Expanding Notions of Family Time and Parental Monitoring: Parents’ and Adolescents’ Experiences of Time Spent Together and Apart in Muslim Immigrant Families

Abstract

In a preliminary investigation of socio-cultural influences on parent-adolescent negotiation of time together and apart, six focus groups were conducted with 58 mothers, fathers, adolescent sons and daughters from Muslim immigrant families residing in a mid-sized urban centre in Ontario, Canada. Focus group participants were asked to describe the time they spend together with and apart from their families, and the degree to which adolescence and immigration contribute to this experience. Qualitative analysis was based on social constructionist principles. One of the primary themes evident in this analysis was related to families’ subjective experience of sociocultural differences between countries-of-origin and current Canadian context. An expanded concept of family time that incorporates an element of communal or collective time is supported, suggesting further conceptualization of parental monitoring and family acculturation with corresponding clinical and research directions.