Identity choices in immigrant adolescent females.

The active role immigrant adolescents can take in balancing the influences of old and new cultures in the formation of a healthy bicultural identity is discussed, and the special problems females face in adapting to a new sex role culture are discussed.

Abstract

The adolescent task of ego identity formation is especially complex when it must be carried out in the context of a new country and culture. For immigrant adolescents, whose numbers have grown rapidly in the American school population in the past decade, developing a firm identity involves steering a course between refusing to adapt to American life at all and acculturating too rapidly. Based on semi-structured interviews with five adolescent females, all recent immigrants from Latin America, this paper discusses the active role immigrant adolescents can take in balancing the influences of old and new cultures in the formation of a healthy bicultural identity, and the special problems females face in adapting to a new sex role culture.