Family Assistance Experiences of Adolescents in Marriage Immigrant Families
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research Design
2.2. Data Collection
2.2.1. Participant Selection
2.2.2. Participant Recruitment
2.2.3. Data Collection Procedure
2.3. Data Analysis
2.4. Ethical Considerations
2.5. Rigor
3. Results
3.1. General Characteristics of the Participants
3.2. Experiences of Family Assistance Among Adolescents from Marriage Immigrant Families
3.2.1. Old Enough to Help—Naturally, and Rightly So
Things That an Adolescent—Not a Child—Can Take on
“The food waste bin is kind of big. So, my parents started asking me to take it out once I got tall enough”. (Participant 7)
“Now that I’m 14, I guess they trust me more. When I was younger, they didn’t really believe in me”. (Participant 1)
“My mom and dad say I have a knack for taking care of my little sibling. When the baby sleeps well, it feels nice and fulfilling”. (Participant 1)
Learning and Preparing for the Tasks I Will Face When I Grow up
“When I vacuumed the wrong way, my dad said, ‘This is how you should do it’, and demonstrated it to me”. (Participant 8)
“I think of it as practice for when I grow up. I’ll have to clean like this then, too”. (Participant 3)
Family Means Helping One Another
“When I was sick, my mom and I went to the university hospital with my aunt. She helped with the diagnosis and explained everything to my mom”. (Participant 6)
“I might not be the best at everything, but I think I’m decent. I listen to my parents and try to do what they ask, even if I’m not good at it”. (Participant 1)
3.2.2. Foreign Mother Whom I Naturally Come to Help
Being Told to Help My Immigrant Mother
“(When I tell my dad I’m upset with mom) he says I should help her because she came from Vietnam all alone without her family and must be really lonely… When I hear that, I feel like I have to understand and help her, not that I want to”. (Participant 9)
Driven by Empathy for My Immigrant Mom
“If I went to another country where I didn’t speak the language and went to the hospital with a friend, and people were speaking in words I didn’t understand… I’d ask my friend what was going on”. (Participant 5)
“When my mom talks about being discriminated against, I feel like it must be really tough for her. It makes me think, ‘I should be on her side at least.’” (Participant 10)
Assisting with Mom’s Small but Constant Language Struggles
“Mom isn’t great at figuring out Korean words on her own, so she always asks dad. If he’s not home, she asks me”. (Participant 9)
“For things like writing a report in Korean, I think I started doing that in first grade. It used to be hard, sitting there going over it and fixing it… But these days, I can just run it through a grammar checker quickly, so it’s okay”. (Participant 7)
3.2.3. Unavoidable Family Assistance, Even Under Pressure
Carrying the Weight of the Father’s Role Too Soon
“When I was told we were having a new baby, my dad said, ‘I’m getting old, and if something happens to me, you—my eldest son—must lead the family. You can’t act like a child anymore. I’m sorry, but I want you to mature earlier than other kids.’” (Participant 8)
“The thought of having to earn money as soon as I become an adult is kind of stressful. So I try not to think about it… a sort of helplessness?” (Participant 4)
“Getting the role of the next family head at such a young age made me feel mentally overwhelmed and stressed. I didn’t believe in depression before, but now… I realize it’s real”. (Participant 8)
Forced into Traditional but Outdated Roles
“Times have changed a lot, right? But I just think to myself, ‘It’s not like that anymore…’ When grandma says things like, ‘You have to eat what you’re given if you want to be liked by your future in-laws, and you must be good at housework if you want to get married.’ I hate that”. (Participant 7)
“If you’re the eldest son, the family’s pillar, you must be able to take responsibility, bear the burden, endure hardship… and I think you’re expected to have a strong sense of sacrifice too”. (Participant 8)
Unassisted Academic Struggles
“I think it’s good to be respectful to the parents who went through so much to have me. I try not to speak rudely, and I try to listen when they ask me to do something. I just want to keep them from being stressed”. (Participant 1)
“Most people talk to their parents about GPA and the college entrance exam. But my mom and dad don’t really know much about that, so we don’t talk about it. I wish I could talk to them—even just to get some advice”. (Participant 10)
“It’s hard to ask my dad to help my younger brother with homework… Honestly, no one in our house is good at studying. My dad only finished high school, and my mom doesn’t speak Korean well. So if not me, then who?” (Participant 6)
A Language Barrier Too Thick to Truly Touch the Heart
“Since she’s Vietnamese, she often talks in a very shortened way. It made me wish mom spoke better Korean… or even that she were just Korean. Then we could communicate better”. (Participant 9)
“Mom tends to just say, ‘Do what I say, I’m tired’, and things like that… Since she’s a foreigner, I think it’s hard for her to express things properly in Korean”. (Participant 7)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Author’s Note
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Participant No. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Age | 13 | 17 | 17 | 18 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 13 | 17 | |
Sex | Female | Male | Female | Male | Female | Female | Female | Male | Female | Female | |
Age of Father | 45 | 50 | 51 | 61 | 63 | 56 | 54 | 57 | 47 | 52 | |
Age of Mother | 34 | 42 | 41 | 40 | 40 | 34 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 55 | |
Father’s Educational Level | High school | Under-graduate | Middle school | Under-graduate | High school | High school | High school | High school | High school | High school | |
Mother’s Educational Level | Middle school | Under-graduate | Under-graduate | Graduate | Under-graduate | Primary school | Under-graduate | High school | High school | Under-graduate | |
Mother’s Country of Origin | Pakistan | Philippines | Philippines | Philippines | Philippines | Vietnam | Vietnam | Vietnam | Vietnam | Indonesia | |
Mother’s Korean Proficiency | Speaking | High | High | High | Low | High | Middle | High | High | High | High |
Listening | High | Middle | High | Middle | High | Middle | High | High | Middle | High | |
Reading | Middle | Middle | Middle | Middle | High | Low | High | Middle | Middle | Middle | |
Writing | Middle | Middle | Middle | Low | Low | Low | High | High | Low | Middle | |
Age of Sibling(s) | 11, 5 | 32, 29 | 13 | 12 | 3 | 18 |
Theme 1. Old enough to help—naturally, and rightly so
|
Theme 2. Foreign mother whom I naturally come to help
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Theme 3. Unavoidable family assistance, even under pressure
|
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Jeong, Y.; Bang, K.-S. Family Assistance Experiences of Adolescents in Marriage Immigrant Families. Children 2025, 12, 862. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12070862
Jeong Y, Bang K-S. Family Assistance Experiences of Adolescents in Marriage Immigrant Families. Children. 2025; 12(7):862. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12070862
Chicago/Turabian StyleJeong, Yeseul, and Kyung-Sook Bang. 2025. "Family Assistance Experiences of Adolescents in Marriage Immigrant Families" Children 12, no. 7: 862. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12070862
APA StyleJeong, Y., & Bang, K.-S. (2025). Family Assistance Experiences of Adolescents in Marriage Immigrant Families. Children, 12(7), 862. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12070862