Speaking About Independence and Family Closeness: Socialisation Beliefs of Immigrant Indian Hindu Parents in the United States

Abstract

This paper is based on a yearlong cultural psychological study of immigrant Indian Hindu parents in the United States. I examine here their repeated use of two phrases —“be independent” and “be close to family”—that they articulated as their most valued socialisation goals. I argue that although these English terms are seemingly self-evident, the meaning the parents attached to them, in conjunction with their simultaneous emphasis on cultural and religious-moral goals, was influenced by the content encapsulated in the cultural and religious script of Sanskār, a Hindi concept for which there is no semantic equivalent in English.

Keywords:

• Indian American Hindu
• Immigrant Parents
• Beliefs
• Independence
• Family Closeness
• Sanskār

Notes

[1]. I use the terms “Indian” culture and “Indianness,” conscious that India is a diverse nation-state and that there is no single “Indian” culture.

[2]. This study utilised the methodology of the Baltimore Early Childhood Project (ECP), a longitudinal project (1993–1998) undertaken at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, by Robert Serpell, Linda Baker, and Susan Sonnenschein (2005). The ECP examined distinctive patterns of socialisation and parental beliefs in different sociocultural environments and how these variations impact children’s academic performance. The broader study that informed this paper compared the parenting beliefs of Asian Indian, African American, and Anglo American parents in Baltimore, Maryland (Ganapathy-Coleman, 2004). Here, the focus is on the beliefs of Asian Indian parents only.

[3]. I use the term “multivoiced” because these parents have “rented” (Bakhtin, 1935/1981) the English language and imbued words with cultural meanings learned in India, requiring me to interpret/generate meaning from them in a transnational context.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hemalatha Ganapathy-Coleman

Correspondence to: Hemalatha Ganapathy-Coleman, Department of Communication Disorders, Counselling, School and Educational Psychology, Bayh College of Education, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA. Email: [email protected].