שתיל - שירותי תמיכה וייעוץ לקידום שינוי חברתי

Markowitz F. (1994) Family dynamics and the teenage immigrant: creating the self through the parents' imageThis study assesses the role played by the Soviet Jewish emigre family in exacerbating the dual disjunctures of immigration and adolescence. The results of this study, based on life history interviews with women who came from the USSR to the U.S. as teenagers in the 1970s, challenge the bipolar model of adolescent immigrants and raise questions about previous findings on the dysfunctional, detrimental effects of the enmeshed Soviet-Jewish family.The five young women who participated in the study provided a clear view of the one familial dynamic that characterizes relationships between parents and children in a variety of forms. While household composition may vary from the nuclear family to different types of extended families, interactions among members are consistently marked by a lack of ego boundaries, and many decisions young people make in these families are motivated by their desires to please their parents.The results of this study indicate that, problems notwithstanding, most immigrant teenagers not only muddle through adolescence, but navigate a successful passage in a hospitable, although sometimes overly demanding, family environment.