Collective vs. Individualistic

A formative aspect of my upbringing was my “hyphenatedness,” which is to say that as an Asian-American I straddled two cultures and therefore two worlds.  I spoke Taiwanese at home and English at school.  I spent a lot of time with Taiwanese relatives and family friends in one setting, and with a whole range of kids and adults in another setting.  And through all of that, I picked up on similarities and differences, and had to navigate those similarities and differences.

As I’ve grown older, made my own decisions, and started a family, I’ve had to, consciously and subconsciously, own one or the other or both of those parts of my upbringing.  One dichotomy I’ve been thinking about lately is the more Taiwanese notion of collectivism versus the more American notion of individualism. 

Compared to the rest of my extended family, I’m pretty far on the individualistic side of that continuum.  I moved out to the East Coast, and not unrelated to that we see family members far less often and in general are a somewhat self-contained nuclear unit.  While these were distinct choices I made, and am largely happy with how my life has turned out, that is not the same thing as having no value for living (and raising kids) in an inter-generational and multi-family context.  Life is about trade-offs, and trade-offs mean costs, and that is one cost of the paths I’ve chosen.

Even within our little nuclear unit, I’m torn about my parenting style with Jada, Aaron, and Asher.  As I’ve noted before, Amy and I have already made preparations to downsize our housing situation, in what is now nine years from now, to go from a 6-bedroom rowhouse to a 2-bedroom condo, once Jada and Aaron have graduated from college and only Asher is home with us (and no longer benefitting from the locational advantage we now have, to be able to send him to a good elementary school).  When people ask me “but what if Jada or Aaron want to move back in after college,” I somewhat jokingly but somewhat seriously say, “that’s part of the plan!”  Which is to say, the intention is to force them to be adults and get their own place and get a job and pay rent and buy groceries, because it’s good for them to have to move into that phase of their lives.

But what if one of our kids really needs our help, because of health or addiction or heartbreak or finances?  The 20’s are such a tumultuous time for those possibilities, and to pull the drawbridge up on them can seem like a bad idea.  Or, to offer a counter-point to that counter-point, maybe we can still love and serve and protect them, but it is a good thing to do that but without the “living under our roof” part.

I don’t know.  Which just reminds me that for all the inner wrestling I did as a hyphenated kid so many years back, I’m still wrestling.