The New Generation Gap.(Arts)

Byline: Barbara Kantrowitz and Charlene Dy

The daughters of immigrants often make career choices their moms donat understand.

When Katherine Chon was in fifth grade, she drew a adream treea representing the path she hoped her life would take. One branch led to Harvard Medical School, which is exactly what her mother, Kumhee, had hoped for when the family immigrated to New Hampshire from South Korea in 1980. The Chons, including the then 2-month-old Katherine, brought only $200 and spoke no English, but the parents worked long hoursaon an assembly line at a Hewlett-Packard plant and in a dry cleaneras they eventually boughtato give their three children opportunities they could never have had in South Korea. aI was a typical mom,a recalls Kumhee. aI wished my kids to get higher education, get powerful jobs.a

Always a diligent student, Katherine started out on the premed track at Brown. But then a new limb sprouted on her dream treeaone that her mother still doesnat understand. She read in the local newspaper that South Korean women were being forced into brothels near Brown. Appalled, Katherine joined forces with another Brown student to form the Polaris Project, now one of the largest anti-human-trafficking organizations in the country. aIt was really hard for my parents,a says Katherine, now 27. aThey gave up a life in Korea; they were working 80 to 90 hours a week, and had so many life stresses so their children could get a great education and have a comfortable life.a

The dreams of parents and children often clash, but the conflict can be especially painful in first-generation immigrant families where the parents have made enormous sacrifices. Lisa Sun-Hee Park, an assistant professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego, says that every family that moves to the United States to provide opportunities for their children shares a remarkably similar story. The focus is almost always on the future, with little mention of the circumstances that compelled them to move. And even though the parents are the ones working 12-hour days, the children are also under intense pressure to perform in ways that will justify the parentsa sacrifice: study hard, get into top schools and choose careers that offer financial stability without considering personal fulfillment.

The contrast between parentsa dreams and childrenas realities can be particularly acute for daughters who have grown up with almost infinite opportunity in the wake of the feminist movement. Their mothers often came from countries where opportunities for women were severely limited, which makes the daughtersa choices even more inexplicable. May Lugemwaas family left Uganda and the tyranny of Idi Amin when she was 7, ultimately settling in Birmingham, Alabama, where her father was studying for a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Her mother, a math teacher, stood in line for hours to make sure May was enrolled in a progressive grade school. Later, May was accepted at Harvard, where her parents encouraged her to study math or science. May complied at first, majoring in computer science. But then she switched to Visual and Environmental Studies, where ...