Asian parents who give you money instead of love

Asian parents who give you money instead of love

I thought my dad didn’t love me.

Sure, he said “I love you”, but I didn’t believe him—how can he love me when he constantly criticized my career choices, never bothered to learn about my dreams, or didn’t empathize with my failures?

In college, I put enormous energy and sleepless nights into my passion for entrepreneurship. I excitedly told my dad about how I started a bus company and spent my days winning customers and wooing investors, only to be disappointingly admonished with “ok you shouldn’t do that, make sure you focus on getting good grades” when I was already a straight-A student.

I yearned for the type of love that I saw my friends receiving freely from their parents.

The first time I went to a friend’s house to play Xbox after school it blew my mind that his dad would ask him simple questions like “hey, how was school? what did you get up to?” with attentive, genuine interest.

My dad did none of these things. I thought he didn’t love me.

— ❦ —

One thing my dad did was support me financially.

Despite getting fired over and over again from his first jobs as an immigrant, my dad scrounged enough money to buy the most expensive things he ever purchased: plane tickets for my mom and me to join him in Canada.

He kept me fed and clothed, and shielded me and my mom from economic hardship. Despite seeing my classmates sporting top-of-the-line hiking gear and new iPods while we could only afford donation bin clothes and bootleg CDs, I never felt like we were impoverished. He paid my university tuition and room and board.

But I wasn’t grateful for this. In school, I learned that money is an exchange for labour, so it meant that the only reason my dad gave me money was because he wanted me to perform some job in exchange.

My job was to be a “good son”, and show my piety to his wishes, or he would react with furious anger that I disobeyed so vehemently from his “elder wisdom” for trifles like letting him know that he was driving the wrong way on a road trip, or for affronts like taking a girl out to prom that he didn’t like—a friend that I spent a semester together fundraising for the same non-profit.

I suppressed my individuality and authenticity because I could never do anything that angered him so much that he kicked me out, as that would be catastrophic. I would have nowhere to live, no way to make money to pay for food or shelter.

This gave me an extraordinary motivation to earn my own money and become self-sufficient so I didn’t need to rely on his approval.

Money was my ultimate career goal. Job satisfaction, work-life balance, making a difference in the world—none of it mattered compared to just taking home a huge paycheque.

So I stayed up late nights after school running my own business and practicing interviews for ultra-competitive jobs in finance and software engineering.

If I could pay for everything myself, I would be independent from my dad and he would no longer have power over me.

— ❦ —

In the West, we have a narrative that money is supposed to be something that you earn. You don’t deserve it if you didn’t make it yourself, so if someone gives you money for no reason, it’s because they are trying to manipulate you in some way.

But being a son was not a job1—if I was ungrateful, or angry, or a “bad son”, my dad would send me money anyway. If I failed at business, or flunked out of school, or got fired from my job and ran out of money, he would have just given me more.

Love is not about deserving. Unconditional love means that my dad would have given me the money anyway, even if I didn’t “deserve” it. My dad gave me money because he cared. Because he loves me.

Every time my parents gave me money for no reason, it attacked my self-concept. In college, they kept trying to buy me things and encourage me to go on vacation with my classmates, and I kept refusing.

This broke my brain—it violated the fiction I created about how they didn’t love me. This wasn’t supposed to happen—I’m supposed to develop useful skills and sell my talent for money. But if I just receive money for nothing? Then I would have to confront the fact that they do love me, and that I don’t actually have to do anything in return.

Only by rejecting them could I keep my ego intact, and maintain my drive to become self-sufficient, which had wholly consumed me at this point. What was the purpose of working so hard if I always had a safe home to fall back on anyway?2

— ❦ —

Money means different things to different people.

To some, money is “fun tickets”, like going to the arcade—money is for buying drinks, jet skis, or jazz concerts—the more money you have the more fun you can have.

To others, money is for attention and respect, to impress other people and attract their envy in an attempt to fulfill your loneliness.

In the West, money is a form of power. It’s a tool to leverage other people to do what you want, to accomplish selfish goals.

But for Asians, money is an act of care or love. You give people money because you love them and you want them to be happy.

More importantly, for our parents’ generation, money is safety and security. The world they grew up in was radically different from ours.

South Korea went from medieval villages to manufacturing cutting-edge smartphones in 50 years. Compared to North Korea, the sibling frozen in a time capsule, the contrast is incredible. Japan transformed from a feudal aristocracy to a thriving high-tech society with maglev trains during the same time period.

My parents’ generation grew up during communism in China, under poverty so extreme that some were faced with the horrible prospect of eating their own babies to avoid starvation. My parents were fortunately spared from the worst of this fate, but my mom still told me stories of her childhood in China where she chopped firewood to heat their elementary school in the winter, and my dad recounted how he would jump the fences at the beach to trawl for crawfish to supplement my grandma’s cooking.

No wonder my peers feel their Asian Parents™ are devoid of affection, and are so monomaniacally focused on money.

To our parents’ generation, they grew up in a world where affection didn’t matter. Who cares about your stupid emotions or fulfillment or self-actualization or any of these “higher values” if you can’t eat the next day?

If you’re starving for weeks on end, why would you give your last grains of rice to someone else? The only reason is because you love them. Forfeiting any piece of nourishment brings you one step closer to death’s door, but you choose to make that sacrifice because you would rather support the person you love instead.

Hugs or words don’t require any sacrifice. Money was the only real form of love to our Asian parents. It’s the only thing that actually mattered.

But Western culture does not recognize this as love, and so I didn’t either.

The West delegitimizes sending money as an act of care; instead, denigrating it as a “transaction”. And when money is a transaction, it means my job is to try to do the least “work” to extract the maximum value I can out of my relationship with my parents.3

Western institutions say: how dare your parents try their hardest to provide a good life for you. What little income they earn makes you ineligible for government assistance. Your sob story about being emotionally unfulfilled in your college application becomes pretty muted when your parents paid your tuition in full.

Western rhetoric looks down on “trust fund kids”, because they “didn’t deserve it” and they’re “spoiled”.

My parents spoiled me by protecting me from the poverty that we could have faced, and ensuring I could focus on studying instead of sustenance. They took on that struggle themselves so I could have the luxury of worrying about my passions and feelings.

The West taught me that the voices of victims ought to be elevated above the privileged, so I devalued the care that my parents provided and rejected them by playing the victim and accentuating the emotional turbulence. I couldn’t acknowledge their love for me because it would mean that I wasn’t a victim after all—instead, I was the “trust fund kid”, someone who was profoundly privileged but too prideful to appreciate what I had received.4

I didn’t understand this as a 10-year-old—I only understood that hot adrenaline rushed into my cheeks as I fought desperately to be heard.5 I couldn’t see that my dad’s expectations were not the prison walls that I imagined. It wasn’t until I stopped rejecting his love that I could experience it for the first time.

Despite my ungratefulness, it’s so remarkable that my parents would unconditionally provide me with a financially stable base, even if I lashed out at them screaming for attention after yet another late-night argument, even if I didn’t behave as a “good son” by giving them grace and acknowledge their sacrifices, even if I didn’t “deserve” to be loved.

Love is not about deserving! The greatest thing I inherited from my parents was not their money, but their care. I just couldn’t see it because they didn’t show care in the form of affection.

— ❦ —

My friends’ parents were respected community members. They helped out at neighbourhood barbeques, could hold fascinating conversations on fun hobbies like carpentry, or had big impressive houses to host dinner parties.

My parents didn’t have any cool hobbies, nor could they impress neighbourhood guests or spend the time learning interesting conversation topics. My mom often worked late, and my dad did all the home repair and renovation himself.

I felt ashamed of my parents, like they weren’t as cool, successful, or caring as my friends’ parents. But I didn’t see that behind the scenes, my friends’ parents’ financial support had an expiration date.

Would it be better if your parents said “I love you” to your face, but kicked you to the curb the day you turned 18? My parents would never turn their backs on me like that.

My dad would tell me “you always have a home here”, no matter what was going on in my life. I never once doubted him, or felt like he would withhold money to manipulate me, even if I displeased him or didn’t do what he wanted, because he ultimately wanted what was best for me.

Sure, in principle he could have been both affectionate and financially generous, but idealistic fantasies foment only dissatisfaction with the actual flawed humans in your life. Love is about accepting someone for who they are, not about replacing them with someone “better”.

My dad didn’t come from a rich family. He didn’t have the luxury of figuring out his feelings and showing me the type of love I saw from my friends.

But that didn’t matter, because he tried his hardest to give me the best possible life that he could anyway, and it’s on me that I didn’t see what he was doing until now.

I love you, dad.

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Footnotes

  1. Unless you are a professional son. ↩

  2. A friend of mine told me a similar story. She felt really frustrated that her dad suggested buying her a titanium Apple Watch for her birthday.

    She didn’t need an Apple Watch, and even if she needed one, she would have gotten the basic $200 aluminium version, not the $800 titanium version, because what’s the point of paying an extra $600 for a shinier metal?? She’d rather use that money for rent, food, or travel.

    I asked her why she couldn’t tell her dad that she doesn’t want the Apple Watch, and she replied that it’s because he would have said “it’s okay, I’ll just give you money instead”. So she accepted the Apple Watch, and then ended up selling it for a discount secondhand so she can use the money to buy plane tickets to Seattle to go hiking.

    She works in academia and has never made much money in her life, having to rely on her parents to support her hobbies like travel and hiking. Instead of gratitude, she felt shame about receiving money, resentful that she couldn’t make it on her own and had to rely on her parents.

    She couldn’t just accept money for “no reason”, because that was proof that her parents loved her. It had to be because it was “for her birthday”, which is just an obligation, and not “real” love. ↩

  3. Is giving someone money domination or subordination? Even though the act is the same, you can interpret it oppositely:

    Giving someone money is a form of domination when you expect them to do something for you in return, as an inducement or manipulation. “See what I can make you do!” It’s a block to connection because you’re just treating them as a transaction instead of relating to them as a human being.

    Giving someone money is a form of subordination when you care about them, because despite being a valuable resource, you want the other person to have it so they benefit from it instead of you. It’s a vehicle for connection because you’re making yourself vulnerable to being exploited, and placing your trust in the other person that they won’t.

    Growing up in the Western context, I saw it as framed as the former, when in reality my parents were trying to do the latter. ↩

  4. We are all trust fund kids. Even if our parents never gave us any money, we benefit from the trust fund of being in good health, with working eyes, ears, and legs. We benefit from the trust fund of a stable, peaceful society with public education, and the opportunity to grow and learn and work and love and become the person who we truly are. We benefit from the freedom to choose to make a difference in the world.

    We benefit from the trust fund of accumulated knowledge that undergirds our modern society. Our ancestors have toiled through the muddled fog of ignorance, painstakingly recording each spark of truth so that its glow may not be extinguished, illuminating humanity’s climb to prosperity. We all inherit this priceless endowment. ↩

  5. School was no escape either, I resented the truancy laws that kept me trapped and unable to pursue an actual education. ↩