6 September the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation in Afghanistan reported on executions of captured fighters in Balkhab district of Sar-I-Pul Province.

Impunity prevailed for such crimes under the Taliban. There were no proper or transparent investigations into extrajudicial executions or other gross human rights violations. Taliban officials continued to deny that such violations had occurred and rejected the findings of NGOs including Amnesty International.

Death penalty, torture, and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment

The Taliban began publicly executing and flogging people for crimes such as murder, theft, "illegitimate" relationships or violations of social norms. Between 18 November and 16 December, more than 100 people were publicly flogged in stadiums in several provinces, according to UN human rights experts.

In December, the Taliban authorities carried out their first public execution in Farah province in the presence of senior Taliban officials including the deputy prime minister, ministers and the chief justice.

Freedom of expression, association and assembly

The space for free media shrank drastically as the Taliban created an increasingly intimidating environment, forcing many media outlets to close. Journalists faced growing restrictions including arbitrary arrest, unlawful detentions and torture in response to reporting that criticized the Taliban, leading many to self-censor. Journalists were beaten and faced other forms of torture while detained. Many journalists fled the country. Women television reporters were forced to almost completely cover their faces.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), the national human rights institution, remained closed, and the space for civil society organizations to document and report on human rights shrank significantly. Independent human rights groups were unable to work freely. The Taliban arrested and unlawfully detained those who criticized the Taliban on social media, particularly Facebook.

The Taliban dismantled any space for peaceful assembly, demonstration or gathering. Taliban police used excessive and unnecessary force against demonstrators, and peaceful protesters were arbitrary arrested, detained, tortured and forcibly disappeared. Detained protesters faced physical and psychological torture. Family members prevented female relatives from protesting out of fear of repercussions, further shrinking the space for freedom of assembly.

Women's and girls' rights

The Taliban shut down the Ministry of Women's Affairs (MoWA) and replaced it with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which issued restrictive and abusive decrees on women's and girls' rights. Women who protested against these restrictions were met with unlawful detention and violence.

Girls remained barred from attending secondary school, and from December, from tertiary education. Previously, women attending universities were required to learn in gender-segregated classrooms wearing head-to-toe coverings, among other restrictions. They faced difficulties registering for classes and the national university entrance exam and, in some instances, were denied entrance to university buildings, making higher education almost inaccessible. Women were also barred from studying certain subjects. By the end of the year, women and girls were only permitted to attend primary schools.

Women and girls were increasingly prevented from freely accessing other public spaces through various measures. The Taliban imposed a dress code, required women to have a chaperone ( mahram) to accompany them in public, and banned women and girls from public parks. In August, the media reported that 60 women university students were denied the right to leave Afghanistan because they did not have a mahram. These rules were arbitrarily and randomly enforced and many women chose not to travel alone as a result.

The Taliban announced that male relatives would be responsible for any violations of the restrictions by women and girls in their families. This led to family members restricting the rights of female relatives out of fear of reprisals by the Taliban authorities. The Taliban cracked down on women who protested against these restrictions publicly or on social media, including through beatings, arrests, unlawful detention and arrests of family members. Some of the women arrested, including those fleeing abuses, were charged with a vague and ambiguous "crime" of "moral corruption". However, following the Taliban takeover the applicability of previously existing laws remained mostly unclear as the Taliban publicly enforced their narrow and restrictive understanding of the sharia laws in the country. While protests continued throughout the year, they were increasingly met with resistance from Taliban police who blocked the way of protesters and arrested journalists attempting to cover the protests.

The dismantling of former government structures, including the MoWA and the AIHRC, and the conversion of the judicial system into the religious-based sharia system, reduced the protections previously available to women and girls. This led to an increase in reports of domestic violence and forced marriages. There was no reliable mechanism to which women victims of domestic violence could turn. Courts and prosecution units that were previously responsible for investigating and adjudicating cases of gender-based violence remained shut. The Taliban authorities and community-level dispute resolution mechanisms both punished women for reporting domestic violence.

The Taliban additionally barred women and girls from working with NGOs in December. This and other Taliban restrictions on women's rights to work outside the home hugely affected women's livelihoods - in particular households where they are the sole breadwinners - at a time of increasing national food insecurity.

Unlawful attacks and killings

Between August 2021 and June 2022, UNAMA recorded 2,106 civilian casualties. Many were people killed by the IS-KP, which continued to carry out systematic and targeted attacks on minority ethnic and religious groups, including by bombing religious and educational centres and attacking public transportation taken by these groups. Such instances included an attack on a Sikh temple in the capital, Kabul, on 18 June and the bombing of an education centre in a primarily Hazara neighbourhood on 30 September. The latter killed at least 52 teenagers, mostly girls. The Taliban authorities failed to investigate these attacks or take adequate steps to protect minorities. Instead, in some instances, the Taliban removed existing security measures set up under the former government to protect these minority groups. This included removing guards protecting sites likely to be targeted, exposing them to further risk of attack.

In areas of ongoing armed resistance against the Taliban - particularly in the provinces of Panjshir, Baghlan, Badakhshan and Sari Pul - civilians continued to face death, arbitrary arrest, torture and restricted movement enforced by local Taliban authorities. Locals also reported that the Taliban carried out forced evictions in these areas, particularly in Panjshir.

Right to health

The government takeover by the Taliban continued to be deeply damaging to the country's healthcare system. The Taliban policy on women healthcare workers remained ambiguous and inconsistent. Because of requirements that women travel with a mahram, as well as fears of Taliban reprisals against women and the large numbers of educated women who fled the country, the healthcare sector faced a serious depletion in human resources. This was particularly challenging in rural areas where health resources were already limited under the previous government. The freezing of most international aid, which had been largely responsible for supporting healthcare before 2021, left hospitals and health clinics with limited resources or staff, contributing to a widespread inability to access healthcare.

Refugees and internally displaced people

Large numbers of Afghans continued to flee the country due to a well-founded fear of persecution by the Taliban. Despite the dangers they were subject to in Afghanistan, other countries continued to deport Afghan refugees and asylum seekers. Some fleeing Afghans were shot dead, denied the right to apply for asylum, faced pushbacks on the border, or met with other violations and exploitation by the authorities of the countries in which they sought refuge.

At the beginning of the year, 3.8 million people were internally displaced in Afghanistan, living in precarious circumstances with limited ability to access their human rights. The Norwegian Refugee Council reported that the Taliban forcibly evicted some of these internally displaced people from urban areas and forced them to return to their villages of origin, where they faced extreme poverty and an inability to sustain themselves.

LGBTI people's rights

LGBTI people in Afghanistan continued to face grave human rights violations perpetrated by the Taliban, including threats, targeted attacks, sexual assaults, arbitrary detentions and other violations. Many LGBTI people remained fearful that past discriminatory practices by the Taliban would resurface. These historically included punishing those believed to be engaging in same-sex relations with death. Many LGBTI people remained in hiding, fearing a risk to their lives.

The Taliban governance structure lacked justice, truth or reparation for crimes under international law or human rights violations. Courts and prosecutors did not investigate extrajudicial executions or prosecute those committing other human rights violations. The independence of the judicial system was severely damaged by the Taliban replacing judges and courts with their own systems of justice.

In October, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber authorized the ICC Prosecutor to resume its investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. In its decision, the Court stressed that such an investigation should be with regard "to all alleged crimes and actors", including "members of armed forces or security and intelligence services of non-States parties", in contrast to the Prosecutor's prior decision to focus his attention on crimes committed only by the Taliban and IS-KP.

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Stay up to date on the state of human rights in Afghanistan with the latest research, campaigns and education material from Amnesty International.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHpPtdk9rco

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Racism fueled Nazi ideology and policies. The Nazis viewed the world as being divided up into competing inferior and superior races, each struggling for survival and dominance. They believed the Jews were not a religious denomination, but a dangerous non-European "race." Nazi racism would produce murder on an unprecedented scale.

1
Racists believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior. In the early twentieth-century, such views on race were widely accepted in many parts of the world. In fact, race is not biologically based, it is a cultural classification of groups.

2
According to Nazi theories of race, Germans and other Europeans had perceived superior physical and mental traits. They considered European peoples to be "Aryans," descended from the ancient Indo-Europeans who settled throughout the European continent as well as in Iran and India.

3
Racial antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false scientific theories. This aspect of racism was always an integral part of Nazism.

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Racists are people who believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior.

The doctrine of racism asserts that blood determines national-ethnic identity. Within a racist framework, the value of a human being is not determined by his or her individuality, but instead by membership in a so-called "racial collective nation." Many intellectuals, including scientists, have lent pseudoscientific support to racist thinking. Nineteenth century racist thinkers, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, exerted a significant influence on many in Adolf Hitler's generation.

Racism, including racial antisemitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false biological theories), was always an integral part of German National Socialism (Nazism).

The Nazis perceived all of human history as the history of a biologically determined struggle among people of different races. The Nazis held that political movements such as Marxism, communism, pacifism, and internationalism were anti-nationalist and reflected a dangerous, racially based Jewish intellectualism.

In 1931, the SS ( Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of the Nazi state) established a Race and Settlement Office to conduct race "research" and to determine the suitability of potential spouses for members of the SS. After the Nazis came to power, they passed the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935, which codified a supposedly biological definition of Jewishness.

Nazi racists viewed the mentally and physically ill as blemishes upon the genetic landscape of the so-called master race and, when they reproduced, as a biological danger to the purity of the Aryan race. After careful planning and data collection during the last six months of 1939, German physicians began to murder disabled residents of institutions throughout Germany in an operation that they euphemistically called "euthanasia".

According to Nazi theories of race, Germans and other northern Europeans were "Aryans," a superior race. During World War II, Nazi physicians conducted bogus medical experiments seeking to identify physical evidence of Aryan superiority and non-Aryan inferiority. Despite killing countless non-Aryan prisoners in the course of these experiments, the Nazis could not find any evidence for their theories of biological racial differences among human beings.

Once in power, the Nazis implemented racial laws and policies that deprived Jews, Black people, and Roma (Gypsies) of their rights. During World War II, the Nazi leadership set about what they referred to as an "ethnic housecleaning" in the occupied Eastern territories of Poland and the Soviet Union. This policy included the murder and annihilation of so-called enemy "races," including the genocide of European Jews and the destruction of the leadership of the Slavic peoples.

Nazi racism produced murder on an unprecedented scale.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Discussion Questions

See Also

Related Links

Series: Victims of the Nazi Era

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Nazi Racism Victims of the Nazi Era

Critical Thinking Questions

Despite overwhelming scientific data to the contrary, many people still believe in the superiority of certain races. Why might individuals hold onto a belief that has been discredited?

How can racism keep a party or political group in power?

What information do racists use to justify their beliefs? Jewish people are not a racial group, and yet the Nazis and others believed Jews were a racial, existential threat. How can radical beliefs, like these, be challenged and countered?

How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity in the world?

Further Reading

Back, Les, and John Solomos, editors. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2000.

Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Hutton, Christopher M. Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology, and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.

Mosse, George L. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. London: Thames Methuen, 1991.

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We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Learn more about Nazi racism and racial antisemitism. These prejudices were at the core of Nazi ideology, policies, and practices. They led to murder on a mass scale.

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Racial Stereotyping | Emilia Espinosa | TEDxYouth@TFIS

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Child Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2021 Jan 1.

Published in final edited form as:

Abstract

Although many immigrant children to the U.S. arrive with their parents, a notable proportion are first separated and later reunited with their parents. How do the experiences of separation and reunification shape the well-being of immigrant children? Data were from a national survey of legal adult immigrants and their families, the New Immigrant Survey from 2003-2004 (for academic achievement, age 6-12, N=876; for psychosocial well-being, age 6-17, N=1,084). Results indicated that immigrant children who were once separated from their parents exhibited poorer literacy and higher risk of emotional and behavioral problems than those who migrated with parents. A protracted period of separation and previous undocumented status of parents amplified the disadvantages experienced by these children.

Children of immigrants, comprised of immigrant children (i.e., foreign-born children of immigrants) and US-born children of immigrants (i.e., the second generation), are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population. Between 1994 and 2014, the growth of total U.S. child population was almost entirely driven by the growth of children of immigrants; by the 2014, they comprised 25% of U.S. children ( Child Trends, 2014). Furthermore, 57% of Hispanic and 91% of Asian children came from immigrant families in 2014 ( Kid Count Data Center 2017).

Immigrant children accounted for about one fourth of children of immigrants ( Child Trends, 2014). Despite their lower SES status, minority background, and experience of acculturation stress, immigrant children often do as well as or exceed native-born children in many dimensions of child development ( Driscoll, Russell, & Crockett, 2008; Hirschman, 2001; Kao 2004; Washbrook, Waldfogel, Bradbury, Corak, & Ghanghro, 2012).

One underexplored area of research includes the diverse experience of immigrant children. Traditionally immigrant children studied are those who arrive with their immigrant parents. However, as legal restrictions tighten and the costs of immigration continue to rise, immigration increasingly takes place in a serial fashion, with one or a few family members migrating first, later followed by others. In this process, children are often the last to move abroad ( Orellana, Thorne, Chee, & Lam, 2001). As a result, a notable proportion of immigrant children endure a period of parent-child separation before reuniting with parents ( Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002; Yoshikawa, 2011).

The present study contributes to a more complete appraisal of immigrant children's development by distinguishing immigrant children who arrive with their parents and those who experience separation and reunification. Using a national sample of immigrants collected in 2003 to 2004, we examined (1) the prevalence of immigrant children who encountered family separation; (2) differences in a range of developmental outcomes among those children who were and were not separated from their parents; and (3) for children who were separated and reunited with parents, the potential moderating effect of duration of separation, the legal status history of immigrant parents, and the children's sex and age at migration.

Drawing on perspectives from family reorganization theory and attachment theory, we proposed a conceptual framework for understanding the distinct challenges facing immigrant children who come with immigrant parents compared to those who are separated and later join their parents. For children migrating with their parents, the process of uprooting and adapting to new social, linguistic, and cultural environments results in disorientation and acculturation stress for both parents and children ( Pumariega & Rothe, 2010; Sciarra, 1999). Family separation and subsequent reunion may heighten such experiences, well beyond those typically faced by immigrant children in general. This further complicates children's adjustment to their families, schools, and communities in the host society.

Little research compares the well-being of immigrant children who undergo family separation and those migrating with parents. Most existing research is based on clinical and qualitative studies of small samples or included only children who sought medical assistance ( Adams, 2000; Falicov, 2007; Lashley, 2000). A few notable exceptions exist. Suárez-Orozco and colleagues ( Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002; Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim, 2011) used a survey of about 400 immigrant children in middle childhood and adolescence who had immigrated to two U.S. cities (San Francisco and Boston) from a few selected countries and regions (China, Central America, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico). The study found that immigrant children who were once separated from their parents were more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who had not experienced separation. This was especially true in the initial years after reunification. Gindling and Poggio (2012) used national data to examine the educational success of immigrant children (aged 6-18) and found that children once separated from parents were more likely to lag behind in school.

Our research extends these studies by focusing on a wider array of developmental outcomes (academic achievement, psychosocial well-being, and health) for a broad age spectrum of immigrant children using national data. Rigorous statistical techniques were used to obtain more accurate estimates of the impact of family separation and reunification on immigrant children. Several moderating mechanisms were examined to understand conditions that amplify or mitigate the challenges facing immigrant children who were separated from parents.

Separation and Reunification with Immigrant Parents and Child Development

Family systems perspectives, family reorganization and attachment theory are each relevant to children's separation and reunification with their parents. The family systems perspective views family as comprised of subsystems (e.g., parent-child, marital, sibling) that are embedded within larger systems ( Cabrera et al., 2011; Cox & Paley, 1997). Each family member is part of an interactional, interdependent system in which the behavior of each individual or subsystem modifies that of other subsystems. In this view, family reorganization, such as separation and reunification, triggers change at multiple levels of the family system and creates adaptive challenges for all family members ( Hetherington, 1992).

Family systems and reorganization have mostly been studied during divorce and remarriage ( Fomby & Osborne, 2017; Hetherington, 1992), but are also relevant when children are left behind by parents to circumvent the costs and uncertainty of migration and rejoin parents when parents establish some stability in destination societies ( Nobles, 2013). In this process, children experience two sets of family reorganizations: first as they are separated from migrant parents, and second as they reunite with parents while separating from caregivers back home. These alterations lead to changes in family functioning and in multiple relationships-- children and parents, children and other caregivers, parents and other caregivers-- which creates disequilibrium and disruptions in child development. Reorganizations also result in family instability, which in turn is adversely associated with children's development ( Wu & Martinson, 1993; Sweeney, 2010). Various types of transitions can lead to instability, including parent and other family member's moves in and out of the household ( Mitchell et al., 2015). Separation and reunification from parents is typically not investigated but, as we contend, can lead to a high level of instability as children experience transitions in both family configuration and residence.

Attachment theory highlights the importance of children's attachment to parents and the immediate and long-term negative consequences associated with parent-child separation ( Bowlby, 2010; Cassidy & Shaver, 2016). During parent-child separation following migration, children experience disruptions in their attachment figures, which can trigger intense emotional and behavioral distress, even if children are cared for by others ( Ainsworth, 1982; Dreby, 2010). There is an "attachment hierarchy" ( Ainsworth, 1982): although children may have multiple attachment figures, these are not interchangeable. As such, other attachment figures may not easily compensate for the loss of the principal attachment figures (most often parents). In the context of parental out-migration, children are likely to experience weakened affectional bonds with their parents and problems in emotion regulation. These children may express heightened insecurity and feelings of anxiety, anger, and sadness ( Kobak & Madsen, 2008).

Moreover, family separation necessarily leads to disruptions in parenting, reducing both the quality and quantity of parental input and supervision critical for child development ( Dreby, 2010; Graham & Jordan, 2011; Parreñas, 2005; Toyota, Yeoh & Nguyen, 2007). These disruptions include the lack of parental cognitive stimulation such as involvement in children's learning and help with homework (Ensor & Hughes 2008), as well as supervision for emotional and behavioral regulation ( Galambos et al., 2003; Pettit et al., 2001). Parental migration also results in the absence of traditional authority figures and the likelihood of a breakdown of essential social control in the household ( Parreñas, 2005). When both parents migrate, children are left in the care of grandparents or other relatives. These extended family members can play an important role in family functioning, but they do not fully substitute for parents ( Smeekens et al., 2012). Alternative caregivers may not be as engaged in child rearing as children's biological parents, provide the same standards of care, or create the same enriching home environment.

In the face of migration, the remaining caregivers, whether a parent or extended family member, do not just face additional household responsibilities from childcare and home maintenance; they also bear the social and emotional costs of family reorganization associated with the migration of their loved ones ( Lu, 2012). These physical and psychological burdens may impose heightened distress and time constraints on the remaining caregivers. Under these challenges, remaining caregivers may show lower levels of warmth and support and may be more punitive in their interactions with children ( Yeung, Linver, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). Exposure to such rearing practices undermines the social and psychological well-being of the children. The impaired psychological functioning of the caregivers may be inadvertently transferred to children, giving rise to emotional instability and depression ( Hammen et al., 2012).

Family reorganization experiences earlier in life shape children's ability to adapt to later family reorganization ( Hetherington, 1992). In this respect, the detrimental ramifications of separation for children can carry long-term consequences, even after left-behind children join their migrant parents. Specifically, the weakened parent-child attachment and heightened distress resulting from family separation create a difficult path to restabilization of family relationships and functioning, particularly when children form close attachments with alternative caregivers ( Falicov, 2007). Reunification activates a reparative process to restore the attachment bond and rebuild family relationships. This process can be fraught with stress for both the parents and children as they negotiate their new lives together ( Landolt & Da, 2005). Qualitative evidence shows that children in reunified families often experience tensions, conflicts, disorientation, or withdrawal ( Falicov, 2007; Lashley, 2000; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2002). They miss the caregivers in the home country and re-experience the grief of loss. For parents, disciplining children with whom they have spent little time presents a serious challenge. The difficulties are exacerbated if family reorganization involves a new family constellation, such as stepparents or new siblings. Surely we should not lose sight of the joy and renewed intimacy that family reunification brings, and the fact that for many families, the process is successful. But the heightened stress children experience during separation and reunification, beyond the typical life stressors all immigrant children encounter, can have an adverse effect on their development.

The processes discussed above are summarized in Figure 1 . Taken together, immigrant children who experience family reorganizations (i.e., separation and reunification) are likely to experience multiple sources of stress and greater adjustment difficulties than those who migrated with their parents. This leads us to expect immigrant children once separated from parents to fare worse in academic and psychosocial outcomes than their counterparts (Hypothesis 1).

The impact of separation and reunification varies by the dimension of child development. The effect may be especially detrimental in developmental areas that closely hinge on familial social environment and non-material resources ( Yeung et al., 2002), such as psychosocial well-being (Hypothesis 1a). These areas are most severely disrupted during separation and most difficult to mend after reunification. When it comes to children's educational and health outcomes, the impact of separation may be less adverse because these areas are closely tied to family economic resources ( Paxson & Schady, 2007; Yeung et al., 2002). Post-migration transition in these areas may be easier for children moving to join parents. Children are brought to reunite with parents usually when immigrant parents are economically stable. These children may thus live in better off families and may receive greater parental support in navigating the new country than children who arrive as a family unit. These conditions may offset some of the negative repercussions of family separation during migration.

The changing family process after migration tends to vary by which parent(s) is absent. Literature on child development demonstrates that children are more adversely affected by maternal absence than by paternal absence, reflecting the traditional role of mothers as primary caregivers and principal attachment figures ( Brooks-Gunn, Han, & Waldfogel, 2002). In this respect, a mother's migration is likely to pose a greater social and emotional hardship than the out-migration of fathers (Yeoh & Lam, 2006). It follows that children left behind with no parent may endure the greatest disruptions in parenting practices and be most adversely affected (Hypothesis 1b). This scenario entails the most discontinuity in family arrangements, as neither parent is available to continue their roles as caregivers.

Moderating Mechanisms

Children's responses to family reorganization may vary depending on the circumstances surrounding separation and reunification, as well as their personal characteristics. We explored several moderating factors. First is the length of reunification--are immigrant families capable of mending the trauma to children caused by years apart in the relatively short term? On the one hand, the period immediately after reunion can be particularly challenging as children begin to rebuild their relationship with parents. The negative ramifications of separation diminish over time as family roles reestablish and parents and children regain close relationships. On the other hand, the reverse could be true, in which time does not fully repair rifts in parent-child relationships. This results in the continuation of initial difficulties and negative cycles long after parents and children are reunited. Overall, we expect the negative impact to subside over time, especially with respect to areas less adversely affected by family separation (e.g., health and education); for psychosocial development, the recovery could take longer (Hypothesis 2a).

The length of separation could be an important factor shaping children's well-being after reunion. Although families commonly expect to reunite within a short period of time, financial or legal obstacles often prolong the separation. Longer separation entails a protracted loss of attachment figures and disrupted parenting, making children more vulnerable to adjustment difficulties and persistent psychosocial problems. It also results in a more estranged parent-child relationship and greater reorientation challenges after reunion (Smith, Lalonde, & Johnson, 2004). We thus expect children who experience longer separations from their parents to be more likely to report psychosocial problems and academic difficulties (Hypothesis 2b).

The experience of immigrant parents may also shape the impact of separation on children. In the U.S., legality represents an important aspect of the immigration experience. Undocumented immigrants, who are under tremendous stress arising from employment uncertainties and illegal status, are less able to maintain contact and provide support to left-behind children; they also face constraints on their physical mobility and are blocked from making regular return visits ( Menjívar, 2006). Hence, it is likely that undocumented immigrants are away for protracted periods without seeing or having regular communication with their children. Their precarious socioeconomic conditions often relegate them to insecure and low-paying jobs, making them less capable of providing stable remittances to offset the negative effects of family separation ( Capps, Bachmeier, Fix, & Van Hook, 2013). Taken together, these conditions lead to greater disruptions in parenting and economic support during separation. We expect that among children once separated from parents, those whose parents were undocumented during separation face the most challenges in development (Hypothesis 2c).

Children's personal characteristics may matter. Here we do not offer specific hypotheses because the relation is less clear-cut. Previous research on family reorganization highlights vulnerability facing children of both sexes and various age groups, though this may manifest in different ways ( Hetherington, 1992). Children's age at migration is potentially associated with the likelihood of successful adjustment. On the one hand, some research shows that parental deprivation in early and middle childhood produces more deleterious impacts than in late childhood and adolescence ( Ermisch & Francesconi, 2001). This may be because younger children are more attached to parents and more dependent on resources within their own family. Young children are likely to interpret separation from parents as a complete loss of parents' love and protection. Some young children have little memory of their parents and can experience emotional withdrawal from migrant parents after reunion. In contrast, older children have greater personal and extra-familial resources for coping with their parents' absence. They may better appreciate parents' sacrifice in taking the journey. Thus, young children may face more psychosocial difficulties, which hampers successful reunification and long-term well-being.

On the other hand, older children face distinct challenges specific to their development stage, making adaptation after family reorganization especially difficult. Older children seek autonomy from parents and are more defiant of parents' authority ( Schapiro, 2002). This can create significant strains in parent-child relationships after reunion, adding an additional level of stress to the adjustment process ( Dreby, 2010). In contrast, younger children are better able to become reattached to migrant parents and adapt to family reorganization. Also, language and cultural acquisition is typically easier for younger than for older children ( Bleakley & Chin, 2010). Some suggest that the best time to acquire a new language is before puberty ( Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978). The same holds for adjusting to a new school system and establishing new relationships with peers ( Clarke, 2016). In this respect, older children may experience greater stressors, particularly in adapting to schools.

Children's sex can be a moderator considering the distinct role of gender in the socialization and adaptation process, including gender-specific affective and behavioral responses to stress incurred during family disruptions. Previous research on the effect of parental divorce shows that boys show more intense and enduring problems in response to family disruptions than girls ( Allison & Furstenberg, 1989). With a lack of adequate supervision and strained relationship with parents, boys are more likely to show social and behavioral problems; furthermore, they tend to act out, thus more prone to externalizing behavioral problems ( Bertrand & Pan, 2013). Girls, in contrast, are more likely to show protective psychosocial qualities that foster their resilience to family discontinuities. When girls develop reactions to family disruptions, they tend to internalize problems ( Leadbeater, Kuperminc, Blatt, & Hertzog, 1999), which may manifest in difficulties in learning.

METHOD

Data

This study used data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), a survey of new legal immigrants and their families in the United States ( Jasso, Massey, Rosenzweig, & Smith, 2005). The NIS is based on a nationally representative sample of the administrative records of adult immigrants (aged 18 and older) who were newly admitted to legal permanent residence between May and November 2003 (a 4% sample of all who received permanent residency during the period). The administrative records were compiled by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Data collection was carried out between June 2003 and July 2004. The response rate for the survey was around 70%, yielding a sample of 8,573 immigrant families ( Jasso et al., 2005). The sample included both new arrivals to the U.S. (48.7%) and those who had adjusted their immigration status (adjustees) while in the U.S (51.3%). The immigrants came from a wide range of sending countries and spanned 44 states in the U.S. All respondents were interviewed in the language of their choice (a total of 95 languages). Information on the spouse (if applicable) and co-resident children (up to 2 randomly selected children of the sample adults aged 6-17) was included.

Children's psychosocial well-being and health was reported by parents, usually the mother if she was at the interview. The sample size of children (age 6-17) was 1,084 (from 816 families). Academic achievement was assessed through the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Tests. By design, the achievement tests were administered to all children aged 3-12 in the household, yielding a sample of 876 children (from 681 families). We conducted sensitivity analyses restricting the analyses of psychosocial well-being and health to the same age range as academic performance (age 6-12). The results were consistent. We thus present results based on the full sample (age 6-17) that offers sufficient sample size for disaggregated analyses.

The NIS provides a unique research opportunity because it is the first national study of immigrants with information on the timing of arrival for adult immigrants and their children. This allowed us to compare immigrant children who came to the U.S. as a family unit and those who were separated and later joined their immigrant parents. Note that the NIS was restricted to legal immigrants and the findings are thus generalizable only to children of legal immigrants. But the information is still useful because children often reunite with parents after their parents obtain legal status. In this respect, undocumented immigrants, which were not included in our sample, are less relevant to the research questions. Between 2007 and 2009, a follow-up survey of the original NIS sample was conducted. We did not use the second wave because only a small proportion of children in the original sample was re-interviewed, leading to a small sample size.

Biological children of adult immigrants who were born outside the U.S. were included in the analysis. Adopted and step children (2.6% of the child sample) were excluded. US-born children to immigrant parents (i.e., the second generation) were excluded from the main analyses (but were included in additional analyses). About 8% of children were from refugee families. We conducted additional analyses restricting the sample to non-refugee children, which led to similar results ( Appendix A in online supplement).

Outcome Variables

Academic achievement was assessed for children aged 6 to 12 with Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Tests (WJ-III version Form A; Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). Four tests were given to children: Applied Problems, Letter-Word Identification, Passage Comprehension and Calculation). We studied all 4 tests and restricted the sample to children aged 6-12 who participated in all tests. Population-normed test scores were used (calculated using a procedure that combines features of both area and linear transformations of the distribution scores; McGrew, Woodcock, & Schrank, 2007; WJ Technical Manual).

Emotional and behavioral problems were assessed through parents' report on two questions: "During the past 12 months, has the child seen a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor about any behavioral, emotional or mental problem?" and "During the past 12 months, have you felt, or has anyone suggested, that the child needed help for any behavioral, emotional, or mental problem?". We constructed a dichotomous variable indicating if the answer was yes to either question. This variable reflected serious psychosocial malfunctioning that was evident and required medical attention. Child health was based on parents' report: "In general, would you say that the child's health is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?" We treated it as a dichotomous variable, with excellent or very good health coded as 1 and 0 otherwise.

Immigration Status Variables

The key predictor was children's immigration status, distinguishing children who experienced separation and reunion and those who immigrated with their parents. This variable was based on the year of arrival for parents and children. For immigrants who had multiple entries to the U.S., the year of the first immigration trip since the child was born was used and compared with the year the child first entered the U.S. This allowed us to capture any period of separation during a child's life. Children who entered the country a year or more after the parents were considered as having separated and reunited with parents. For the main analysis, we did not distinguish which parent(s) was separated from children due to migration because only a subset of the sample had information on both parents. We conducted additional analyses restricting the sample to children with information on both parents (77% of the children with achievement data and 62% of the children with psychosocial data). We distinguished children who were once separated from mothers only, fathers only, and both parents.

To examine the moderating mechanisms, we first differentiated children once separated from parents by their year since reunification (immigration). We used 2 years as the cutoff point because over half of immigrant children migrated within two years of the survey. We next distinguished immigrant children once separated from parents by duration of separation (for 0-2 years, 3-6 years, and more than 6 years; 6 years was the median duration of separation). We then disaggregated children once separated from parents by parents' previous documentation status--whether parents endured any period of undocumented status before obtaining permanent residency. The information was derived from adults' legal status history section in the NIS.

Covariates

The independent variables included the following: children's age (and age squared), gender, immigrant children's region of birth (Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia), family structure (in two-parent families, with only mother, or with only father), the number of siblings in the household, parents' education (the years of schooling of the better educated parent), parents' and children's length of residence since the first immigration, and home ownership (a measure of living standards, following earlier research using NIS; Jasso et al., 2005). Household income was not used, given large missing data (54%). We also controlled for region of the child's current residence (West, Midwest, Northeast, and South). In an additional analysis, we distinguished the state of residence of immigrant families and the results were consistent ( Appendix A).

An important determinant of children's language development is parents' English proficiency. Parents who have difficulty with English are less likely to help with children's learning and participate in literacy-related activities with their children ( Capps et al., 2013). A variable based on parents' listening and reading skills was constructed: "How well would you say you understand English when someone is speaking to you?"; and "How well would you say you speak English?". We reverse-coded the responses so that higher values indicate greater proficiency (Not at all (1), Not well (2), Well (3), to Very well (4)). We summed the scores from the two questions to create an overall scale. This variable was included in models predicting children's literacy test scores (Letter-Word Identification and Passage Comprehension). For the analysis of children's health, we also controlled for parents' self-rated health, which was a dichotomous variable with "1" indicating excellent or very good health, and 0 otherwise.

In the models of children's WJ test scores, we also controlled for the language of the test. In the NIS, children whose parents were from Spanish-speaking countries and whose first language was Spanish were randomly assigned to take either the English or Spanish test. The Spanish test was directly comparable to the English version ( Schrank, McGrew, Ruef, & Alvarado, 2005). Although a recent study found little bias of test language ( Akresh & Akresh, 2011), we included this variable to obtain more accurate results.

In general, the level of missing data was low. The variable with the highest level of missing data (6%) was that indicating whether the child was once separated from their migrant parents. We conducted complete case analysis by dropping 9% of the child sample that had missing data in any of the variables used in the analysis.

Analysis

We ran simultaneous equation models for achievement test scores, treating immigration status as the endogenous variable. This approach helped address potential selection bias, in which certain unobserved factors leading to parent-child separation during migration also affected children's development. If these factors negatively affected children's well-being, we would underestimate the effect of separation on children, and vice versa. In implementation, the simultaneous equation method estimated a system of equations via three-stage least squares (3SLS) to model the determinants and impacts of the endogenous variable ( Wooldridge, 2015). Specifically, we used a three-equation system, in which Letter-Word Identification and Calculation were jointly estimated with an equation predicting the endogenous variable--whether the child was once separated from his or her immigrant parent--based on an array of pre-migration characteristics of the immigrant parent (age, gender, year of education, employment status, and occupation). In a similar vein, the Passage Comprehension and Applied Problems were jointly estimated with an equation predicting the endogenous immigration status variable. The system of equations takes into account selection on unobserved variables by allowing for correlation of disturbances across equations. The models are identified when at least one exogenous exploratory variable, operating analogous to an instrumental variable, is excluded from one equation that appears with a nonzero coefficient in other equations ( Woodridge, 2015). In our analysis, parents' pre-migration characteristics were included in the model predicting children's migration status but excluded in the models predicting literacy and numeracy test scores; and parents' English proficiency was included in the model predicting literacy test scores but excluded in that of numeracy test scores.

For the analysis of children's psychosocial well-being and health, the outcome variables were dichotomous. Accordingly, bivariate probit models were estimated (an extension of simultaneous equations to binary outcomes). These models allow for two probit models with endogenous exploratory variables while accounting for correlated disturbances ( Greene, 2012). We included parents' self-reported health in the health equation as an instrumental variable to provide exogenous variation for identifying the model, under the assumption that parents' health directly affected children's health but had no independent impact on their psychosocial outcomes.

In the analysis, we first compared the outcomes of the two groups of immigrant children. We then conducted a series of additional analyses replacing the binary immigration status variable with more detailed categorical variables distinguishing different years since reunification, different durations of separation, and different documentation status history of parents. We next carried out separate analyses by children's sex and age at migration to examine these factors as potential moderators.

RESULTS

Descriptive Results

Descriptive statistics of immigration status variables and covariates are shown in Table 1 . Among immigrant children, namely those born outside the U.S., 22% were once separated from parents. We also obtained weighted statistics using the sample weight provided by the NIS, which provided a similar story (25%). Among children who were ever separated and reunited with their parents, about 53% experienced a separation of 6 years or less, with the remaining 47% enduring a separation of more than 6 years. Also, 30% of immigrant children who were separated had parents who were undocumented before legalization. Moreover, separation was most prevalent for immigrant children from Latin America (32%), followed by children from Africa (25%) and Asia (19%). Immigrants from Europe were most likely to migrate as a family.

Table 1.

Percentage or Mean

All Children
(N=876)

Children Reunited with Migrant Parents
(N=192)

Children Migrating with Parents
(N=684)

Immigration experience

By year since immigration (YSI)

By duration of separation

By parent's documentation status

Controls

Sending regions

Family structure

Region of residence

Additional analysis conducted on a smaller sample of children with migration history information for both parents showed that among children once separated from parents, the majority (62%) were separated from fathers only, followed by those separated from both parents (26%). Separation from mothers alone was least common (12%).

Children's outcomes are presented in Table 2 . Without controlling for differences in other characteristics, immigrant children who reunited with their migrant parents scored lower in Letter-Word Identification and Calculation, and higher in Passage Comprehension and Applied Problems, than immigrant children who migrated with parents. Relative to the small differences in other outcomes, there was a substantial gap in emotional and behavioral well-being: children reunited with parents were more than twice as likely to report psychosocial problems.

Table 2.

Percentage or Mean

All Children
(N=876)

Children Reunited with Migrant Parents
(N=192)

Children Migrating with Parents
(N=684)

Outcomes

Developmental Differences between Children Migrating with and Separated from Their Parents

Overall Differences

The regression results provide supportive evidence that immigrant children who were separated from their parents fared worse than their peers who arrived with parents (Hypothesis 1). Table 3 presents models predicting immigrant children's academic achievement. The simultaneous equation predicting children's immigration status is shown in Appendix B. Fathers, less educated parents, parents who were self-employed before migration, and parents who were not in managerial occupations were more likely to leave children behind during migration.

Table 3.

Letter Word Identification

Passage Comprehension

Calculation

Applied Problems

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents

−5.651*
(2.251)

−1.653
(2.021)

1.653
(1.842)

4.650⁺
(2.580)

Panel A: By separation from which parent(s) (N=674 for restricted sample)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents, separated from mother only

1.674
(4.188)

−2.208
(3.816)

−2.103
(3.287)

−4.329
(5.116)

Child reuniting with migrant parents, separated from both parents

−6.150⁺
(3.651)

0.615
(3.326)

1.630
(2.865)

1.457
(4.460)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents in 2+ years

−0.483
(2.900)

6.881***
(2.633)

3.878
(2.370)

12.964***
(3.382)

Panel C: By duration of separation (N=876)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents, years of separation 0~2 years

0.997
(3.126)

5.298*
(2.793)

5.473**
(2.594)

11.431***
(3.587)

Panel D: By parent's documentation status (N=873)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents (ref.=child migrating with parents)

−6.212*
(2.635)

−3.002
(2.366)

0.225
(2.170)

4.228
(3.147)

Child reuniting with migrant parents (ref.=child migrating with parents)

−7.356*
(3.267)

−3.878
(2.661)

−2.262
(2.528)

1.948
(3.518)

The first two columns in Table 3 show the literacy test results (Only the key independent variable is shown. The full table is presented in Appendix C). Children who reunited with parents scored lower in Letter-Word Identification than those migrating with parents. In Passage Comprehension, they also appeared to have lower scores but the difference was small and not significant. This result is consistent with previous research suggesting that literacy is a particularly challenging area for immigrant children from countries where the main language is not English ( Chiswick & Miller, 2001). In other academic subjects, immigrant children often perform on par with, if not better than, native-born children ( Kao, 2004). The difference in the two literacy tests warrants discussion. Letter-Word Identification constitutes an oral test, in which both vocabulary and pronunciation are evaluated. Passage Comprehension evaluates the child's understanding of what was read (silently). The worse outcomes in Letter-Word Identification of children reuniting with parents highlighted the challenges they faced in vocabulary and oral communication skills.

Results of the numeracy tests, presented in the last two columns of Table 3 , revealed a different pattern. Immigrant children once separated from parents appeared to fare slightly better in Calculation but the difference was non-significant. In Applied Problems, these children performed better than children who migrated with parents. This difference was marginally significant. This result pointed to their better problem solving skills in the area of numeracy.

Turning to Table 4 , results revealed a notable difference in psychosocial well-being between children who experienced family separation and those who did not (Only the key independent variable is shown. The full table is presented in Appendix D). The disadvantages in psychosocial well-being of children who were once separated from parents appeared stronger and more persistent than those in academic achievement (consistent with Hypothesis 1a). Specifically, these children were three times as likely to experience serious emotional or behavioral problems than their comparison group. There was no significant difference in physical health. Hence, the discussion below focuses on children's psychosocial well-being.

Table 4.

Emotional or behavioral problems

Excellent or very good health

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child reuniting with migrant parents

0.468*

0.074

Panel A: By separation from which parent(s) (N=674 for restricted sample)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Panel C: By duration of separation: at most 6 years vs. over 6 years (N=1,084)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Panel D: By parent's documentation status (N=1,081)

Child immigration experience (ref.=child migrating with parents)

Separation from Both Parents versus One Parent

Panel A in Table 3 differentiated children separated from fathers, mothers, and both parents. It suggests that children who were once separated from both parents were disadvantaged in letter word identification. The difference was marginally significant. There were no significant differences in the other literacy test. Children separated from fathers fared worse in Applied Problems. The difference was marginally significant.

Results from Panel A in Table 4 show that the psychosocial problems were most severe when children experienced separation from both parents. Separating from mothers also produced psychosocial costs, although the coefficient was marginally significant due to the reduced sample size. In contrast, separating from fathers alone did not significantly undermine children's psychosocial development. Overall, these results offer some preliminary support for Hypothesis 1b that immigrant children are most adversely affected when they experience separation from both parents. The difference was especially evident for children's psychosocial outcomes.

Moderating Factors

Results of the moderating factors are displayed from Panel B to F in Table ​Table3 3 and ​and4. 4 . The role of the length of reunification seems to depend on outcomes. Panel B ( Table 3 ) shows children's academic achievement by time since reunification (equivalent to year since immigration). As expected, in the short term after reunification (i.e., within two years), immigrant children who were once separated from parents fared poorly in both literacy tests. By comparison, children who reunited with parents were no longer disadvantaged in literacy several years after reunification. This group of children even outperformed their counterparts in Passage Comprehension. With respect to numeracy scores, immigrant children who reunited with parents enjoyed an advantage in Applied Problems after several years in the U.S. This advantage was not evident within the first two years of arrival. These results lend some support to Hypothesis 2a, which predicts improved outcomes over the course of reunification. This, however, was not the story for psychosocial outcomes (Panel B, Table 4 ). Behavioral and emotional problems were especially evident after two years of reunification. We discuss possible explanations below.

Duration of separation is a strong moderator, consistent with Hypothesis 2b. With respect to academic achievement, a shorter duration of separation was associated with better literacy and numeracy outcomes of immigrant children (Panel C, Table 3 ). Children who endured a relatively short period of separation (<=6 years, especially 0-2 years) were on par with children who migrated with parents in Letter-Word Identification and even outperformed the latter group in the other three tests. Among children who endured a short period of separation, 50% were separated from parents for 1 year or less, and 80% for three years or less. Thus, they endured limited disruptions. In contrast, a longer duration of separation conferred significant academic challenges on immigrant children. This was especially evident for the two literacy tests, which depended heavily on children's social environment. Similar to academic outcomes, children who had undergone a protracted period of separation reported higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems (Panel C, Table 4 ). Those experiencing a shorter separation (< 2 years) were not significantly worse off than children who arrived with parents.

Results, which were in line with Hypothesis 2c, suggested that undocumented status during migration conferred disadvantages on children. Immigrant children whose parents were ever undocumented during separation performed significantly worse in Letter-Word Identification than their counterparts who migrated with parents (Panel D, Table 3 ). Children whose parents maintained a legal status during separation also underperformed but their disadvantage was smaller. Panel D in Table 4 further points to an amplified negative consequence of separation when immigrant parents were undocumented. Children of those parents showed a significantly heightened risk of emotional and behavioral problems. In contrast, immigrant children whose parents maintained a legal status, even if having been separated, did not suffer worse psychosocial outcomes than those migrating with family. Note that this analysis controlled for duration of separation. Hence, the disadvantages of children of undocumented immigrant parents were not primarily driven by their longer duration of separation.

Children's Age at Immigration and Gender

Age at migration and gender were important moderators. We used age 5 as the cutoff because it corresponded to the first year of formal schooling in the U.S. The results (Panel E1 and E2 of Table 3 ) suggested that among children who came to the country at or before age 5, there was no significant difference in the literacy tests. These children even performed slightly better in Applied Problems than their counterparts who migrated with parents. By contrast, among immigrant children who arrived at an older age, many of whom entered the U.S. school system halfway, the experience of separation took a toll, as indicated by a large negative and significant difference in Letter-Word Identification.

Panels E1 and E2 of Table 4 display the difference in psychosocial well-being by age at immigration. We used age 10 as the cutoff to distinguish children in commonly accepted developmental stages: early and middle childhood, versus late childhood and adolescence. The negative psychosocial impact of separation was particularly salient for children who immigrated at a young age. There was little evidence that separation had a negative impact on children who immigrated at or after age 10. This result suggested that separation and adaptation was more challenging for young children. Although younger children integrated into the school system more easily ( Table 3 ), they endured substantial emotional and behavioral difficulties.

With respect to differences by gender (Panel F1 and F2, Table 3 ), immigrant girls were more negatively affected academically than boys by the experience of separation. Girls who were once separated from parents scored significantly lower in Letter-Word Identification than their counterparts without such an experience. This was not the case for immigrant boys. By contrast, immigrant boys with family separation experience performed better in Applied Problems than their counterparts who did not endure separation. This was not the case for immigrant girls.

Panels F1 and F2 of Table 4 report a large gender difference in psychosocial well-being. The negative ramifications of family separation were largely borne by boys. Boys who reunited with parents were more likely to develop severe manifestations of psychosocial distress. The difference between girls with and without such experience was small and non-significant.

To place our findings in the broader context of immigrant families, we compared the two groups of immigrant children with native-born children of immigrants (i.e., the second generation). The descriptive statistics and regression results are shown in Appendix E and F.

DISCUSSION

The present study investigated the impact of family separation and reunification on the well-being of immigrant children. By comparing immigrant children who were once separated from parents and those who migrated with parents as a family unit, we found that the type of immigration experience had implications for children's academic and psychosocial outcomes. Specifically, immigrant children who experienced separation manifested poorer literacy achievement and higher risks of emotional and behavioral problems than children who immigrated with parents. The adverse effect of family separation was especially pronounced for children's psychosocial well-being and for acquisition of English (vs. numeracy skills and physical health), as these dimensions hinged heavily on social environment. During separation, children may suffer from a lack of a stimulating environment and disrupted parenting, which can impede their learning and social development. The experience of separation further posed substantial adjustment difficulties to children post family reunion, leading to social disruptions and learning difficulties in school. The adjustment challenges they encountered go beyond the general acculturation difficulties all immigrant children face.

It is worth noting that the data used were gathered 14 years ago. The prevalence of the phenomenon and magnitude of the effect of separation and reunification may differ today. Nevertheless, we believe that the results are meaningful in understanding immigrant children in the current context, because the key sending origins of immigrant children have remained relatively stable over the past two decades ( Child Trends, 2014) and the underlying processes linking separation and reunification to child development are likely to hold ( Figure 1 ). Also, our data do not include undocumented immigrants and their children, for which the strategy of separation and reunion may be less common. To the extent that we identify parents' documentation status history as an important moderating factor, children of undocumented immigrants may suffer even more adversities from separation.

Immigrant children reuniting with parents did not suffer across the board. They fared similarly in physical health to their counterparts. They even seemed to enjoy a slight advantage in one numeracy test (Applied Problems). The differences between literacy and numeracy results may be partly explained by the numeracy education in children's origin countries, which is sometimes more rigorous than in the U.S. Based on the PISA report, the U.S. fell below the OECD average in mathematics education. The U.S. also lagged behind, or was on par with, a number of less developed countries in Asia and Latin America ( The OECD, 2015). Children who were separated from parents were more likely to be exposed to a greater emphasis on numeracy skills in their home countries. The difference between literacy and numeracy tests may also reflect the distinct learning processes involved. Numeracy skill is based largely on quantitative reasoning and more easily transferable across cultures and languages. In contrast, literacy skills are less transferable across countries. For many immigrant children, performance on literacy tests reflects the degree to which they successfully acquire a new language. The acquisition of a new language is closely tied to children's social environment after immigration ( Jæger, 2011). A family environment fraught with conflict and stress impedes children's language acquisition.

Not all children who had experienced family separation faced the same degree of developmental deficits. Immigrant children who were separated from both parents were most disadvantaged in academic and psychosocial well-being. In some cases, separation from mothers also led to psychosocial costs. These results, however, should be considered preliminary because of small sample sizes. In addition, there was a difference by duration of reunification. The academic disadvantages experienced by immigrant children who were once separated with parents subsided a few years after reunification. But the detrimental psychosocial consequences were not short lived. Because our analysis did not follow immigrant children over time, this result provided only suggestive evidence that the emotional trauma caused by years apart was not easily mended after reunion. This result could be interpreted in two ways. First, the initial reunification may be characterized as a honeymoon period. Over the longer term, the cumulative stressors during separation and after reunion may lead to manifestations of psychosocial problems. Second, the result may also reflect the greater likelihood of diagnosis associated with longer durations of stay and greater utilization of health services, as immigrants, especially shortly after arrival, may have limited contact with the health system. But even if this were the case, it still suggested that the persistence of initial emotional difficulties.

The study identified several important moderating factors, namely length of separation and parents' documentation status. A protracted period of separation and an episode of undocumented status of parents created especially adverse circumstances for immigrant children. Across both academic and psychosocial outcomes, these conditions amplified the disadvantages faced by children who were once separated from parents. Prolonged separation entails greater disruptions in family relationships and functioning, hence greater reorientation post reunion. Undocumented immigrant parents were less able to maintain social and economic linkages with children during separation, leading to heightened family disruptions even among children of immigrants who eventually obtained legal status.

The results also pointed to some differences by age at migration and gender of children but their role differed for distinct dimensions of development. Among children who endured separation and reunification, those who arrived at an older age faced particular challenges in language acquisition. This was consistent with earlier research showing that for immigrant children who entered the country at an older age, adapting to the U.S. school system was more challenging ( Hirschman, 2001). Immigrant children who arrived at a younger age seemed to be better able to adapt to the school system. However, for these young children, the experience of separation had a more adverse impact on their emotional and behavioral well-being, suggesting that they were more prone to developing psychosocial responses to separation from parents. With respect to gender differences, separation due to migration appeared to affect girls in academic performance, whereas boys were especially vulnerable to psychosocial disorders. Boys were more likely to develop externalizing behavioral problems that were severe and more easily detected ( Leadbeater et al., 1999). Girls, on the other hand, tend to develop internalizing emotional responses, which interfered with learning can be manifested in school difficulties.

Overall, our study demonstrates the importance of understanding immigrant children's diverse experiences during migration. Drawing on a national sample of legal immigrants and their children, we found that every year close to a quarter of immigrant children came to the country to reunite with their parents. Immigrant children from Latin American countries were most likely to endure such an experience. These children faced distinct academic and social challenges as they integrated into the host society. Results of this study are generally consistent with previous studies based on qualitative evidence or smaller samples. Some difference from previous research should be noted. For example, Suárez-Orozco et al. (2011) reported a higher rate of immigrant children who were once separated from parents. This may partly reflect their sample composition, which included a disproportionate number of children from Latin America.

This study contributed to our understanding of the processes and consequences of family reorganization in family systems and attachment processes. We added to the existing knowledge derived largely from marital processes (divorce and remarriage) to the context of migration, an increasingly prominent phenomenon that has changed the family landscape worldwide. We contend that migration represents a distinct form of family reorganization, which can complicate and disrupt family relationships and functioning when parent-child separation is involved. In this scenario, children undergo a series of family reorganizations coupled with disruptions in attachment relationships and parenting practices. They are first separated from parents, and then from the caregivers to whom they have become attached during the parent-child separation. The first stage of separation triggers adjustment challenges in different family subsystems (between parents and children, between migrant parents and other caregivers, etc.). Negative experiences in the first stage can undermine children's ability to adapt to the second stage of family reorganization after reunion. Taken together, these processes shape the development of immigrant children in the host society. By considering the experience of separation and reunification, we move beyond the focus on acculturative stress and on immigrant children's experience since arrival to incorporate the added stress stemming from changes in the family system both before and after children's migration.

The findings provide insights into the vulnerabilities immigrant children bring with them to a new country. The experience of separation and reunification can impose unique challenges for children's integration into their families, schools, communities, and society at large. Given rising immigration costs, as well as the increasing number of adult immigrants who engage in long-term migration, this phenomenon is likely to persist. The findings help educators and social workers to be more sensitive to the unique challenges facing immigrant children who underwent separation and reunification. It is also useful to raise immigrant parents' awareness, who may not be fully aware of the psychological ramifications of separation. Parents may expect children to be happy and appreciative after reunification. In the absence of such behaviors, they may feel disappointed, further exacerbating family tensions and impeding children's healthy transitions.

Several policy implications warrant discussion. Unlike family reorganization due to divorce, family reorganization due to migration is partly shaped by institutional factors such as immigration and integration policies. Current U.S. immigration policy determines who can move to the country legally and when they may do so. Despite following principles that support family reunification, the policy sometimes ends up separating rather than reunifying families. Legal restrictions often prevent parents and children from migrating to the U.S. together, as the regulations stipulate that during the immigration petition, families must remain outside the United States. Thus, it is not uncommon for legal immigrants to wait several years, under long backlogs and annual numerical limits, before their spouses and children can legally join them. In 2006, a spouse or a minor child sponsored by a legal immigrant waited on average six years between application and admission, and the wait was longer for groups who applied in large numbers (i.e., Mexicans; Hatch, 2010). Based on our results, prolonged wait times can carry detrimental ramifications for child well-being, making adapting to a new life more challenging. Policies of family reunification that shorten the duration of separation for immediate family members of legal immigrants or provide means for applying family members to join the immigrants would help mitigate the adverse effects.

Several limitations of this study warrant discussion. First, we were not able to incorporate longitudinal data because of sample size constraints. We thus could not examine the longer-term effects of separation and reunification. In addition, the measure of psychosocial well-being through parents' report is less than ideal, because immigrants, especially those of low socioeconomic status or new arrivals, tend to have limited interaction with the health system. Although we adjusted for a range of background variables and adopted statistical methods to reduce potential endogeneity, we could not evaluate the degree of underestimation. Also, we did not have a sufficiently large sample size to make further distinctions by, for example, children's country of origin and state of residence. The study thus cannot speak to how cultural background in the context of origin and reception shapes the experience of different groups of immigrant children. The same holds for the analysis by separation from mothers, fathers, or both parents because only a subsample had migration information from both parents. Moreover, we were not able to explicitly test for the mediating mechanisms laid out in Figure 1 , because the data do not provide information on family circumstances and care arrangements during separation.

Despite these limitations, this study provides a glimpse into a less-understood family process affecting many immigrant families in our country. Future studies will benefit from large-scale national longitudinal data that collect detailed information on family environment before and after migration to unpack the short- and long-term impact of family separation and the mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Acknowledgement

We thank the funding agencies and investigators of the New Immigrant Survey for the valuable data. We also thank Monica Higgins for providing useful information. Lu gratefully acknowledges support from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (1K01HD073318), and the Columbia Population Research Center with funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD058486). We thank the editor and reviewers for their thoughtful comments, David Dailey, Mark Ledbetter, and Kevin McGrew of the Woodcock-Muñoz Foundation for help with norming the scores, and Sarah Lazzeroni for assistance in manuscript preparation.

Contributor Information

Yao Lu, Columbia University.

Qian He, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Diverse Experience of Immigrant Children: How Do Separation and Reunification Shape Their Development?

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Although many immigrant children to the U.S. arrive with their parents, a notable proportion are first separated and later reunited with their parents. How do the experiences of separation and reunification shape the well-being of immigrant children? ...

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Profile

The size of the Hazara population, as with other communities in Afghanistan, is highly uncertain as the country's authorities have never conducted a national census of the population. However, it is broadly recognized that none of the country's ethnic groups form a majority, and the exact percentages of each group as part of the national population are estimates and often highly politicized.

The size of the Hazara community has also declined significantly as a result of forced migration, land grabbing and persecution. They were once the largest Afghan ethnic group, constituting nearly two-thirds of the total population of the country before the 19th century. Some estimates suggest that more than half of the Hazaras were massacred, forced to flee or taken into slavery during the 1891-93 Hazara War when the Afghan King Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880-1901) led a genocidal campaign of violence against Hazaras. Many of the Hazaras who fled the persecution by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan settled in the Indian subcontinent or Iran, laying the foundation of the Hazara communities that now live in the Pakistani city of Quetta and various districts in Iran's eastern provinces. These communities have increased in size as more Hazaras who fled from Afghanistan over the past four decades have settled within them, especially in Quetta.

The origins of the Hazara community are much debated. Although a common myth suggests that Hazaras originated from a contingent of the army of Genghis Khan in the 13 th century, there is no historical evidence to support these claims. Other more plausible theories suggest that Hazaras are more likely to have descended from communities that inhabited the region well before the advent of Genghis Khan.

Hazaras speak a dialect of Dari (Farsi dialect) called Hazaragi and the majority of them follow the Shi'a (Twelver Imami) school of Islam. As a result, Shi'a Hazaras constitute a religious minority in a country where the majority practice Sunni Islam. Significant numbers of Hazaras are also followers of the Ismaili Shi'a school of Islam or are Sunni Muslims. Within Afghanistan, Hazaras are known for their distinctive music and literary traditions with a rich oral history, poetry and music. Hazaragi poetry and music are mainly folkloric, having been passed down orally through the generations.

In Afghanistan, the majority of Shi'a Hazaras live in Hazarajat (or 'land of the Hazara'), which is situated in the rugged central mountainous core of Afghanistan with an area of approximately 50,000 square kilometres. The region includes the provinces of Bamyan and Daikundi and several adjacent districts in the provinces of Ghazni, Uruzgan, Wardak, Parwan, Baghlan, Samangan and Sar-e Pul. There are significant Sunni Hazara communities in the provinces of Badghis, Ghur, Kunduz, Baghlan, Panjshir and other areas in the northeast of Afghanistan. Ismaili Hazaras live in the provinces of Parwan, Baghlan and Bamyan. In addition, Shi'a as well as Sunni Hazaras are based in substantial numbers in several urban centres of Afghanistan, including Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif and Herat.

Traditionally, the majority of the Hazara community were involved in subsistence farming or working as peasants and artisans. In Afghanistan's cities, Hazaras traditionally engaged in unskilled labour as they faced discrimination in education and public sector employment. This has contributed to their further stigmatization, reflected in the low rate of intermarriage between Hazaras and members of other groups. Systematic discrimination, as well as recurrent periods of targeted violence and enforced displacement, have led the Hazara community to lose much of their population and standing in the social hierarchy of modern Afghanistan.

Historical context

Shi'a Hazaras are historically the most discriminated ethnic minority group in Afghanistan and have long faced violence and discrimination. Partly, this is to do with religious faith; historically, the Shi'a minority, regardless of ethnicity, has faced long-term persecution from the majority Sunni population. During the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman (1880-1901), Hazaras suffered severe political, social and economic repression, culminating in a state-backed declaration of jihad or holy war against Hazaras from 1890 to 1893. Abdur Rahman Khan, a Pashtun, mobilized large contingents of government forces as well as ethnic and tribal militias in the war against Hazaras, promising them Hazara lands and men and women as slaves. Thousands of Hazara men were killed, their women and children taken as slaves, and their lands occupied and redistributed to Pashtun tribes. To strengthen the forces against Hazaras, he appealed to Sunni religious sensibilities to mobilize Tajiks and Uzbeks (both Sunnis) to help Pashtuns fight against the Shi'a Hazaras. Those Hazaras who survived the initial period of raids managed to escape to the north, while a significant number fled to then British India. Apart from Pashtuns, Uzbeks are also thought to have conducted slave raids on Hazaras in Bamyan and elsewhere.

Hazarajat was occupied by Abdur Rahman's forces in 1893. Subsequently, he instituted a system of rule that systematically suppressed Hazaras. This repression ranged from issuing unwarranted taxes to assaults on Hazara land and harvests, massacres, looting and pillaging of homes, enslavement of Hazara children, women and men, and replacement of Shi'a clerics with their Sunni religious counterparts.

Although slavery was formally abolished by King Amanullah Khan in 1923, the persecution of Hazaras continued. Hazaras faced political, economic and social marginalization and the stigmatization of Hazara culture and identity. In Hazarajat, Pashtun nomads who participated in the conquest of the region in the 1890s progressively took control of the region's pasturelands and dominated its trade and other economic activities with the rest of Afghanistan. The government also collected exorbitant taxes and kept the region economically undeveloped, with no investments in roads or other infrastructure. To mitigate the impact of this discrimination, many Hazaras concealed their identities to obtain state identification. As late as the 1970s, some Sunni religious teachers preached that the killing of Hazaras was a key to paradise. As a result of these policies, many Hazaras lived on the edge of economic ruin in Afghanistan.

Since the 1960s, Hazaras have actively campaigned against policies that discriminate against them, demanding equal rights as citizens of Afghanistan. Hazaras have formed their own political parties and participated in alliances with other parties to exert their influence over state policies in the country. The most significant Hazara political groups emerged during the resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s. Several groups that appeared during this decade merged to form Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan (The Party of Islamic Unity of Afghanistan) in 1989. Following the collapse of the last pro-Soviet government in April 1992, the former anti-Soviet resistance groups, known as Mujahedin, were unable to agree on a new national government. These groups fought bloody civil wars over the control of Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan. Between 1992 and 1995, Abdul Ali Mazari led Hezb-e Wahdat to speak out at the international level for, and on behalf of Hazaras, putting their case to the UN and the international community. He unified the Hazara people by bringing together the many sections, forces and classes within Hazara and Shi'a society. Hezb-e Wahdat found itself in bloody conflicts with other mainly Sunni groups, including Jamiat-e Islami led by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ittehad-e Islami led by Rasul Sayyaf. Jamiat, under Rabbani's chief commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, launched retaliatory artillery attacks on Hizb-e Wahdat, killing many Hazaras. Amnesty International subsequently reported the killing of many unarmed civilians and the rape of many Hazara women. In February 1993, hundreds of Hazara residents in the Afshar district of western Kabul were massacred by government forces under the direction of Rabbani and Massoud, joined by Ittehad-i-Islami. The fighting saw the utter devastation of large areas of Kabul, particularly those inhabited by Hazaras.

Mazari was killed in mysterious circumstances while in Taliban captivity in March 1995, and Hezb-e Wahdat under the leadership of Karim Khalili joined a coalition against the Taliban until 2001. In the years that followed the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in 1995, Hazaras faced particularly severe repression and persecution, including a series of mass killings in several provinces, leading to the deaths of thousands of Hazaras and forcing many to flee their homes. The largest massacres of Hazaras took place in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif where the Taliban massacred several thousand predominantly Hazara residents in the city after it took control from the opposition groups.

A key moment in recent Hazara history is the destruction of the Bamyan Buddha statues by the Taliban in March 2001. The giant Buddha statues had long been central to the identity of the Hazara community. Hazaras celebrated the Buddha statues as heritage of a past civilisation in the heart of their homeland and had their own myths associated with the statues, unrelated to Buddhism. In some Hazara folklore, the statues are of a star-crossed couple Salsal and Shahmama, whose doomed love ends tragically in their deaths. The two remain forever separated, petrified in stone, looking out across the Bamyan valley.

In much of the international media this wanton destruction has been characterized as an assertion of the Taliban's extreme reading of Islam that forbids representations of human features in art. What was missing in this media reporting were the views of local Hazaras who saw the targeting of the statues as an assertion of Taliban dominance over their culture and homeland. The destruction was, in fact, part of a larger campaign by the Taliban to suppress the rights and identity of Hazaras. In a private order to his commanders in 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar specifically instructed that Hazara cultural heritage be destroyed and the celebration of Persian New Year, Jashn-e Nouroz, be prohibited. The order also included forced land dispossession, anti-Shi'a propaganda and restrictions on Hazara women, who generally maintained more freedom in their society than other Afghan groups. After the fall of the Taliban, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the remains of the destroyed Bamyan Buddhas a World Heritage Site. International debate has raged regarding whether the statues should be reconstructed or not. However, the discussions often disregard the fact that the sculptures are an integral part of Hazara culture and do not always consider the need to involve local communities in any future decisions concerning them.

Shi'a Islam was also recognized by the 2004 Constitution. Yet the influence of Shi'a personal laws has threatened that freedom. In 2009, the controversial Shi'a Personal Status Law was passed, stripping Shi'a women, many of whom are Hazara, of some of their basic rights enshrined in the Constitution, including allowing a husband to withhold basic sustenance from his wife for not having sex with him, restricting women from working without permission from their husbands, and denying women custody over their children. The law was reportedly drafted by a powerful Shi'a cleric and pushed through by conservative Shi'a community leaders, who did not adequately consult or protect the rights of Shi'a women.

The formal inclusion of a small number of Hazaras in positions of government did not address the structural discrimination and violence that ordinary Hazaras faced. Hazaras were discriminated against in public sector jobs as well as in the allocation of national budgets and international aid. These grievances led to the emergence of several waves of protest movements among Hazaras that demanded equitable allocation of resources, especially at the subnational level. In 2016, these protests led to the Enlightenment Movement (Junbesh-e Roshanaye), which was galvanized by a decision of the government of President Ashraf Ghani to divert a previously planned national electricity transmission line from the Hazarajat region.

Furthermore, Hazaras also became the targets of waves of violence by extremist groups, including the Taliban and the regional affiliate of the so-called Islamic State, known in this context as Islamic State - Khorasan province. For several years, the Taliban targeted Hazaras who were travelled along the roads that connected Hazarajat with Kabul and other urban centres. The main road between Hazarajat and Kabul became known as 'Death Road' due to the frequency of kidnappings and other deadly Taliban attacks on Hazaras that took place there in recent years. This violence on the main roadway further isolated and thereby stalled the development of Hazarajat, which requires labour and materials from Kabul to build facilities such as schools and clinics. These factors contributed to the large numbers of Hazara currently residing in Kabul, with many concentrated in one overcrowded area of Dasht-e Barchi, a vast informal settlement with limited public services.

The wave of extremist violence also hindered the Hazaras from peacefully protesting in the cities. On 23 July 2016, a rally of the Enlightenment Movement at Deh Mazang Square in Kabul was targeted by a suicide bomber, which killed 85 protesters and injured more than 400 others. It was the deadliest attack on civilians since 2002 and targeted Hazaras on the basis of their Shi'a religious identity. Other attacks include a December 2017 bombing that left at least 41 dead and another 80 injured in a Hazara neighbourhood of western Kabul and an assault in March 2018 that resulted in the deaths of at least nine people. As the Taliban gained control of Hazara areas, they also engaged in summary executions of Hazaras in the district of Malist in Ghazni and in Daikundi.

Current issues

Well before the Taliban took control of Kabul on 15 August 2021, Hazaras faced an escalating campaign of violence by the Taliban and Islamic State - Khorasan as well as structural discrimination by the government in Kabul. A wave of violence that deliberately targeted Hazara mosques, cultural and educational centres in Kabul and other provincial centres claimed the lives of several hundred Hazara civilians. Since coming to power, the Taliban have dismantled the constitutional order that provided the basic rights of the citizens of the country and have re-established the Islamic Emirate, which institutionalizes sectarian and ethnic discrimination towards Hazaras. Hazaras have lost virtually all influential posts in the government in Kabul, and the Taliban have appointed Pashtuns in positions of authority across Hazarajat.

Hazaras also suffer particularly seriously from other Taliban policies such as their restrictions on civil society, women's rights and freedom of expression. Some minority women, including Hazara women, have traditionally enjoyed more freedom in their society than other ethnic groups and benefited considerably from post-2001 political and educational reforms. Civil society and independent media also provided important opportunities for Hazaras to voice their concerns against policies that discriminated against them. These channels are now largely unavailable to them.

Furthermore, the Islamic State - Khorasan have continued a campaign of violence to cause maximum casualties among Hazaras. After the Taliban came to power, the group claimed responsibility for attacks on Shi'a mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar that killed scores of predominantly Hazara worshippers. Several attacks on passenger vehicles in Hazara neighbourhoods of Kabul have claimed the lives of many others.

A key issue for the Hazara community is the general climate of impunity, whereby those who committed atrocities - both past and present - can evade justice. Hazaras are deeply concerned about the return of the Taliban to power, who they feel pose a direct threat to their community. The Taliban's sectarian tendencies towards Hazaras are also likely to be reinforced by increasing ethnic tensions and incidents of violent clashes between Hazaras and nomadic tribes who, like the Taliban, are Pashtuns and claim rights to pasturelands throughout the Hazarajat region. Local Taliban have forcefully displaced hundreds of Hazara families from districts in the provinces of Daikundi and Helmand and have threatened Hazara communities with similar mass evictions in the provinces of Ghazni and Balkh. Pashtun nomads, who relied on government support since the late 19th century to claim the pasturelands of Hazarajat, have also returned to Hazara areas in large numbers.
Updated December 2021.

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Hazaras in Afghanistan - Minority Rights Group

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The size of the Hazara population, as with other communities in Afghanistan, is highly uncertain as the country's authorities have never conducted a national census of the population. However, it is broadly recognized that none of the country's ethnic groups form a majority, and the exact percentages of each group as part of the national population are estimates and often highly politicized.

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The UN projects over 8 million refugees will flee Ukraine

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The UN projects over 8 million refugees will flee Ukraine

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https://www.npr.org/2022/04/26/1094796253/ukraine-russia-refugees

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I think that the claim that the video is trying to make is that even when racism between 2 groups subsides, there will always be another group that is experiencing racism.

When the blue/white rabbid appears they become peaceful between each other, but then the orage rabbid appears and the whole process repeats itself

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Les Lapins Crétins Invasion - Expérience lapin : La différence (S1E55)

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The soon arrival of thousands of Afghan refugees reminds me of interviews I did with three young men from Kabul back in 2016. Each of them were part of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visas program (SIV) that provides a path to American citizenship for Afghan nationals who assisted the United States military during the war.

SIV applicants are required to demonstrate that they were employed by or on behalf of the United States government in Afghanistan for a minimum of one year, and that, because of their employment, they face an ongoing and serious threat to their lives. Names and specific details of their stories have been changed in order to protect their identity.

Remembering Home

When I first met these young men, they had been living in the U.S for less than a year. They were young children when the Taliban took power in 1994. They, along with their families, were forced to flee the country because their parents worked for the Afghan government. When the U.S. removed the Taliban in 2002, all three returned to Afghanistan as young adults. Each of them recalled watching the news reports of the U.S. invasion, and upon returning to Kabul all three secured prestigious jobs assisting the U.S. in rebuilding the Afghan government. Both Ibrahim and Yusuf worked for defense contractors in Kabul and Ahmed worked directly with the U.S. military as a translator throughout the country. Both Ibrahim and Yusuf had professional degrees and were some of the highest paid Afghan civilian contractors in Kabul. They loved their jobs because they felt like they were seeing their country transformed for the better, particularly the city of Kabul. Ibrahim put it this way, "It's not because Kabul is very modern, but there is a deep connection for a lot of Afghans. Friends in Kabul are different. If you have a friend there, they are friends forever. Even after my dad died, his friends would still come to my house to check on us and take care of us."

The truth is, these young men loved living in Kabul. They described the city as being cosmopolitan and that the ethnic and religious differences that dominated rural areas of the country did not matter in the city. However, as time went on, the threat of retaliation by the Taliban became an ever present reality. They applied and were given visas to come to America but none of their family members could join them. This has resulted in an incredible sense of loneliness and concern for their family back in Afghanistan.

Culture Shock

Prior to coming to the U.S., each of these young men believed that the diversity they experienced in Kabul was an American value. However, during their first six months in America, this belief was disconfirmed. Upon entering the U.S., they were resettled into a low-income apartment complex in Columbia, South Carolina. According to them, their neighbors were primarily African American, Latino, and other refugees. They were disappointed that the social gatherings, at least in their perception, were centered around racial or ethnic boundaries. They had hoped to make a variety of friends like they had back in Kabul, but instead, they found themselves only welcomed by fellow Afghans. They were thankful for the small Afghan community, but they felt isolated from the broader American community. Yusuf told me that some of his Afghan friends who came to America for college warned him not to come. "They said 'don't go there because you will feel homeless.' I have been trying to adjust, but I miss my home." In six months, none of the three had made any significant friendships with Americans. At first, they wondered whether it was because they were Muslim immigrants. However, they eventually concluded that it was more likely that American culture was not friendly in general. Ibrahim explains:

"Here it is really quiet and very slow. We grew up in the middle of Kabul city-it is like New York, busy all the time, very crowded with people. Here you don't see people on the street, neighbors do not talk to each other. We have a neighbor and a couple of times we said hi and she just ignored us. I don't think it is because we are Afghani. I think neighbors here just don't talk to each other. In our culture, you have to have respect for your neighbor. If your neighbor is sick or has a need, you have to try to help them. Even if you are not in a position to help them, still you have to try your best. That's the culture. I think it comes from the religion."

Religious Confusion

Anyone who has lived in the Muslim world would likely agree with Ibrahim's assessment that hospitality is a Muslim value. It is also a Christian value despite the fact that many American Christians may not do it very well. Nevertheless, these young men did find that some Christians went out of their way to welcome them and even invited them to church. However, the experience left them feeling even more discontent and further in culture shock. Ibrahim described the church service as a party. He didn't understand why everyone was dressed up like they were going to a nightclub. Yusuf shared how, after the service, one person asked him to explain the Qur'an to him. He replied, "That is not something we can discuss in one hour. We need at least one year to discuss the Qur'an." The person then proceeded to explain the Bible to him, and, according to Yusuf, he was trying to convert him by convincing him that Christianity was better for him than Islam. Yusuf was not convinced. On the contrary, they left the church more convinced of Islam's superiority over Christianity.

In addition, the guys were surprised by how Christians handled their Bibles. Ibrahim shares how he felt that the church he visited had no respect for the Bible: "When we carry the Qur'an, we carry it with respect. But in the church, I saw that the Bible was on the ground. I even picked up a couple of the Bibles and put it on top because this was disrespectful. We believe in all four books, and it is disrespectful when you see a Bible lying in front of you on the floor. These are words from God. You can't leave them on the floor. You even have to clean your body, your hands and mouth before you read the Qur'an. I don't know how it works in the church but I was really surprised when I saw Bibles lying everywhere." The church experience was further confirmation for these young men that America was not the place they imagined it would be.

Struggling for Meaning and Purpose

In addition to not making meaningful friendships, finding meaningful work is also a challenge. Neither Ibrahim nor Yusuf have been able to find work in their field of study. Ibrahim is currently working as a grocery bagger while he continues sending out resumes. Both Yusuf and Ahmed are working in fast-food restaurants. While they are all grateful to have jobs, none of them are finding much meaning in their current employment.

The ease of computer-mediated communication back home provides some respite from the daily struggle with culture shock. However, this regular communication may be a barrier to Ibrahim, Yusuf, and Ahmed integrating into American society. They spend a significant amount of time on social media with family and friends back in Kabul. It is rare to see Ahmed not wearing his Bluetooth earpiece. Sometimes he has friends or family connect with him online just so he can listen to their conversations as if he were sitting with them in the room. The ability to maintain significant relationships back in Kabul through social media may be hindering them from pursuing meaningful relationships in their new socio-cultural context. All three are homesick and are struggling to cope with their sadness. They do not feel like they belong in America, but they know that they cannot return to Afghanistan.

For practical tips on helping Afghans resettle, see our Field Guide for helping Afghan refugees. If you would like to read an in-depth study on the transnational experiences of Afghan and Pakistani immigrants, check out Trevor's recent book Narrative Identity: Transnational Practices of Pashtun Immigrants in the United States.

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Trevor Castor shares how some Afghan refugees may experience culture shock in the process of resettling in America.

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One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe. One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe.

Lying on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor, I had just given birth to my twin son, Zakaria, at just 23 weeks and six days gestation. My knees buckling, almost falling to the floor, with only my husband to hold me upright. He said some words. I can't quite remember, but it was along the lines of "rely on God".

Just hearing those words was as if a switch had been turned on. I grabbed my baby, wrapped him in my arms and stumbled to the bed. My husband was frantically calling the ambulance and all we could hear was a beeping of a busy line signal while the operator tried desperately to connect us to the paramedics.

But this emergency didn't begin in my bathroom that night. I had raised the alarm on several occasions with health professionals over the previous two days but my symptoms were dismissed. As a first-time mum, it's unclear what are usual or unusual symptoms. So I tried to get some clarity. I was told it is absolutely normal to have this kind of pelvic pain and that it sounded like ligament pain.

The symptoms persisted into day two, so I called again and was met with the same response. In a call that lasted no more than three minutes, I was left alone to decipher what the pain meant. A few hours after that call my husband and I were delivering our precious, delicate, warm, soft and all-encompassing, beautiful twins. Alone.

We were completely helpless and after a lengthy delay we were finally transferred to a paramedic, who immediately instructed "start CPR now". So, with my baby Zakaria lying on my chest, using my fingers looking for the ribcage, finding the middle and starting chest compressions, we counted. One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe.

I told the operator, "I think I am pressing at the diaphragm." "Move up," she said. "Place your fingers between the two nipples".

At this time, my husband was breathing for Zakaria and I shouted, "I cannot hold on any more! The second baby is coming".

The operator gasped. She had just realised there were two babies. Malak, our baby girl, joined us. My husband began compressions on her, me on Zakaria. We counted with the operator. One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe. Zakaria was lying on my chest, I could feel his skin and the warmth of his tiny, vulnerable body. With every compression Malak was making the smallest of sounds, only audible to her dad.

After what seemed like an eternity of CPR on our own, there was a huge sense of relief when help arrived. I thought our efforts meant nothing, they were just so delicate and small. There is no way you could successfully resuscitate twins at 23 weeks and 6 days. But here I was entering the hospital on a stretcher, going in one door and my babies taken away through another. I was told "they are stable".

Now in the safety of the hospital we witnessed teams of people fighting for our children's care. From the triage team to the NICU department, they were all there.

Our babies fought for two days - and what days they were. We watched their personalities grow, their fingers heal and their presence fill the room. It was devastating to say goodbye.

The politics of pregnancy

We may never know if my babies' premature birth could have been prevented but our questions over why my husband and I were left to birth and resuscitate our babies alone at home remain unanswered.

When I tried to get answers one health professional said she was sorry for my loss, however there was one thing she said that really stood out to me, "Sara you are so stoic and we were just getting to know you".

Straight away I broke down. "Just because I didn't make a fuss!" I shouted. It felt as if she was suggesting that my distress was not made clear enough for them to understand as they were still "getting to know me".

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Not all women demand care in the same way but that does not mean they do not deserve it. I believe I should have been better assessed. The comments compounded the trauma we had already experienced.

Unfortunately, this is not just my experience and occurs too frequently, in particular for women of colour. In a system that boxes women in, you feel like you can never win. If you are overly vocal you are the crazy black woman. If you are quiet, you are the passive, subservient woman. So here I am. Not a flower picker or a bulldozer but a perceptive person who respects health workers' professional judgment, and I feel that I was let down.

During my recovery I came to learn of a very difficult fact, that my experience could have been worse, it could have been fatal for me. Research shows that women of colour are more likely to die giving birth, with Indigenous women being three times as likely as non-Indigenous women in Australia, while immigrant women from sub-Saharan Africa in Australia, Canada and Denmark are twice as likely to die.

In these devastating maternal health disparities, there's a common theme - systemic racism.

A UN report of women in the Americas, including maternal health, revealed that systemic racism and sexism in medical systems are the main reasons black women and women of colour are more likely to experience serious complications or even death.

For this trauma to stop the medical system needs to acknowledge and actively work to dismantle its systemic racism. It needs to understand the biases that blind practitioners and lead to preventable deaths and worsening illness. It needs to make room, not just for diversity but genuine engagement that listens to women, respects their concerns and ensures they are adequately informed through the process of their care.

I am blessed to have held my babies; they're always there by our side. Grief is still very difficult and at times I know they are there, but my God do I want them here. So, whenever laughter fills the room or I hear children play, their voices are a part of the choir. Their song is so loud, anyone can hear it if they really listen to the symphony of life.

Zakaria and Malak, our blessings, continue to protect us for we know you are not too far away.

Sara Mussa is a psychologist based in Melbourne

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My twin babies didn't survive their premature birth - and I'm left to wonder why | Sara Mussa

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Women of colour like me are more likely to experience pregnancy complications. That's a devastating indictment

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Still winter. Snowing, still. Can it even be called action, this patience
in the form of gravity overdressed in gray?

Days like this, the right silence can be an action, an axe,
right through the frozen sea, as Kafka calls for. A necessary smashing,
opening. Though silence can also be a shattering, closing.

Think of peace & how the Buddhists say it is found through silence.
Think of silence & how Audre Lorde says it will not protect you.

Think of silence as a violence, when silence means being made
a frozen sea. Think of speaking as a violence, when speaking is a house
that dresses your life in the tidiest wallpaper. It makes your grief

sit down, this house. It makes you chairs when you need
justice. It keeps your rage room temperature. I've been thinking

about how the world is actually unbearable.
About all those moments of silence we're supposed to take.
Each year, more moments, less life, & perhaps

the most monastic of monks are right to take vows
of silence that last a decade.

Though someone else (probably French) says our speaking
was never ours; our thoughts & selves housed
by history, rooms we did not choose, but must live in.

Think of Paul Celan, living
in the bone-rooms of German. Living, singing.

What does it mean, to sing in the language of those
who have killed your mother,
would kill her again? Does meaning shatter, leaving

behind the barest moan? This English, I bear it, a master's
axe, yet so is every tongue-red with singing & killing.

Are we even built for peace? I think of breath & my teacher,
Michael, one of the least masterly, most peaceful people I know,
& Kafka's number one fan. I think of the puffy blue vest Michael wears

when his breaths turn white. Even when I'm doing my best
think axes & walls, brave monks & unbearable houses,

the thought of Michael in his bit-too-big deep blue vest
leaks in. & I don't think I will ever stop trying to sneak
into casual conversation the word "ululation." If only all language

could be ululation in blue vests. If silence could always be
as quiet as Michael, sitting with his coffee & his book, rereading.

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Still winter. Snowing, still. Can it even be called action, this patience in the form of gravity overdressed in gray? Days like this, the right silence can be an action, an axe,right through the frozen sea, as Kafka calls for. A necessary smashing, opening. Though silence can also be a shattering, closing.

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NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

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A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

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Brown v. Board of Education Celebrating the 67th Anniversary of LDF's Seminal Case May 17, 1954 marks a defining moment in the history of the United States. On that day, the Supreme Court declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" unconstitutional and handed LDF the most celebrated victory in its storied history.

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Afghanistan: what is life like for children since the Taliban takeover? | Save the Children International

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A year on from the Taliban takeover, read the stories of children and their families living in Afghanistan.

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Learning more about adoptees' lived experiences can help mental health professionals better support these children and their families

Cite This Article

Huff, C. (2023, October 1). Behind the international adoption journey. Monitor on Psychology, 54(7). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/10/supporting-international-adoptions

Susan Branco, PhD, has always had two birthdays. But until she reunited with her Colombian birth family in 2021, she and her adoptive parents did not know about the second one, the actual date of her birth, which falls about 6 weeks earlier. She also learned that she has two siblings, a shock for someone who was raised as an only child in suburban Philadelphia.

While her White adoptive parents were loving and supportive, Branco had yearned to know about her birth family since she was a little girl and started searching for them in her 20s. "It took 24 years of active searching," said the 51-year-old, an associate professor of clinical mental health counseling at Palo Alto University in California, who studies transracial adoption.

The 2021 reunion at the airport in Bogotá, joyful with flowers and tears, proved to be the next stage in what researchers frequently describe as a lifelong journey for transracial international adoptees. Branco, who has conducted research involving Colombian adoptees while pursuing her own familial search, is still getting to know her birth mother and adjusting to her new status as the middle child with an older and younger sibling. Her therapeutic journey also has occurred in stages. When Branco sought therapy earlier in life, she was not asked about any adoption-related challenges-not an unusual omission, particularly years ago, she said. More recently, she found a psychotherapist trained in working with transracial adoptees. "You go through life with one identity for yourself and one understanding of what family is and what it means," said Branco, who these days celebrates both her Colombian and U.S. birthdays. "And then all of the sudden, as a middle-aged adult who has their own family and is married and has parents who are aging, now I'm incorporating this whole other family into my life."

While U.S. adults have long adopted children from other countries, with the initial surge occurring after the Korean War, psychological insights into the lived experience of these international adoptees have only begun to coalesce in the last few decades. Since international adoption rates peaked in 2004, many of these children are now well into their adult years, and researchers have continued to study the acculturation and other adjustment challenges that they may face.

International adoptees can be more vulnerable to some mental health difficulties compared with non-adoptees, including eating disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders ( Strand M., et al., Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, Vol. 29, 2020). Other research indicates that mental health challenges may be related to color blindness-the myth that racism can be avoided by disregarding skin color-when exhibited by adoptive parents, as that can make adoptees feel isolated in managing society's racial stereotypes ( Wiley, M. O., American Psychologist, Vol. 72, No. 9, 2017).

To provide effective therapy, psychologists must be prepared to assist adoptees as they strive to process the contradictory experiences that they may have encountered, according to psychologists who study international adoption, some international adoptees themselves. While they may love their adoptive parents, they may still grieve the loss of not only their birth family but their home country and language. They may require support with cultural and, in particular, racial socialization, as research indicates that White parents who adopt children transracially-children whose racial or ethnic background differs from their own-may be less able to discuss issues involving bias or racism.

In some cases, transnational, transracial adoptees of color may not grapple with what Minnesota counseling psychologist Richard Lee, PhD, describes as the "transracial adoption paradox" until they move farther away from their largely White home and community for college or other opportunities. At that point, they may recognize for the first time that being raised with the privileges of a largely White community has not prepared them for living in a culture where they are perceived based on their skin color, said Lee, a psychology professor who also directs the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota.

"You're in a setting where people don't know about your family history and experiences growing up in a White family," Lee said. "So, they look at you and they see your brown skin and they make assumptions about your ethnicity and race and the experiences that you had that are often associated with your ethnic and racial background."

Racism and the adoption journey

Prior to 2000, most psychology researchers applied a more "color-blind" prism to international adoption, similar to the framing that adoption agencies used at that time, Lee said.

"They were really trying to make the case that the color of one's skin, the cultural background of a child, whether it's the same or different from the family, is less relevant than just growing up in a warm, nurturing home," said Lee, who published one of the first reviews of transracial adoption research in 2003 (The Counseling Psychologist, Vol. 31, No. 6, 2003).

But the lived racial and ethnic experiences of adopted children were largely missing from that earlier research, Lee said. He credits adoptive parents and earlier generations of adoptees with playing an influential role in highlighting the importance of cultural socialization by establishing cultural camps and building related communities in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly involving Korean adoptees.

In recent years, researchers have delved more into how much ethnic and racial socialization adoptive parents do provide to foster the adoptees' ethnic identity and prepare them for bias and racism. Between 2007 and 2014, Lee and his colleagues followed 116 internationally adopted Korean American children and adolescents across the 7-year span. They found that the parents of the adolescents-who were ages 13 to 20 when the follow-up interview was conducted-reported higher levels of parental ethnic socialization than their children did. Researchers also learned that those parental ethnic socialization efforts decreased as their children entered adolescence (Developmental Psychology, Vol. 53, No. 11, 2017).

Like Branco, many international adoptees are now adults, given the broader trends. Adoptions to the United States, which peaked at nearly 23,000 in 2004 according to U.S. Department of State data, have significantly declined as the primary sending countries- China, Russia, Guatemala, South Korea, and Ethiopia -made it more difficult to adopt, according to Pew Research Center data published in 2017. The reasons vary, ranging from concerns about fraud and corruption in Guatemala to a diplomatic rift with Russia. By 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of adoptions to the United States had dropped below 3,000.

As these children become parents themselves, psychologists have begun to study how they provide socialization to their own children. Parents who have biological children report that it can be a powerful experience, a step toward engaging with their birth roots, said Xiang Zhou, PhD, an assistant professor of counseling psychology in the College of Education at Purdue University. Zhou and colleagues have conducted 51 qualitative, in-depth interviews with Korean American adults who became parents biologically or through adoption (Family Relations, Vol. 70, No. 2, 2021).

One participant described how having their own biological child "is almost like looking into a mirror backwards," Zhou said. "By having a child, they can finally look into their ancestry, to their past."

Most of the adults, though, reported feeling hampered in helping their children, having received limited cultural and racial socialization from their adoptive parents, the researchers found. Still, some reframed their new parenthood as providing a second chance, Zhou said. "Becoming a parent offered them another window, another opportunity to start learning about Korean culture that they may not have been able to as a kid."

Vulnerability to microaggressions

Psychologists may find that therapy enables adoptees to share their struggles with bias and discrimination, which they may not have felt comfortable broaching with adoptive parents and other family members. Children adopted transracially from countries outside of the United States likely have encountered another type of verbal assault as well, called an adoption microaggression, said Amanda L. Baden, PhD, a professor of counseling at Montclair State University in New Jersey who was adopted by White parents from Hong Kong in 1969. With transracial adoption, she said, "the adoption is visible to other people immediately," given differences in facial and other physical features from other family members. "So, people are having adoption trigger questions as soon as they see that," she said.

Baden developed and began to study adoption microaggressions after learning about research involving racial microaggressions ( Sue, D. W., et al. American Psychologist, Vol. 62, No. 4, 2007). Microaggressions of any type are rooted in some form of stigma or misunderstanding, including adoption microaggressions, Baden said. "Adoption is widely seen as a second, third, or last choice for forming a family," she said, adding that "people have widely inaccurate assumptions about what adoption means and how it works."

In her research, Baden described common themes involving adoption microaggressions, which can be directed at children adopted domestically or internationally as well as their adoptive parents. (Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016). These microaggressions can persist well beyond childhood, according to other research that Baden was involved with, based on interviews with 11 transracial adult adoptees. One type of microaggression is rooted in the misperception that adoptees must be a "bad seed" in some way, with emotional or developmental traits that could cause strain within the adoptive family, she wrote. Another microaggression-that they should be grateful-places weighted expectations on the adoptee (Journal of Family Psychology, Vol. 36, No. 8, 2022).

"It's a complicated thing," Baden said. "Adoptive parents don't adopt someone because they want to hurt them."

"But adopted children sometimes feel a lot of pressure to be very loyal," Baden continued. "They get the message very clearly from family, from society, from every book and movie that has an adoption story ... That they're supposed to be grateful for their being rescued from this terrible situation."

Baden also has introduced a new type of microaggression, called adoption microfiction. During the adoption process, the true circumstances around the adoption "can be altered purposefully, or even accidentally," Baden wrote, resulting in inaccurate information. Or, some parents attempt to hide that the child was adopted (Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016).

Meanwhile, efforts by White parents to understand racism and prepare their children for bias and discrimination may not be as robust as they perceive. In one study, involving 30 families with White parents and at least one child adopted from Korea, just nine of the families acknowledged that racial and ethnic differences had an influence on their family. Six rejected that premise and the remainder held a mix of views (Kim, O. M., et al., Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2012). Other work, based on interviews with 95 pairs of Asian American adolescent transnational adoptees and their parents, found that the parents underestimated their children's personal exposure to racism compared with what the children themselves reported ( Langrehr, K. J., et al., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2019).

For Kimberly Langrehr, PhD, one of the study's authors, those findings resonate with her clinical experience, working with families who have adopted internationally, along with her personal perspective. When she was adopted in 1981 from South Korea by a family living in rural Wisconsin, she noted, her parents were given the guidance prevalent at the time-to raise her as though she were White.

In Langrehr's clinical work, she's noticed that parents are more prone to focus on building their child's ties to their cultural heritage and less comfortable with exploring their vulnerability to racism. Thus, it can be quite painful when their child comes home talking about racial taunts and slurs, said Langrehr, an associate professor of psychology at Roosevelt University in Chicago. "A lot of times I feel like their shock speaks to the parents' own lack of racial socialization themselves to know just the prevalence and pervasiveness of racism on a daily basis," she said.

Doctoral student Inah Jeong, who grew up as Maggie O'Brien, described college as a pivotal turning point. During their childhood years in suburban Minneapolis, Jeong's White parents tried to connect Jeong with Jeong's Korean heritage, suggesting that they attend a Korean cultural camp one summer. But Jeong declined, preferring to remain at home and play soccer with friends.

Once in college, Jeong joined a Korean drumming group. They began to learn the language and identify more as Korean, including using Inah Jeong more frequently-the name listed in the Korean adoption papers.

"Still even to this day, it's kind of hard for me to say 'Korean American,'" said the 26-year-old, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in learning sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. "Because I feel that holds with it the story of growing up in a Korean American family."

Working with adoptees

Researchers are still sorting out why international adoptees experience more mental health difficulties. Some studies point to preadoption factors, such as neglect at adoption facilities and separation from early attachment figures, as potential contributors to later challenges ( Palacios, J., et al., Research on Social Work Practice, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019).
[Related: The ongoing war in Ukraine has disrupted the lives of vulnerable children]
Amid the pandemic, Chinese transracial adoptees in the United States described how they were psychologically buffeted in various directions, according to a qualitative study involving interviews with 20 young adults who were born in China then adopted by White families. Like others with Chinese heritage, the young adults reported discrimination amid the fears over COVID-19. But they still lived in a primarily White culture, with parents who sometimes denied their pandemic-influenced racial experiences. Eight subthemes were identified, among them an increased sense of being a perpetual foreigner in the United States, a sense of in-betweenness amplified by sociopolitical tension, and increased thoughts of birth parents ( Wing, H. M., & Park-Taylor, J., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2022).

Psychologists who want to better meet the psychological needs of international adoptees should first make sure that they are not overlooking them among their existing patients, Zhou said. As part of the intake process, psychologists should routinely ask patients to detail their relationship to their caregivers, whether it's biologic, adoptive, or some other type of family structure, he said.

Therapists should not assume that someone is seeking counseling for reasons related to their adoption history, but they should keep that additional context in mind, Lee said. For example, an adolescent may seek help for depression, but over time it becomes apparent that their depression is influenced in part by strain within their adoptive family over their desire to seek out their birth family. Therapists should stay especially alert, Lee advised, to the rethinking of identity that can occur during life transitions, such as starting college or becoming a parent. For example, a Korean American parent may choose to reengage with their culture and ethnicity after having a child, which may change the dynamics within the partnership if the other parent is White.

Langrehr, who counsels young adult adoptees from China and Korea, said that these adoptees have traditionally tended to keep their experiences with racism to themselves, regardless of how strong their relationship is with their adoptive parents. But that's changed somewhat, she said, amid more public discussions about microaggressions and more overt racism against Asian Americans during the pandemic. "I see a lot more adult adoptees wanting to have conversations with their parents and realizing that they have been sitting on some resentment over the years," she said.

In this regard, therapists can serve as a sounding board, working through some of these emotions with the adoptee in advance, Langrehr said. What do they want to express and how? Also, what are they trying to achieve? While expressing one's feelings is important, she added, it does not always lead to the critical conversations that adoptees crave. Instead, they can just end up feeling minimized and ignored as a person of color.

Psychologists also can provide guidance and support for the adoptive parents, who may initially be defensive as their color-blind perspective is disrupted, Langrehr said. "It can be absolutely heartbreaking for them," she said. "What I often tell adoptive parents is, 'This is not the end though. You also have the opportunity to still grow should you want to.'"

In a similar vein, Branco suggests that therapists talk with patients about what they want to achieve during a birth family search. Her research has identified strong emotions, including grief and loss, among individuals who have reunited with their birth families as they contemplate what they have missed out on by growing up so far away (Adoption Quarterly, 2023).

Therapists should prepare patients for a range of outcomes if they decide to try to meet their birth parents or other family members, Branco stressed. The birth parents may no longer be living or may not be ready to connect with their biological child. The search can disrupt existing relationships, Branco found in her research. "Sometimes adoptive family members felt jealous or felt angry at them or wanted to be over-involved." Moreover, there can be notable disconnects between the stories that the adoptees first heard and what they later learned.

In one study, involving interviews with 17 adult adoptees from Colombia, eight of them reported inaccurate information or challenges related to their birth family search. In one case, the birth mother described being coerced into adoption by family members. In another case, the search was delayed because the adoptive parents withheld the birth mother's information for years ( Branco, S. F., & Cloonan, V., Genealogy, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2022). When adoptees learn about such a microfiction, Branco suggests that therapists set aside their own preconceived notions about international adoption to acknowledge and validate what the adoptee is sharing.

In Branco's personal search, she felt supported by her adoptive parents. But she had little to work with because she did not know her birth mother's name. It was not until a DNA match connected her to a cousin, who had also been adopted by a U.S. family, that they were able to piece together the genealogy. The cousin, adopted more recently, had the name and a government identification number for her birth mother, the sister of Branco's mother.

The story that the orphanage told Branco's adoptive parents proved to be a microfiction, she said, about her mother living in a home in the Andes mountains that cared for unmarried college students. "They had no reason to believe that it wasn't true," Branco said of her adoptive parents. "But it wasn't the story at all."

Branco declined to share more specifics, other than to say that her mother had been underage and not in college. "It was not a happy scenario," she said. "I don't think any of the scenarios are happy though, ever, in adoption." But it gave her a lot of peace to know the truth, she said, and to reclaim her birth story.

As Branco gets to know her birth family on her mother's side, her path has been eased by her proficiency in Spanish and familiarity with Colombia, which she had visited nine times prior to 2021. Although they do not yet have the degree of shared experiences and history that she has already built with her adoptive family, they are working on it.

"Our commitment is, we're going to have to make memories," she said. "And we're going to commit to being in each other's lives."

Further reading

Hidden among the hidden: Transracially adopted Korean American adults raising multiracial children
Wu, C. S., et al. Developmental Psychology, 2020

Selling transracial adoption: Families, markets, and the color line
Raleigh, L. Temple University, Press, 2017

Somebody's children: The politics of transracial and transnational adoption
Briggs, L. Duke University Press Books, 2012

Unpacking complexities in ethnic-racial socialization in transracial adoptive families: A process-oriented transactional system
Pinderhughes, E. E., et al. Development and Psychopathology, 2021

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Behind the international adoption journey

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Learning more about adoptees' lived experiences can help mental health professionals better support these children and their families.

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Men and women are equally likely to be infertile, yet less than half of men would be willing to talk about it, according to a new study.

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Historically, the attention surrounding infertility has primarily centred on women, yet 50 per cent of fertility problems within a heterosexual relationship can be due to male infertility, including low sperm count - which has more than halved worldwide in the past 50 years - poor sperm motility, impotence or erectile dysfunction and insufficient testosterone.

Almost a fifth (18 per cent) of men, however, think women are the most likely to experience fertility issues, new findings by fertility benefits company Apryl suggest, while 22 per cent aren't really sure whether fertility problems impact men or women the most.

Approximately 7 per cent of men experience infertility, but less than half of those interviewed (44 per cent) are aware of the issues that can impact men's fertility.

The majority of male respondents (56 per cent) also said they weren't at all worried about their fertility; in comparison, 40 per cent of women said they were.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), infertility is "a disease of the male or female reproductive system, defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse," which can cause significant distress, stigma, and financial hardship, affecting people's mental and psychosocial well-being.

Men are less likely to seek professional help for fertility problems

The study was conducted by Censuswide and surveyed 2,000 UK adults on behalf of Apryl, a Berlin-based fertility benefits company.

The results found that men are far less likely to seek professional help for fertility difficulties compared to women.

Almost a third (32 per cent) of women surveyed said they'd be most likely to turn to a fertility or family planning clinic in the UK as a first step if they were concerned about their fertility. By comparison, just under a fifth (19 per cent) of men said they would.

Instead, men were twice as likely as women to turn to social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram or Facebook if they were worried about their fertility. Close to a fifth of men (20 per cent) said they wouldn't look for help.

Tobias Kaufhold, co-founder at Apryl, which assists European businesses - including Soundcloud - to give employees access to inclusive fertility benefits deems it's "only natural" that the first thing people do when they're worried about their fertility is to turn to social media, but he advises caution.

"The journey to parenthood can be vulnerable, which can make us more susceptible to inaccurate claims and risky fertility advice," he told Euronews Next, pointing out that every fertility journey is different.

"The advice we find on social media won't be tailored to our circumstances, which means it can be a false friend and lead to misunderstandings, confusion, or unnecessary panic about what's going on with our health".

Social media posts often fail to account for the complexity of fertility due to the need to create snappy, consumable content, he said, "but the nuance is critical".

Men feel unable to speak to friends and family about fertility worries

The study's findings also suggest men are also far less likely than women to speak to friends or family about their fertility.

Just 44 per cent of men surveyed said they'd feel comfortable discussing their fertility issues with a friend, and 49 per cent said they'd be happy to do so with a family member. 62 per cent of women say they wouldn't mind discussing their fertility with friends.

The findings point to a wider historical trend of fertility pictured as a "female" issue, said Apryl in a statement.

The most impactful measure we can take to address the knowledge gap around infertility "is to make fertility care cheaper and more accessible for everyone," says Kaufhold, adding that sadly "the way fertility care is structured and delivered in many countries means that accessing it is a privilege, rather than a right. This needs to change".

In March this year, research published in the journal Human Reproduction Open found that the direct medical costs paid by patients for a single round of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in low and middle-income countries are often higher than the average annual income. In other words, it is virtually impossible for people in these countries to have access to fertility treatments.

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Making fertility treatments, including fertility testing, more readily available, could encourage people to think about their fertility earlier and plan for the future, which would also help close the knowledge gap around infertility, says Apryl's co-founder.

Egg freezing, a medical practice for preserving a woman's fertility, is known to be pricey - and its use is tightly restricted in some countries like France.

The typical cost of a single egg-freezing cycle across the UK and the EU starts at around €3,000, to which one needs to add the cost of later thawing the eggs for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) - procedures which can reach a total of €10,000 or more.

According to a new report published today by WHO, around 17.5 per cent of the adult population - roughly 1 in 6 worldwide - are affected by infertility in their lifetime.

"The report reveals an important truth: infertility does not discriminate," said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in a statement.

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"The sheer proportion of people affected shows the need to widen access to fertility care and ensure this issue is no longer sidelined in health research and policy so that safe, effective, and affordable ways to attain parenthood are available for those who seek it".

"We need to fundamentally rethink how fertility treatment is funded and delivered if we are ever to widen access and ensure starting a family is a basic human right," notes Kaufhold.

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A fifth of men think fertility is a 'women's problem,' study finds

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Men and women are equally likely to be infertile, yet less than half of men would be willing to talk about it, according to a new study.

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Naomi Osaka has made history as the first Japanese woman to claim a Grand Slam singles title after defeating Serena Williams in the final of the US Open.

However, her defining performance was overshadowed by controversy around sexism and double standards in sports. As our current research suggests, female and male athletes are held to different standards - and this also filters through to endorsement deals. "Bad boy" sports stars with an anti-hero or rule-breaker image are generally welcomed by sponsors, but female athletes aren't treated the same.

The Grand Slam

Osaka's opponent, Serena Williams, was looking to win her 24th Grand Slam singles title, one year after giving birth. The feat would have equalled the record of controversial Australian Margaret Court.

AAP, CC BY-ND

Opinions about this incident have been divided across the globe. Billie Jean King, a strong advocate of women's rights in sports, tweeted:

Global outrage followed a sketch by Mark Knight, the editorial cartoonist of the Herald Sun, which depicted Williams as a baby and Osaka as white, misrepresenting both athletes.

Read more: The Herald Sun's Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature

Double standard in sports

Differences between permissible on-court decorum of female and male athletes have been called into question, prompted by the severe umpire calls towards Williams' behaviour as well as penalties against French player Alizé Cornet earlier in the tournament for briefly taking off her shirt on court after realising it was on backwards.

This incident came days after the French Tennis Federation announced a new dress code that will ban Serena Williams' catsuit. Designed to help prevent blood clots that threatened her health after giving birth, the suit was deemed to be disrespectful of the game.

Several celebrities and athletes have argued for a redefinition of women's tennis oriented towards strength, power and athleticism. Former top-five tennis player and Miami Open tournament director, James Blake, alluded to contradictory gendered reactions to athletes expressing their anger and frustration.

The sport definitely has a double standard when it comes to perception.

Several comments noted "boys will be boys" reactions to male tennis players such as Novak Djokovic and Dominic Thiem when these players misbehaved by destroying a racquet on court.

Marketability of male and female athletes

Over the past decades, female athletes in tennis have been fighting for equal pay. Some gains have been made, but equity is far from achieved. Prize money in tennis is only equal in Grand Slam tournaments. More than 70% of male professional tennis players in the world's top 200 have earned more than their female counterparts.

Tennis is not an isolated case. According to the Women's Sports and Fitness Federation, women's sport only gets 7% of media coverage and barely 0.4% of commercial investment goes to women-only sport. Substantial pay disparity has also been evident in the football world cup, with men receiving US$28.6m in prize money, while the women's tournament only receives US$820,000.

Notable discrepancies have also also been observed in terms of sponsorship opportunities, with women underrepresented in endorsement deals. In order to secure a sponsorship deal, athletes are expected to behave in an exemplary manner on and off the court and have to shoulder the immense pressure of being positive role models. In Williams' case, this is particularly true as attacks on her have been personal and her suitability as a role model was called into question.

Nike's reaction to Maria Sharapova's drug suspension, in contrast to its response to Tiger Woods' infidelity scandal or Kobe Bryant' rape accusation, highlights equity issues among consumers and sponsors.

Villain or rogue

Research has demonstrated that celebrity endorsements are based on credibility and attractiveness. The main premise of endorsement decisions is based on the transfer of positive associations between the endorser and the brand. However, several sources have noted differences between how male and female athletes are evaluated in terms of marketable qualities.

Female athletes are more often judged on attractiveness and physical appearance, while male athletes are judged primarily on performance and skill.

For example, at the 2015 Australian Open, after becoming the first Canadian woman to qualify for the semi-final at a major tennis tournament, Eugenie Bouchard was asked by the on-court announcer to "give us a twirl".

Similarly, the Women's National Basketball Association holds makeup seminars for rookie players to ensure women secure the sponsorship deals they need to play. The evidence suggests marketability of female and male athletes does indeed revolve around different meaning transfers.

Read more: Why sports fans need villains

In an era where brands are searching for athletes that are different and unique, there's been an increased interest in athletes with intriguing personalities. Research has in the past demonstrated the appeal of a hero defeating the villain, but recently controversial athletes with a rogue image have gained appeal to specific target markets.

Our current work examines the role of anti-heroes in sports and how breaking the rules can have positive effects for sponsoring companies, even making an athlete more attractive. Positive sentiments such as fearlessness and intrigue are often associated with bad boys, while the perceptions of a bad girl is not so favourable. The "lovable bad boy" has no female equivalent.

No matter which side of the fence you may sit on with regards to the events between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, the conversation about women in sports is long overdue, albeit, unfortunately, at the expense of the current US Open women's singles champion.

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Women in sports: double standards a double fault

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Naomi Osaka has made history as the first Japanese woman to claim a Grand Slam singles title after defeating Serena Williams in the final of the US Open. However, her defining performance was overshadowed by controversy around sexism and double standards in sports.

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My Mom, a Mexican Immigrant, Taught Me to Love America

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My Mom, a Mexican Immigrant, Taught Me to Love America

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My Mom, a Mexican Immigrant, Taught Me to Love America

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Cristela Alonzo: My mother showed me why I should be grateful to live in the United States

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"There are two kinds of power: coercive power and authentic power. Coercive power is asserted using force instead of communication and cooperation. It uses punishment, intimidation, threats, and withdrawal of support/love. Coercive power is divisive. It breeds fear, insecurity, and mistrust. How can parents forge a loving and respectful relationship with their children when they are constantly asserting coercive power? They cannot."

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Humans are hard-wired with the need for self-determination. All children have a nascent sense of agency that seeks (and at times demands) to be heard and respected. In truth, isn't this is the primary goal of parenting and education? To nurture and support self-respect, self-determination, independence, and critical thinking? Often, however, parent-child power struggles begin because it is challenging to balance a child's desire for self-determination and parents' the need for cooperation.

Parents also struggle because independence must always go together with responsibility, respect, cooperation, and compromise. Such values and skills must develop alongside independence otherwise instead of developing freedom, they will develop license -which is permission to do whatever they want without any consequences. And too much license inevitably leads to chaos.

CoercivE Power Creates Parent-child Power Struggles

There are two kinds of power: coercive power and authentic power. Coercive power is asserted using force instead of communication and cooperation. It uses punishment, intimidation, threats, and withdrawal of support/love. Coercive power is divisive. It breeds fear, insecurity, and mistrust. How can parents forge a loving and respectful relationship with their children when they are constantly asserting coercive power? They cannot.

Most parents were raised using coercive power. Hence, they often reactively and unconsciously apply it due to lived experiences and familiarity. Given a lived history with coercive power, ending parent-child power struggles requires an overhaul parents' understanding of power so that their methods are more equitable, unitive, and cooperative.

Authentic Power Dismantles Parent-Child Power Struggles

The second type of power is authentic power. This type of power does not require zero-sum result in a power struggle. Rather, it seeks to find a solution to problems with the use of communication, understanding, and cooperation. The goal of authentic power is to find a way for everyone to come to a respectful agreement. Compared to coercive power, which is quick and short-term but can have long-term adverse results, authentic power takes time to develop and master, but it is more durable and lasting.

The practice of authentic power teaches children the ability to deconstruct their own wants and It also teaches them to determine what they really want-because sometimes a power struggle is not always about what is being fought over but something deeper. (Think back to your own acts of rebellion as youngster and teenagers; sometimes it was about being heard, but other times it was about self-respect or the fight for respect).

Below are several concrete ways to avoid or work through parent-child power struggles:

When it comes to small decisions, give your children the power to decide for themselves. This will give them some say in things that directly impact them and let them know that you are trying to give them power and agency. It also builds goodwill and trust-so that when there is a decision that you must make for them, they are more likely to respect it.

Examples of small decisions are:

Pick what color pajamas they want to buy from the store.

Decide what fruit goes in their lunchbox from the fruit bowl.

Choose on what snack to pick from your pre-approved snack basket.

We all want to have a say in our lives. When giving your children free reign over small decisions is not possible, consider giving just a couple of limited choices. This allows them to feel some measure or power and control over an issue that leads to a similar outcome. It may seem small, but it does let your children know that you respect then enough to give them the power to choose.

examples of this could be:

Do they want to take a bath/shower before dinner or after dinner?

Would they like to have an apple or a banana?

Which would they prefer, Legos or puzzles?

Here parents present children with a limited number of possible choices. This allows them to maintain authentic power while still giving their children some degree of control.

Let Your Child be the Boss in Some Situations

Ask yourself which instances you can give your children some power. Seek out their opinions. Offer them a chance to give you advice on small things and listen to them. Give your children an opportunity to teach you about their interests or hobbies. These tools encourage bonding and give your children a sense of importance and empowerment.

examples of Letting your child be the boss are:

Ask for their opinion and take their advice. For example: when you are getting ready to go to work, ask them what color tie do they think you should wear? Which earrings do they think go well with your outfit? It lets them know that their opinion matters and is valued.

Play games with them and when they are familiar enough with the rules, let them lead the game-they can assign turns, enforce the rules of the game and generally be the "game master."

Take an interest in one of their own interests and let them teach you something. If your child is interested in a video game or app, a TV show, or an extracurricular activity-ask them to teach you or tell you about it. They can also teach you the lyrics of a favorite song or the gist of a story they enjoyed reading. Let them be the "expert" in something.

Instead of frowning and getting frustrated that they haven't gotten started on their homework or they did not put their dishes in the sink or dishwasher, steer clear of any arguments and instead give them a big smile and point to the homework that needs to be done. No words need to be said. Or smile and point to the dish that needs to be taken to the sink or dishwasher. A gestural prompt with no words and a big smile is silent and leaves no room for a verbal argument. A big smile also immediately disarms the situation and reduces any hint of anger or frustration-which gives them no reason to engage in any aggression.

When PArent-Child Power Struggles Begin: Communicate, Compromise and De-Escalate

Even with preventative measures such as sharing power and control, power struggles will still happen when raising children. Their need for self-determination will inevitably assert itself. The key to managing parent-child power struggles is to communicate, compromise, and de-escalate.

First, it is important for both you and your child to hear each other-listen intently to what your child wants and repeat it back. Communicate your position and have her repeat it back to you to make sure you both understand. Second, listen to your child but stay committed to the non-negotiable aspects of your position. Let your child know that you are committed to helping them get what they want while also getting what you want. Finally, ask her to compromise with you to reconcile your positions. When your child sees that your goal is to work together rather than simply trying to win the argument (which means that she will inevitably lose the argument), she will more likely to agree on a compromise or suggest a cooperative way forward.

Here's an example:

Let's say you tell your child to contribute with loading the dishwasher. Your child does not want to load the dishwasher. Instead of digging in, you can tell her, "Okay, I hear you. You don't want to load the dishwasher, that's okay that you don't want to do that. However, in our family, everyone needs to pitch in. Can we think of another way you can pitch in instead of loading the dishwasher?" Other ways she can "pitch in" are activities such as clearing the table, sweeping the floor, or putting away the clean dishes once the dishwasher is done running. Pivoting away and de-escalating a budding power struggle over loading the dishwasher into other ways she can pitch in with the household jobs is cooperative and respectful. It leaves both you and your child satisfied.

Parent-Child Power Struggles can be De-Escalated

Parent-child power struggles are real. However, they need not always cause frustration, or stress if handled with an approach rooted in respecting and empowering a children's desire for self-determination. Preventative tools such as giving small decisions, limited choices and letting them be the boss serves to democratize power in a household and increase cooperation. Non-verbal prompts as well as communicating, compromising, and de-escalating serve to round out the ways a power-struggle can either be avoided or worked through constructively.

Take good, kind care of yourself and your family,

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Parent-Child Power Struggles - The Effective Parent

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Practicing authentic power results in mutual respect, security, cooperation, responsibility and effectively de-escalates parent-child power struggles.