Traveling as an adult with my Chinese parents is very comfortable, but also disconcerting I don’t often spend full, uninterrupted days with them anymore, and similar to my friends from HS/college from whom I’ve drifted, we don’t share as much life-context as we used to
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I do know a few people whose parents are their closest friends and confidants, but none are from 80s/90s white-collar Chinese-American immigrant families Lots to dig into here re: different immigration waves, economic circumstances, other countries’ immigrant cultures
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Most of the Chinese-Americans I follow seem to be from a similar immigration cohort, and some of them post about their family dynamic But everything I’ve seen so far has been jokey Subtle Asian Traits-esque material, mostly about the cultural alienation I’ve described here
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Also FWIW I think I’ve seen this phenomenon in non-Chinese and non-immigrant families as well Basically in any family where they’ve learned to peacefully coexist without directly confronting a fundamental-values-chasm that’s opened up over time And that might be Good Enough
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update: got drunk w my parents for the first time. homies can hang. we’re really in it now. can’t wait for the next couple decades(?)
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It's a lot of effort, considering the huge contextual gap even w the great starting place of a good relationship To add some nuance? Maybe unless your values/choices start to diverge sharply from legibility (to them), things are Good Enough? Not sure how that feels to you?
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I think we implicitly understand which conversations are off limits, but as far as I can tell, everyone’s quite satisfied as it is But one thing I haven’t explored is whether my parents even *want* to access this kind of vulnerability Might actually be quite unpleasant for them
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