ABSTRACT
Assimilation theory today is in a largely discredited state among social scientists. This is not to say that it does not continue to influence or guide research on immigration and ethnicity, but a wide-ranging critique of its fundamental assumptions has weakened its status as the dominant American paradigm on immigration and ethnicity (Kibria, 1993). Among scholars of immigrant and ethnic families there has been a movement away from questions of assimilation and toward a concern with adaptation or the ways in which such families strategize and respond to their structural circumstances (see, e.g., Glenn, 1986; Stack, 1974). However, this focus on adaptation often bypasses or at least does not deal directly with change in immigrant and ethnic families. The demise of the assimilationist framework has, I suggest, left a certain theoretical void, one that has weakened our ability and willingness to grapple with questions regarding processes of family change among immigrant and ethnic groups. If we abandon the idea that family change among ethnic groups is characterized by conflict between the ethnic and the American, with forces that pull toward the American, then how are we to think about family life?
