I come from two cultures that hammer home how important family is. Taiwanese and America, I don’t actually know much about the former other than what my mother and father have told me. The latter gives lip service to it, but doesn’t really put much effort into making it happen. In fact, during the pandemic, many companies showed exactly how much they cared about family (hint, not much if any).
There are many difficulties in discussing family dysfunction. One, there is a collective investment into pushing the narrative that family is everything (again, without actually promoting family. Many families had a really hard time during the pandemic, especially working mothers. This post is not about that, though).
For people with good parents, it’s nearly unfathomable to them that other people have different families. It’s the same for anything, really, in that people think they are the norm. For whatever reason, though, it’s even more the case with faaaaaaamily. You’re supposed to forgive behavior from family members that you would never forgive from anyone else.
Every family has an Uncle Tim who is to be avoided for whatever reason. Whether he’s creepy or gross or racist or whatnot, everyone speaks about him in hushed tones, but put up with him because ‘he’s faaaaaaaamily’.
There’s a truism that you don’t ask the unreasonable person to change their behavior beacuse you know that they won’t. Instead, you pressure the reasonable person to adapt because you have a better chance of getting that to happen. This is why my mother puts up with my father and scolds my brother and me for not catering to his every whim.
The last time they were here, my mother sent a long and guilt-tripping email to my brother and me, saying that we had to love and respect our father more. The day before, she told us not to speak so fast in front of him because he could not keep up and it made him feel bad. My brother and I only speak English. and we both speak very quickly.
When I pointed out that my brother and I were just talking to each other like normal people in the language we spoke (in other words, we weren’t speaking English AT my father, so to speak), she said we should go to the living room to do that. I pointed out that it would make my father even more paranoid if my brother and I were to LEAVE THE ROOM in order to talk with each other.
Back to the email. She said in Taiwanese culture, kids were supposed to love and respect their elders (that this was the most important thing). Which, yes? I guess? But there are qualifiers to that. At least I hope there are. And maybe this is the American in me, but that’s fine. I am an American, whether I like it or not. I’m Taiwanese by lineage, but I have never lived there. Nor, quite frankly, have I wanted to. Given what my parents have told me about the culture, why would I?
It’s the same with their brand of Christianity, really. Gee, the woman (as I was for many years) is considered inferior, useless unless she marries and spawns children, and completely under the thumb of her husband? That is such a tempting offer. Subsume myself completely to a man, any man, and give up my identity, autonomy, and control of my life? Why would I ever want to do that?
It’s the same with my mother writing, childishly, I might add, that elders deserve love and respect. Doesn’t everybody? On a human level, I mean. Every human being is worthy of both by the virtue of being a human being. Secondly, if the child gets nothing in return, why ever would the child want to make that transaction? Parents are supposed to love their children. At least in America. And in Taiwan, at least the boy children. Girl children are expendable, I know. But I think parents these days would at least have some fond feelings for their girl children. Even in Taiwan.
Yes, I get that society and culture play a big part in making sure the status quo is kept firmly in place. But I am not in Taiwan. I am not surrounded by that culture. American culture is fucked up in its own way, but complete obeisance and filial piety to the parents is not part of the spoken American culture.
Also, you can’t really dictate love and/or respect. You can, of course, but you can’t force someone to do either. She has it backwards. She wants my brother and I to love and respect our father more than we do. The way for that to happen is if he actually does something that would elicit more love and respect. It’s not something you can force. I can’t think, “Oh, I should love my father more. So I do!”
But this ties into the truism that you can’t ask the unreasonable person to be more reasonable. My mother knows that my father is not going to change, especially not this late in his life. She also has spent her entire life slavering to his every demand. That’s not completely fair. She has put her foot down a few times, but in general, she’s let him steamroll her. I can’t completely blame her because my father is a terror and really unpleasant to talk to. There is no chance of him changing his mind, so the best is just to shine him on.
How do you tell all that to someone, though? Someone whose parent loves them, cares about them, and wants what’s best for them? Those people drastically undercut how fucked up parents can be. They believe that parents love their children and anything they do is out of that love. So, even if it’s a bad thing, it’s misguided love. So many people refuse to/cannot understand that there are some parents who do not love their children and/or are actively malevolent towards said children. I can understand why they don’t want to contemplate it, but it doesn’t help those of us who are in that position.
I feel frustrated and gaslit, quite frankly, when people defend my parents without really knowing the extent of what they’ve done. But I can’t really blame them because it’s next to impossible to explain it in relatable tearms.