When it comes to family and identity, immigrant households often walk a tightrope between cultures. For Asian American families, this balancing act can be even more complex, leaving both parents and children vulnerable to feeling “caught between worlds.”
In a ground breaking study, Su Yeong Kim and her colleagues explored how cultural marginalization, which is the sense of not fully belonging to either one’s heritage culture or the dominant American culture , affects the mental health of Asian American parents and adolescents. Her findings shed light on the hidden psychological costs of living between cultures, offering important lessons for how researchers, policymakers, and clinicians should approach immigrant well-being.
**Su Yeong Kim’s Findings About Cultural Marginalization
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Cultural marginality is when one feels neither a part of their heritage culture nor the dominant society. For Asian Americans, it can result in not being "Asian enough" among their own communities and being perpetual foreigners in American society.Earlier critics questioned whether marginality theory really applied to Asian Americans. Su Yeong Kim’s research pushed back against this skepticism. Her study shows that cultural marginalization is not only real but also strongly linked to depressive symptoms in Korean American, Chinese American, and Japanese American families.
**A Closer Look at Su Yeong Kim’s Study
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Dr. Su Yeong Kim’s team studied families in California, gathering data from both parents and adolescents. By distinguishing between three types of marginalization of Asian, Anglo (mainstream American), and Asian American (a hybrid identity). The study revealed striking differences in how each group experienced cultural conflict.
Adolescents: Their depressive symptoms were closely tied to Asian and Asian American marginalization. In other words, feeling disconnected from their cultural roots or struggling to define what “Asian American” meant was strongly linked to poor mental health outcomes.
Parents: For immigrant mothers and fathers, depressive symptoms were more connected to Anglo and Asian American marginalization. Navigating American society as newcomers often left them feeling isolated from mainstream culture.
Fathers in particular: The study found that fathers’ struggles with Anglo marginalization were uniquely tied not only to their own mental health but also to their children’s depressive symptoms. This highlights how deeply parent–child experiences are intertwined.
*## Why Su Yeong Kim’s Findings Matter
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Dr. Su Yeong Kim’s work reveals that the challenges Asian American families face are not just about immigration or language barriers but they are about identity. Adolescents born or raised in the U.S. may feel uncertain about where they belong, while parents who immigrated as adults grapple with exclusion from mainstream society.
What makes this study especially significant is its emphasis on Asian American marginalization as a distinct category. While many psychological frameworks only consider “heritage vs. host culture,” Su Yeong Kim shows that being Asian American is a unique identity of its own. The one that comes with its own struggles and vulnerabilities.
These insights matter because ignoring cultural nuance can have real consequences. If we continue to measure immigrant families through one-size-fits-all frameworks, we risk misunderstanding their experiences and pathologizing what are actually normal responses to cultural exclusion.
*## The Bigger Picture of Su Yeong Kim’s Work
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In legitimizing marginality theory in Asian American settings, Dr. Kim broadens the conceptualization of psychology regarding immigrant adaptation. Of greater significance, her work provides voice to the lived experiences of families frequently marginalized in mainstream research.
Her discovery reminds us that mental health is inseparable from cultural identity. belonging or not affects the way families operate, parents and children interact, and adolescents become adults.
In our multiracial world today, understanding these dynamics is not only crucial for Asian American families but it is a lesson to us all.
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