Esther S. Chang

Can ambition help overcome social inequality in the transition to adulthood? Individual agency and societal opportunities in Germany and the United States.

The regulation of human development requires the selection of developmental goals and focused investment of resources in their pursuit. Societally institutionalized and normative conceptions about developmental tasks and deadlines regulate some of this selectivity, but in modern societies with their substantial social mobility an important part is played by the individual agent. Societies and their educational systems differ in the degree to which they constrain versus facilitate upward mobility. Accordingly, individual goal setting is most effective when closely calibrated in societies with less permeable educational and vocational career paths. In contrast, goal setting that reflects high-flying ambitions is adaptive under societal conditions that offer greater permeability between educational tracks and that foster step-wise social climbing. Exemplary findings from two longitudinal studies of the transition from school to work and college and situated in two critically different societies, Germany and the United States, are discussed.

Kirogi Women’s Psychological Well-Being: The Relative Contributions of Marital Quality, Mother–Child Relationship Quality, and Youth’s Educational Adjustment:

The current study is based on the responses of 153 married Korean mothers accompanying their youth in the United States or in New Zealand while their spouses remained in Korea. Kirogi means “wild geese” in Korean and has come to refer to split-family transnational living for the sake of children’s education. Spillover, or a positive correlation, between indicators assessing marital and parent–child relationship quality was tested within the transnational family context. It was also hypothesized that mother–child relationship quality and youth’s educational progress would be positively and uniquely predictive of indicators of maternal well-being when compared with marital quality due to education-focused Confucian values among Koreans. Results indicated positive correlations between indicators of marital and parent–child relationship quality; and only measures of marital quality had unique associations with maternal well-being.

Parenting goals and perceived shared and non-shared agency among kirogi mothers of a youth

Abstract This study examined the parenting goals and practices of Korean transnational mothers (referred to as ‘kirogi’) in order to understand how parents are preparing youth for success within a world of increasing globalization. Data are based on a cross-sectional convenience sample of Korean mothers (M age = 45.88) accompanying their youth (M age = 15.72) in the US and in NZ (N = 153). Results indicated that mothers rated youth’s educational/occupational self-development and humanistic life goals to be as important as educational/occupational achievement. Self-development and humanistic life goals were also found to be the most correlated to parenting strategies that accommodate youth, which, in turn, was the most predictive of outcomes. Discussion focuses on how globalization allows for parents with resources to find opportunities outside of their home country to achieve their parenting goals and to allow their youth to self-regulate their schoolwork successfully.

The relative importance of parent–child dynamics and minority stress on the psychological adjustment of LGBs in China.

This cross-sectional study examined how minority stress (i.e., internalized homonegativity, self-concealment, and rejection sensitivity) and positive parent–child relationship dynamics (i.e., respect for parents and perceived parental support for sexual orientation) were associated with the psychological adjustment of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals in China. Based on survey responses from 277 self-identified Chinese LGB young adults, results from structural equation modeling showed that minority stress was not a significant predictor of psychological maladjustment, whereas respect for parents and perceived parental support for sexual orientation were associated with positive psychological adjustment. Tests of gender differences partially confirmed whether Confucian traditions may burden sexual minority men more than women. Gender differences were found in the correlations between minority stress and each measure of positive parent–child relationship dynamics. However, the associations between independent variables and psychological maladjustment were not different between men and women in the sample. Our results suggest that culture-specific variables, such as parent–child factors within the context of China, may be especially important when working with LGB individuals in research and clinical practice.