Revealing moments: Voices of Canadian Sikh women in a community health program

Healthy Babies Healthy Children (HBHC), a federal child development program for children aged 0–6 years, serves both the mother and her children. The researcher is a public health nurse involved in this program working with newly immigrated Sikh families in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). From her experiences, and those of other Sikh women she knows, the researcher is aware that immigrant Sikh women often face barriers in accessing community programs that would facilitate a more positive settlement experience. Also, many women, once in Canada, have trouble negotiating new identities and negotiating new parenting roles in a society with different cultures and rules. This has led to Sikh families functioning at a less than optimal level. The researcher could find no literature on the experiences of Sikh women immigrating to Canada or North America. Thus, the ultimate purpose of this research is to add a new piece of literature, specifically regarding the immigration of Sikh women to the GTA, to the vast literature on experiences of immigrant women from cultures other than Sikhism. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)