Humans are the products of their environment and the socio-cultural forces that shape that environment. Moving away from the safety and stability of life in their homeland, immigrants seek new identities and develop strategies to cope with the demands of these new social and cultural forces. Settling in a host society is never easy. Immigration involves various forms of sacrifice and adjustment. These changes are much harder for those who have left their homeland involuntarily and find the culture of their host society incompatible with that of their native origin. Of the changes an immigrant has to face, changes in the family and gender roles are the most difficult and consequential ones because they involve not only changes in the identity and behavior of individual immigrants but also in relationships with their intimates. The most significant among these changes is the role reversal for members of the family.

Social Roles, including family and gender roles, never are fixed. They are negotiated within the new circumstances and are renegotiated if there is any further change in those circumstances. Given the drastic changes in male-female relationships around the world in the past three decades, gender roles have become increasingly a contested site of power, thus open to discursive and situational conflicts and negotiations. 1