New Christians in a New Land: Faith Journeys of Asian American Immigrant Families

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of religion on the relational processes (e.g., marital and parent-child relationships) of Asian American Christian families. Data included selected responses from in-depth interviews of 24 Asian American Christian immigrant families (n = 48 individuals). Under the domain of “General Life Strengths,” three themes of (a) identifying life’s purpose, (b) peace in times of stress, and (c) internalization of prosocial values were found. The themes for the domain of “Relational Strengths in Marriage” included (a) enhanced marital unity, (b) conflict avoidance and resolution, and (c) forgiveness in marriage. The domain of “Relational Strengths in Parenting” included themes of (a) enhanced parent-child unity, (b) parental socialization of prosocial values, and (c) diverse parenting approaches.

Keywords:

• Asian families
• Christian families
• marriage
• family
• immigrant
• parenting
• religion
• spirituality
• qualitative

Note

Notes

1 All participant names are pseudonyms.