Placing Asian American Child Development Within Historical Context.

Abstract

This article discusses influences of historical time and place on the development of children and youth of Asian descent in the U.S. Chinese, Indian, Hmong, and Filipino American experiences illustrate how history has defined race and racial stereotypes, determined cultural and community contexts, established pre-/postmigration circumstances, and influenced oppression and discrimination. Cross-cutting issues as applied to other ethnicities are discussed. By recognizing history's reach on child development, this article intends to inspire others to acknowledge and consider historical influences in their work. It also lays a foundation for the two ensuing articles within this Special Section, which present a novel conceptual framework (Mistry etal., this volume) and methodological recommendations (Yoshikawa, Mistry, & Wang, this volume) for research.