Late 20th Century Immigrants In America

During the late 20th century, family conflicts between parents who immigrated into the United States and their children who were born in the United States started to develop. The main reason for the conflict is because of the differing views in culture. The child wants to fit in with his or her society; therefore, they prefer the American culture. However, their parents want to educate their child about their roots; therefore prefers their own culture. The parents will do anything in order to prevent their child from fully assimilating into the American culture, such as taking them to Saturday school to teach them their native language or only feeding their child their native food. This method of isolating their child from the American culture will eventually cause the child to feel as though they are being isolated from

At the same time, resisting the genre convention of having a sensitive protagonist further demonstrates that eventually an individual will start to favor one culture over the other.

Second generation immigrants in the United States during the late 20th century typically struggled with balancing two different cultures, their ethnic culture and the American culture. However, eventually they would end up assimilating to the culture of their society. In the article “Immigrants in America: The second-generation story”, a couple of second-generation immigrants were interviewed and were asked to comment on how they felt about themselves and their accomplishments. A man named Martinez said, “I’m on my way to doing better than my father” (par 8). This quote demonstrates the idea that second-generation immigrants tend to achieve more success in America than their parents. Some people might argue that their child followed their parents footsteps, however, that is not necessarily true because in the article, “Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers...” studies have shown that