Slavic parents lose control of their Americanizing kids
«Our hands are tied,» Mariya says, clenching her fists on the table in front of her. «I wish the school would punish our kids; I wish we could punish our kids.»
Twice her oldest son promised to change: once in front of the congregation at the Philadelphia Romanian Pentecostal Church in Southeast Portland, which the family attends, and again at a Ukrainian church. He enrolled in the Job Corps but continues to drink, smoke and flout rules, Mariya says. Recently he was caught on the MAX carrying beer. Now his siblings are copying his behavior.
Mariya is also frustrated with church pastors. Many parents have similar problems with their kids, she says, but the church doesn’t know how to openly address them.
«The parents write to the pastor asking for help. But what can he do? He has a stack of requests for prayer this thick,» she says, showing the width between her fingers.
Benjamin Brink / The Oregonian
Mariya, a religious refugee from Ukraine, says she has lost hope for her children. Her teenagers smoke, drink and disappear for days. Two dropped out of high school; one ran away from home. Mariya spends days in her Southeast Portland home praying for change.
Several years ago, a Russian-speaking caseworker came to help with Mariya’s boys, she says, but stopped coming. She hopes similar services can again be offered, somewhere. For now, Mariya says, she prays daily «for a miracle that would make my kids go to church and obey.»
Family roles change
Teenagers and parents often disagree, but the clash is intensified by immigration, Russian-speaking therapist Olga Parker says.
Roles between immigrant parents such as Mariya and her children are switched, Parker says, because young people absorb language and culture like sponges, while parents take a long time to learn.
«Russian kids feel they are no longer Russian,» says Parker, who works for Lutheran Community Services Northwest. «They start to resist everything their parents do or say. They tell their parents, you don’t really understand American life.»
The conflict may be deeper than in other immigrant communities because these evangelical Christian parents are intensely traditional and conservative, and they reject American culture, although the majority have become U.S. citizens.
«Parents think that if their kids get involved in American things, it’s desertion,» Faith Community Church Pastor Robert Rathbun says. «It’s like corruption of their Russian or Ukrainian culture and religion.»
Families are large — some have more than 10 children — making it difficult for parents to control them. And parenting approaches that worked in their homelands don’t mesh with American realities. Children control their parents by threatening to call Child Protection Services if they spank them, Parker says.
«Parents don’t trust their own kids,» says Vadim Riskin, the Russian liaison at Portland Public Schools. «They’re afraid to talk to them, afraid they won’t say the right thing. Some parents are even afraid to ask their kids to do homework, to raise their voices or tell the kids to go to their room, because they’re afraid their kids will be taken away from them.»
Many Slavic parents also know little about the school system and don’t value formal education, Riskin says. «Making it» financially, including home and car ownership, is much more important in the economically stratified Slavic community — a value spawned in a homeland that once eschewed private ownership and kept many in poverty.
Parents expect boys to make quick money in construction or car repair, and they push girls to quit school to baby-sit siblings and get married. Others home-school children because they dislike the values schools teach.
When a teen does get in trouble, Slavic parents often don’t call police or social services. Fixing one’s own problems is a point of pride, and discomfort with government or any organization is common, as is fear of public disgrace.
«If their child did something bad, they think that means they failed as parents,» says John Laws, a retired Portland police officer. «They cover for the kids, because their position in the community is at risk.»
Leading double lives
Some Slavic teens rebel secretly, Parker and others say. On one hand, they attend church and follow the many strict dress and behavior codes. Some Slavic churches require women to wear long dresses, cover their hair and ban makeup and jewelry. They forbid television, Internet, movies, dancing or dating.
But when parents aren’t watching, the kids transform. Girls from the most conservative families go to the school restroom and change into jeans or short skirts and apply makeup. They change back before heading home on the bus. They have makeup parties and secret boyfriends. Boys go partying with friends, telling parents they are at a youth group meeting.
«They have to play two roles,» Parker says. «They can’t be who they would really like to be in front of their parents, so they lead a double life. Parents have no idea what’s going on.»
Youth and school staff estimate at least half to two-thirds of the metro area’s Slavic teens lead some sort of dual existence. At times, this leads to trouble at school or with the law.
Hanging out at Starbucks
A favorite meeting spot is quintessentially American — Starbucks. At Vancouver’s Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard store, groups of girls in makeup and low-cut blouses sip lattes and chat with sharply dressed boys in a mix of Russian, Ukrainian and English. BMWs and other expensive European cars are parked outside.
Most Slavic teens flock to the cafes to socialize, but Vancouver Police Department’s Ilya Botvinnik says some youths are involved in crimes. No statistics are available, but anecdotally, Slavic crime is similar to that in other immigrant communities.
After complaints that Russian-speaking teens intimidated customers, police were sent to monitor the Vancouver cafe, Botvinnik says. They also patrolled Starbucks’ Portland Gateway location on Northeast Halsey Street, another spot popular with Russian-speaking teens.
Mill Plain customers told police about watching a weapons deal out of a car trunk. Botvinnik himself saw evidence of drug sales, Slavic kids smoking marijuana, and girls engaging in prostitution. There is also evidence, he says, of a drug network of Russian-speaking dealers that circulates among metro-area Starbucks cafes, targeting Slavic youths, «although no arrests have been made.»
Imitating the Russian mafia is popular among some of the kids. A few join the dozen or so loosely organized gangs across the metro area, says Laws.
«When parents go to church, the teens form criminal enterprises organized around the churches,» stealing cars and car parts, the retired officer says.
Another dramatic problem that police and social workers see is the rise in drug abuse and addiction, especially to heroin.
Finally, school counselors and police who work with the community say prostitution is rising among middle school and high school Slavic girls. A prostitution case involving the Russian youth community was opened with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office’s human trafficking division, Officer Keith Bickford says. It has been taken over by the FBI, which doesn’t comment on open cases.
Help slim but growing
Despite the overwhelming need for help, few culturally specific resources are available to Slavic youths and families.
Because they are white, Russian-speaking refugees aren’t usually seen as a minority or eligible for minority grants to fund services. And, although they are one of the largest ethnic groups in the states, little or no data are collected about the group as a whole.
Benjamin Brink / The Oregonian
Thirteen youths who will be baptized in the Washougal River wait as Word of Grace Bible Church members gather.
Pastors, the community’s gatekeepers, are skittish about letting social workers into the church, Parker says, especially to distribute brochures or give lectures about physical abuse or parenting, «because they feel I may say something against family values.» Pastors acknowledge they try to solve family problems strictly within the church.
But many don’t openly address the problems with youths. Several pastors interviewed for this story said they have no problems. Some youth pastors speak broken English. Some are not trained or educated and offer simplistic solutions, Riskin and Parker say.
«Many Russian churches here are like the churches in Russia 20 years ago — they are stuck in time,» says Rathbun, the Faith Community Church pastor. «They’ve had all these traditions for so long that they started seeing them as theological truths instead of the cultural norms they are, and they’re unwilling to change them.»
But because religion is so important to this group, Parker and Rathbun say, solutions must be church-based. «We have to work with the pastors to help the community,» Parker says.
College-bound
The Slavic community has seen some success, which gives its advocates hope.
During the past few years, Riskin and others have seen more Russian-speaking teens complete high school and head to college — teens such as Vitaliy Cherchenko, Reynolds High School’s valedictorian last year and now a Portland State University dentistry student.
The Russian Youth Leadership Conference, which promotes student leaders and helps them pursue higher education, is growing, attracting hundreds of Slavic teens. And a new charter school, Azbuka Academy, opened this month in Southeast Portland, draws Russian-speaking students who might otherwise be home-schooled or drop out of public school.
Some congregations are also starting to acknowledge they may lose their youths — and eventually their congregation — if they don’t change. Many see bilingual or English services in their future. Others have relaxed their dress codes. At Sulamita, a Slavic church in Fairview, girls in short skirts and high heels sit next to grandmothers bent in prayer.
Pastors are changing too, says Alexander Tkachenko, who works with Russian speakers at the social service agency Human Solutions. His pastor at Sulamita, Nikolay Michalchuk, now regularly preaches that parents should pay more attention to their kids. Michalchuk encourages youth leaders at Sulamita to work with troubled youth.
«We have to adjust,» Tkachenko says. «Maybe we’ll lose our Russian language service, but at least we’ll keep our faith.»
In the end, pastors, psychologists and school staff agree, it’s the quality of the relationship with parents that makes the biggest difference for youths.
«Success depends on family dynamics,» Parker says, and whether the family is open to education and change.
What Russian-speaking parents need to understand, advocates say, is how important it is to have a healthy relationship with children instead of being rigid and strict.
«The Bible doesn’t teach us to force things. It’s important to explain, to give advice, to talk, otherwise kids will just lie and do things behind parents’ backs,» says Pavel Yuzko, who worked as a Multnomah County health educator with Slavic families until his position was cut last year.
«If you have a good relationship with your kid,» Yuzko says, «it works better than just laying down the law.»
– Gosia Wozniacka; [email protected]
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