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Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  That's American culture again. |
Yes, caring for yourself, living independently, and parents inflicting mental illness are Western/American concepts. Labeling them as such, however, doesn't make these concepts flawed, misleading, or wrong. It doesn't mean that Asian culture is promoting better ideas for children and their parents.
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Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot In American culture, the focus is on whether you are caring and providing for yourself, or not. In other cultures, the focus is whether you are caring and providing for yourself AND OTHERS (including your aged parents) |
Parents should easily be able to provide for themselves using their retirement fund or even better, having a passive income source.
You keep mentioning the fact that the parents have aged, but frankly, lots of people age and don't require frequent medical attention. If parents need their children to look after them daily and provide assistance wherever they go, then obviously they should've focused on their diet and exercise back when they were young.
Their children can help them out financially or visit them, but living with them is completely unnecessary until the parents are unable to take care of themselves. And that shouldn't happen until they reach a ripe old age, giving their kids enough time to live on their own and build their own lives. This depends, of course, on how old the parents were when they had the baby.
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Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot In Asia, it's common for the old folks to like the idea of at least one of their adult children to stay with them. Not only that, for the adult's spouse, and their little kids, to stay there too. So that the old folks can see their grandkids and look after them every day. |
The adult children and their spouses would probably like some privacy and space. Another American idea? It certainly serves those who practice it. Why be cooped up in one apartment when both the parents and their adult children can have separate houses? Since this is very achievable in North America, adult kids are taking advantage of this.
And rightly so. Having a parents' influence over you is limiting. They may have completely different ideas and different beliefs about money, relationships, and health. They have a different outlook on life, a different attitude. Why make compromises when each person can have their attitude within their own house?
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Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot This also seems to be a rather Western phenomenon - the notion that parents inflict mental illness on their children, and vice versa. In contrast, the Asian norm is that a family staying together is a good thing, because you get to see your loved ones everyday. |
This "norm" also encourages kids to take over their parents' business even when they have no interest in doing so. Really, it comes down to this: living together with your parents means that the adult child has to please his/her parents in order to avoid conflict. If you follow right in your parents' footsteps, then all is well. The problem arises when you have different beliefs about reality, and you want to try something new, something that the parents wouldn't approve or attempt themselves.