Factors Influencing Children as They Consider Role Models

3) Culture

Do cultural influences play a part in choosing a role model? First, Solomon (2002) makes a persuasive argument that students who are culturally different (in the dominant Canadian society) identify with teachers who are also culturally different. In Solomon’s (1999) case studies of teacher candidates, they “cited their own lack of role models as a reason why they wanted to become teachers and role models” (399). Second, we believe cultural ties influence familial roles in our students’ lives, especially in the multicultural Greater Vancouver area. Stewart, Bond, Deeds, and Chung (1999) found that Asian parental roles continue to play an influential part in their children’s development into adolescence. Asian teenagers who are recent immigrants to North America tended to internalize their parents’ expectations, specifically their mothers, and this appeared “to be a key variable through which the cultural effect on (the teens) autonomy expectations is exercised” (Stewart et al., 1999, 589). Similarly, within the Indo-Canadian community, retaining and “renewing their commitment to their native culture” (Dasgupta, 1998, 954) is very important. Dasgupta (1998) found that dating and intimate relations outside the Indo-American community is discouraged by the family elders, and those “parents who did let their children date admitted to maintaining separate standards for their sons and daughters” (964).

However, other researchers found that children who are culturally different from the dominant Canadian society do not always choose role models from their own cultural group. Anderson and Cavallaro (2002) found “Asian American and Latino children tended to name media heroes who were not of their same ethnicity” (167). In Allen’s (1994) paper, she was critical of being portrayed as a role model for African American people, especially to women. Allen (1994) argued that recruitment of minority people based solely on role modeling is flawed, in that placing expectations on a cultural group may cause more stereotyping of their “cultures and identities” (194).