Drawing on ethnographic data on two Chinese immigrant families over a five-year period, I illustrate how and why growing alienation occurred in these families. My analysis shows that a host of developmental, immigration-related, and cultural factors lead to growing alienation in parent-child relations. Social class also plays an important role in shaping family relations after migration. This article complicates understandings of the Chinese American home context and provides educational anthropologists with a useful framework to understand changing dynamics in immigrant families.