Establishing a Parenting Program for Transnationally-Separated Chinese Immigrant Families: A Community-Based Pilot

Abstract

Children who experience transnational separation (TS), often referred to as “satellite babies,” reflect a relatively common but underdiscussed phenomenon. To date, no evaluations of clinical interventions that specifically support TS families have been described. This paper describes the implementation of a parent group therapy pilot program at a Boston Chinatown social services agency to address parenting and emotional concerns specifically related to TS. Parent and therapist interviews indicated an increase in parenting skills in the context of negotiating parent feelings of guilt, shame, and regret due to separation. These insights can guide practitioners and researchers who wish to address family separation in their respective communities.

Introduction

Due in part to increased globalization, socioeconomic factors drive thousands of Chinese immigrant parents to send their U.S.-born infants and young children to be cared for by relatives in China while parents remain in the U.S. to work (1–3). Often referred to as “satellite babies,” children sent to China typically rejoin their parents in the U.S. after the family has established financial security and/or when the child is old enough to attend school (4). There are little empirical data on the rates of transnational separation (TS) among Chinese immigrant families; however, among the few, the rates are high. One study of expectant women conducted in New York Chinatown found that 57% had strongly considered sending their infants to China, and among this group, 75% planned to bring their children back to the U.S. after the age of four (5). In our own research in Boston Chinatown, approximately 20% of our sample of Chinese immigrant parents with children under the age of 10 reported having been separated from their children for at least six months or were strongly considering separation (6). The high cost of living, lack of affordable local childcare options, acculturation-related challenges, and opportunity to expose their children to Chinese culture are chief reasons for parents to send their children back to China (5–7).

Practitioners who serve communities where parent-child separations occur recognize that separation experiences – even those that occur outside the contexts of maltreatment or political instability – can lead to challenges, such as parent depression, or poor self-esteem or behavioral problems among children (6,8). Although no longitudinal studies have been conducted with Chinese immigrant families to specifically determine the causal effects of separation on children, our work with Chinese American adults who recalled early separation experiences shared that they lacked an understanding of the circumstances leading to their separation and that communication with their parents about the separation would have helped in their adjustment. Following reunion with their children, parents who made the decision to separate not only encountered challenges in re-establishing their parent-child relationship, but also reported experiencing guilt, shame, or regret regarding their decision throughout this time (6,7). These findings suggest that a focus on the parent-child relationship within the separation context would be valuable (9).

Previous studies have evaluated parenting interventions for Chinese American families (10), primarily focusing on programs utilizing behavioral, skills-based approaches to reduce and prevent child conduct problems. By contrast, programs that apply a psychodynamic family-systems approach that considers the family as a unit may better conceptualize feelings of guilt, shame, and regret reported by TS parents (6,7). Although TS families may take part in existing community-based services, clinical interventions geared to specifically support TS families have not been well described. In this column, we discuss the establishment of a Chinatown parenting program for Chinese immigrant parents who experienced TS, therapist and parent perspectives of this program, and implications of this work in understanding the approaches that practitioners might take to learn and address parent-child separation that occur within their respective communities.

Community-Based Service Delivery

Our program took place at Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), a local community nonprofit that provides education, employment, and family resources for new Asian immigrants. BCNC provided the ideal context for service delivery: BCNC espouses a family-focused model of change that largely exemplifies the holistic, contextual approach needed to understand the effects of TS in Chinese immigrant families. Moreover, BCNC is seen as a trusted organization by the Chinese immigrant community given its longstanding service to the Boston Chinatown community.

In 2011, BCNC started to conduct Parenting Journey (PJ) for the broader Chinese immigrant community. An evidence-based and group-based curriculum used in low-income communities (parentingjourney.org), PJ asks participants to reflect upon their own childhood experiences of being parented and to link this history with their own parenting styles and parent-child relationships. Curriculum topics include: developing trust, honoring yourself and your child’s identity, reflecting on the past and the relationship you had with your own parents, identifying secrets and fears that take place in the family, as well as reflecting on life choices and barriers to achieving dreams, and developing an appreciation for life. Activities to promote concrete parenting skills include learning about self-care, identifying personal strengths, and practicing reflective listening. Notable activities include writing a letter to one’s parent to communicate unresolved emotions, sharing one’s secrets and fears, and participating in a guided meditation session. The final session consists of a graduation ceremony in which therapists read aloud letters they have written to each participant detailing the participant’s progression, contributions to the group, and their hopes for parents moving forward.

Both researchers and BCNC therapists believed that PJ would be ideal for addressing TS parent experiences given the data uncovered by research on the needs of TS families as well as the therapists’ clinical understanding of change; that is, it was believed that the emphasis on generational effects of parenting and the parent-child relationship, the use of self-reflection to understand and improve parenting outcomes, and the group format could facilitate connection between parents with shared TS experiences. In addition, the researchers and BCNC therapists determined that the topics covered by PJ would facilitate discussions regarding the parents’ thoughts and beliefs about their parenting, including the impact of unaddressed guilt on parenting behaviors or the role of emotional distance on the parent-child relationship.

Thus, a pilot program was implemented specifically for TS parents. Each session lasted 1.5 hours and was followed by a 30-minute lunch session that helped to build rapport among participants. All sessions were conducted in Mandarin Chinese by two Chinese immigrants with master’s degrees from U.S. universities in therapy and mental health counseling. Both had taken the 5-day Parenting Journey immersive training to learn the program curriculum as well as group management and facilitation techniques.

Further adaptation to the PJ curriculum was made by the BCNC therapists to meet the more specific needs of TS parents; for example, they spent the last 15 minutes of each session explicitly discussing issues related to the separation. Furthermore, BCNC therapists shortened the total number of sessions to 10 instead of the original 14 to lessen the time burden. To facilitate a safe space for exploration of the decisions and impacts of separation on parenting and on the family, therapists ensured that the group only included TS parents. As such, parents could participate if they had sent at least one U.S.-born child to live with relatives or other caregivers to their hometowns in China. Participating parents were separated from at least one child for nine or more consecutive months in the five years prior to the start of the intervention and had lived in the United States for 4–12 years.

To better understand the experiences of parents and the therapists involved in the program, the researchers conducted post-program interviews with all four of the participating parents to explore their overall assessment of the program in terms of parenting outcomes. Additional interviews were conducted with the two therapists at the mid-point of the program and again one week after program completion to explore their experiences implementing the program with TS parents. Interviews were conducted together by the two researchers. Semi-structured questions were developed to obtain parent perspectives on any changes they experienced as a result of participating in the group (e.g., the quality of the relationship with the child from who they experienced separation; understanding how prolonged separation may have impacted this relationship). With participants’ consent, interviews were recorded, transcribed, and, if conducted in Mandarin or Cantonese, translated into English for analysis by the researchers. A grounded theory approach was used, involving an initial broad wave of coding followed by a more exhaustive wave of coding to generate themes. We first describe the parents’ perspectives as program participants before elaborating on takeaway points identified by the therapists.

Parent Perspectives

Participants identified two main parenting outcomes that were substantially improved by attending the PJ program: the parent-child relationship and increased self-awareness. All the participants mentioned that they developed a stronger bond with their child due to parenting and communication techniques learned from the program. Participant 2, who described his son as “a complete stranger” in the first interview, reflected that his relationship with his son had “improved a lot” after the intervention. He elaborated, “Now, whenever he sees me, he’ll quickly run over to me. He’s very attached to me now, and he wasn’t like this before… It’s a complete change.” Participant 3 reported that applying new strategies that she learned from the group led to improvements in her daughter’s behavior, which alleviated much stress. She noted, “Now that we’ve finished the course, our relationship is a lot better than it used to be.”

Furthermore, participants discussed how the intervention fostered greater self-awareness and understanding that helped them become better parents. Participant 2 noted that he understood his child much better: “I [used to think that] raising a child was easy… And then when I finished the course, I feel like a lot has changed in many ways… because I’ve come to understand that kids have their own ways of thinking…In the past, [I thought], ‘he’s just a kid,’ and that I didn’t need to think hard about that. All he would have to do is just listen to you and be good, and you didn’t have to explain so much to him. Now this perspective has changed a lot…I feel like this is a good change.”

Participant 3 reported that the program made her more aware of how the separation impacted her parent-child relationship: “I didn’t quite think that the experience [of separation] had any real effect. But after finishing the course, I know that if the child and parent have been separated, there’s naturally going to be a lot of effects on the relationship. Now that [my daughter is] back with us, it’s gotten a bit better, but when we were separated, we couldn’t see each other, so we never knew how the child was doing and [didn’t know] every aspect of the child’s mental and emotional development.”

Therapist Perspectives

The therapists identified three areas that required greater attention for group facilitation: encouraging parent engagement with others, developing awareness and comfort in sharing, and acknowledging unique parenting challenges. Because the therapists had run PJ on previous occasions and were also running another group simultaneously at a different location for a more general population of Chinese immigrant parents, they were able to readily compare their experiences in facilitating groups conducted with TS and non-TS families. Therapist 1 noted that parents who send their infants to China often suffer from negative emotions that serve as a barrier to engagement with others: “I think this population’s hard to reach because of their shame and guilt, like, ‘I’m not able to afford childcare for my child in the United States, plus I need to work and have to send [my child] home.’” The therapists believed that building trust through personal relationships was particularly key to recruiting and retaining TS participants for the program.

Therapists also noted that participants in the TS group had more difficulty in sharing and articulating concerns, compared to non-separated parents, even though TS parents were part of a group that comprised only of TS parents. From their perspective, the issue of separation was ever-present and created a complex emotional subtext underlying all group discussions. The therapists noted that while non-separated parents and separated parents may experience similar programs, non-separated parents tended to talk about their current struggles at face value whereas separated parents would wonder if the root causes of their struggles were related to separation. According to Therapist 2, regardless of subject matter, the participants always maintained awareness of separation experiences: “Even if they are talking about another thing, like the parent-child relationship or the relationship between parents… the satellite baby issue might impact their behavior or might impact the relationship… I think that the parents are aware of that.”

Finally, the therapists identified parenting challenges following TS that could be addressed through therapy. After reuniting with their children following a long absence, parents in PJ grappled with their lack of familiarity with their child’s personality and habits, as well as prolonged feelings of guilt and shame about the separation. Therapist 1 remarked upon participants’ struggles with parenting self-efficacy: “I get an overall sense [from them that], ‘I have a child here, and I don’t know how to parent them.’ They’re not just asking about skills. They’re asking for help, like, ‘Can you teach me how to become a better parent or how to parent this child?’”

Conclusions

Our study on transnational separation in Chinese immigrant families provides some insights that can guide practitioners and organizations working with immigrant parents who have reunified with their children following prolonged separation. These parents may still be “getting to know” their children, and participating in a parenting group provides parents with the opportunity in attending to the parent-child relationship. While these skills are valued by parents generally, they may be more necessary to address among TS parents. Thus, a recommendation for practitioners is to emphasize how a parenting program can increase concrete skills when promoting services for parents who have experienced separation.

The contrast in experience for the therapists when working with TS families, relative to non-TS families, highlighted how parental feelings of shame over the separation may reinforce perceptions of inadequacy as parents. Such feelings may also prevent disclosure of additional challenges, and in turn, limit help-seeking. Practitioners may need to be mindful as parents who have experienced separation from their children often negotiate complicated emotional issues that may or may not be a presenting issue from the outset. Overall, the provision of a safe space to discuss such emotions is needed. For certain communities, the option for group therapy comprised of only parents who have had a separation history may promote further processing of these emotions. Limitations of this work include but are not limited to the small sample size that limits generalizability of these findings and the lack of long-term outcomes related to parenting and child outcomes. Nonetheless, our interviews yield information to suggest that practitioners can prepare themselves for supporting parents with a history of having separated from their child by recognizing that these parents may experience complex emotional issues that impact their psychological and family functioning.

Highlights.

• Transnational separation (TS) refers to the practice of parents who send their children to be cared by relatives outside the U.S.

• Practitioners should recognize that TS parents may experience feelings of guilt, regret, and have parenting challenges.

• Group therapy for families affected by separation may be a context for allowing parents to share unique parenting and emotional concerns.