my momma told me...

my friends often comment to me how much of a role their parents play in their dating life. it's almost as if, one remarked, "my mom is dating my girlfriend. she's more picky than i am."

we've all been through this. why, exactly, are our parents so invested in our relationships? sure, it's the whole continuing bloodlines-lineage bit. they want their grandkids to be healthy, happy, smart, etc etc etc. to a certain point, it makes sense. but what's the deal when they start worrying about education, ethnicity (down to intra-Asia ethnicity), and my favorite, height and pallor? are my children really going to suffer by being short? i mean, i'm short. so i can't reach the top shelf in the grocery store, but does it really matter? i'm edumucated, healthy, happy.

i think every asian parent has a picture in their head of a perfect mate for their kids. except that this person doesn't exist. and our parents think that if we find that, if we achieve that sort of relationship, it'll be perfect. and, theoretically, the number of hiccups we (and our kids) encounter along the way will be reduced.

okay. i can accept that. except that it gets kind of ornery sometimes. our discussions about what and how things should be. it sometimes feels that my parents' opinions regarding my significant other is as important as my own preferences. that it's my duty as a child to fulfill their ideals in a mate. except that i'm the one living with him and cleaning up his dirty laundry and dealing with his shortcomings. why do their opinions seem to matter so much? why and when does it become about them and not us?

i dwelled on it for a while.

curious, i looked up the definition of confucius' filial piety. my dad is big on confucius. afterall, confucius did fathom up of a lot of the ideas that serve as the basis for the family values of us 2nd generation asian american folk.

a-hah!

amongst the whole treating others with respect and deference jazz is a sneaky little bit about "ensuring male heirs." i see. so that was back then. nowadays, the whole male heir thing has probably evolved now to be more of "ensuring successful and healthy heirs."

pretty clever mom and dad. in raising me, you not only taught me appropriate and respectful behavior in general, but managed to sneak a little programming loophole into my brain that allows you to have serious say in my decisions about my future mate and my here-to-fore unborn children. so while my normal reaction is to reject your input, i can't! it's hardwired into me to listen to you and pay heed to what you say! my brain, and my womb, are, in effect, yours!

ahhh. it all makes sense now. except that it doesn't. i can't help that i fell in love with who i did. and i can't convince the parents that it'll be okay when they truly, deeply, sincerely feel and fear that it won't.

so here we are, back to square one. with you being unhappy that i may be unhappy, when really, i am happy. we both want the same thing, and are striving for it, but why aren't we on the same page?

our stories

when i first came up with the idea of this blog, i began to interview friends and friends of friends about their childhoods and their perspectives on how they were raised. i started with the expectation that many stories would be similar to mine, perhaps subconsciously out of a need for validation of my own feelings and experiences.

and while i did find many similarities, i also discovered that the stories were varied and unique; not all families mirrored mine in principle and structure, and not all of my friends shared my sentiments in how they were raised.

as a result, when we created this blog, i felt that it was important to share some of these stories, and to also try to provide a parents' perspective. in interviewing several parents, i found that they too had struggles as children, and that these difficulties shaped how they approached our upbringing. having insight into their stories helps us better understand our own.

so, we'll try to interview and post a personal story or excerpt of an interview as frequently as possible. if you have a story you'd like us to share, please feel free to contact us. the stories will all be in the first person voice, as how they were told to us.

stop stealing sheep and learn how to train your asian parents

Yup, it's the answer to all your problems, right here.

starting out with 2 suitcases and 500 dollars...

when i was in college, a friend of mine passed along a list that was called something like "the top 10 things you've heard from your asian parents." actually, most of the things on that list were things that i had heard growing up (e.g. walking barefoot uphill both ways to school, riding a bike 90 miles in the rain, etc). i forwarded it to a few of my other friends. they too, commented on its aptness.

given that our parents had similar experiences in life, it was no surprise that my friends and i often shared the same pains when it came down to our parents. but interestingly, i discovered that these difficulties didn't end for my friends and me when reached adulthood. 7 years ago, i found myself in a cafe griping with one of my childhood friends. we were both young, accomplished, educated, and miserable. oh, and arguing with our parents. that would have been expected if we were teenagers, but no. we were in our twenties, and the fighting was still going strong.

i said to her, "there's got to be something about this dynamic, it's like a syndrome. a syndrome of having asian parents or immigrant parents. the asian parent syndrome."

in the intervening years, i've noticed that the term 'asian parent syndrome' is popping up with increasing frequency on the internet. this supports my belief that this is a tangible, pervasive phenomena. not that i needed a search engine to tell me that, though; many of my 2nd generation asian friends and i have shared similar experiences related to our families. most of my friends are asian, probably because they understand my inveterate neuroticism, and why i'm always a little manic.

so the point of this blog is not to rail on our parents, or the asian culture, or the experiences we've had, but perhaps to create some common ground for discussing and understanding this so-called syndrome.

and that's another thing. i thought long and hard about the use of the word "syndrome". it seems so harsh... in my mind, syndromes seem to refer to immutable, chronic, genetic conditions. so i looked it up (thank you dictionary.com):

syn.drome: [sin-drohm, -druhm]Pathology,Psychiatry a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like.

ok. that works.

of course, we don't mean here that being asian is a disorder or a disease. but maybe we can say that, in being the child of asian immigrant parents, we encountered disparate, if not completely conflicting values, and these conflicts resulted in a certain set of emotions. in light of this, we can loosely define the Asian Parent Syndrome as a pervasive need to achieve some sort of perfection, a nagging, seemingly irrefutable feeling of insufficiency and self-doubt, a deep love for, and desire to please one's parent and family, and guilt for being unable to do so.

so in this blog we are going to attempt to achieve a few things:
1. discuss the 2nd generation asian american experience from both a personal and analytical point of view
2. provide an open resource and forum
3. share the stories and experiences of young asian americans
4. explore the perspective of our parents, in the hopes of gaining some insight into the "why"

we hope to do this with respect and sensitivity for everyone in the situation, and with the end goal in helping everyone achieve a little more harmony in their life.