Image: Nicole

Hugo Schwyzer published an interesting post last week on family and duty as experienced ”the children of Asian immigrants, raised with one foot firmly in [Western] culture and another elsewhere”. The below paragraph particularly struck a chord with me, echoing the experiences of a number of people I’ve been friends with over the years:

So you deny your sexuality through your entire adolescence, and put off sexual relationships until you’re finished with college. Ideally, you find the husband (whom the ‘rents hope will be from the same ethnic group) just as you begin to climb the corporate (or medical) ladder. You have kids while somehow holding down the job. You prepare marvelous meals that reflect the best traditions of your ancestral cuisine, your hair and makeup are immaculate, your body is trim, your husband is kept happy, and two sets of doting grandparents are given well-behaved children. You then begin to care for those grandparents while still holding down the job, still raising the kids, still cooking the superb whatever from the old recipes, still keeping your husband happy. Sister, ain’t nothing simple about it! From a feminist perspective, it looks like one long litany of sacrifice, one long list of obligations, one long reminder that as a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, one’s happiness is always contingent on the joy one brings to others.

In a continuation of this week’s (unintentional) theme of navigating convention, my good friend - and one of my favourite writers - Monica Tan responds below. Please share your own thoughts in the comments.

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While my experience in life does not reflect that what Hugo discusses (my Chinese parents gave me the independence to make my own decisions) it is a story that has come up among my Asian girlfriends.

Take my friend Nicole. From a very young age we shared a passion for performing. Like all good Chinese daughters we played a traditional instrument (she the piano, I the violin) and attended dance classes. But more unusually we co-authored a (still unfinished) book, chose a name for our band (“The Questioning Curtains”), tape recorded our own ‘Hot 30’-style radio show, and most critically took an interest in acting.

My own creative endeavors took me down the path of journalism and blogging, but for Nicole the acting bug never quite went away, much to the growing dismay of her parents - particularly her father, who like many frustrated orthodontists, pinned his unfulfilled dreams of doing medicine on his very gifted young daughter. While they indulged Nicole during her high school years, there was never to be any doubt as to what she was expected to pursue in her adult life: she was going to be a doctor.

Which is why when Nicole graduated high school with exceptionally high marks, it was off to med school she went.

At first things seemed OK. While she could hardly call herself passionate about it, medicine was kind of interesting, and at least she was doing something good for the world. And she did enjoy the prestige that comes with saying she was a “medical student”. But at no point did she ever completely shake off her attraction to the arts. She signed up for weekend acting courses, joined an agency who landed her a few advertisements, and performed in university revues.

But as it does for everyone living a double life, it wasn’t long before cracks began to show. Nicole found herself increasingly despondent in her “medical life” and increasingly drawn to the world of acting - the ideas, the energy, the people. More and more she was beginning to realise that was where she wanted to be.

It was at this point that her calls to me began to grow more desperate. She was extremely unhappy at her hospital placement, sometimes bursting out crying. She tried to lay out a plan that would allow her to work as a locum and simultaneously pursue her real love of acting, but was dismayed at how old she would before this could ever happen. She started to feel the walls of a lifetime of unhappiness closing in on her.

When she finally made the extremely brave step of deciding, once and for all, that she would quit medicine and go to drama school, her parents pulled out all the stops. Guilt-tripping, threats, blackmail, there was no end to the psychological torture made in the name of “it’s for your own good”.

You’ll have no money, all these nice things you have? Forget about it! You’ll never find a good husband. You’re going to be an embarrassment to the family and yourself. Why can’t you be more like your cousin? Didn’t we raise you right? Do you know how hard we’ve worked to give you the best? And you throw it all away!

They would alternate between the soft approach: You can try the acting after you finish your medical degree, and all out war: We’re going to kick you out of the house and you can forget about us paying for anything.

If there’s one thing that Hugo’s post may have overlooked, it is the rather astonishing power Asian parents have over their children. And this unsurpassed ability to emotionally and psychologically manipulate (perhaps “influence” is a nicer word) their children is no accident.

Obedience - be that to your family, school or community - is a cornerstone of Confucian culture. In contrast to the West, which encourages assertiveness, individualism and independent thought and action, Asian cultures places a high degree of importance on social conformity and personal relationships, from which filial obedience in born. (For example, as a teenager when I wanted to go out with my friends, my mother would complain: “Why don’t you just want to stay at home? Do you think in ten years time your friends will be there for you like we will?”)

And in Asian culture, fulfilling these expectations is not a burden. Or more correctly, it is a burden one should feel honored and happy to take on. So from this perspective, the distinction between filial duty and a personal right to be happy become blurred. In Asian culture the two are inextricably linked, with the first giving birth to the second.

Things become further complicated when, like so many young people, the daughter doesn’t really know what she wants. In this case, rebellion is for a question mark, and risks alienation from her parents, whom she loves, as well as alienation from her extended family and community.

She also has to tackle, without the support of her parents, some of the very real issues they warned her about: financial instability and adjusting to a lifestyle that may not have the material wealth of her middle-class upbringing; potential cultural conflicts in mix-race couple relations; all the trials and tribulations of a more adult, independent lifestyle (sex, dating, share house living, part-time jobs, partying).

… all the while watching her more dutiful siblings, cousins and friends reap some of the benefits of filial duty.

So in fact, while it may be impossible for the girl in question to deny her feelings when it comes to religious conversion, sexual orientation, or the “love of her life”, it’s probably easier (and may make her happier) to change her feelings in regards to casual dating, career, and moving out of home, particularly if her feelings weren’t that strong to begin with.

Like Hugo, I would encourage every Asian daughter to do what is true to her heart. Nicole discovered when she was accepted to drama school that her parents’ threats of disownership were hollow indeed (although the occasional comment continues to slip: “You like that house? It could have been yours if you’d become a doctor”). And there must be a degree of faith that, when rebellion is done humbly and kindly, the hearts and minds of even the most stubborn Asian parents can be expanded.

But at the same time, Nicole says, “the fact that I know that it breaks my father’s heart to allow me to do this breaks mine.” So if your heart tells you that doing as your parents ask will probably make you happier (particularly where there are a lot of upsides to the life they want for you) than pursuing a path that will displease them, there’s no shame in that either.

Elsewhere: Monica’s blog, Kapooka Baby
Nicole’s blog, MUSE*LI
Sometimes the greatest way we can honor our parents is by not living up to their expectations (Hugo Schwyzer)