BTW, fwiw, the filial piety thing isn't unique to Asian cultures :D In Sicilian familes, the oldest daughter's role is supposed to be that of caretaker. She's supposed to not marry, to stay and care for the parents.
This has some weird results. There are a lot of unmarried aunts living with other family members in later years. My godmother is one who stayed with her mother and never married. She also never had sex ;) She said to me recently "If I'd known that I was NEVER going to marry, I would have broken down and had sex before I got old and dried up, just so I'd know what it was like."
My mom was the oldest daughter, and her mother was FURIOUS when she got a job with the foreign service and went to live in Spain. And then, when she married my father while over there, my grandmother took the part of her money which would have gone to my mother, and bought herself carpets with it, in protest. She never really reconciled to my father because of that.
And even me, 37 years younger than my mother - I'm an only child. I can recriminations for not living closer - even though my mother KNOWS that we maintain our best relationship with a thousand or so miles in between us.
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Date: 2007-06-26 09:30 pm (UTC)This has some weird results. There are a lot of unmarried aunts living with other family members in later years. My godmother is one who stayed with her mother and never married. She also never had sex ;) She said to me recently "If I'd known that I was NEVER going to marry, I would have broken down and had sex before I got old and dried up, just so I'd know what it was like."
My mom was the oldest daughter, and her mother was FURIOUS when she got a job with the foreign service and went to live in Spain. And then, when she married my father while over there, my grandmother took the part of her money which would have gone to my mother, and bought herself carpets with it, in protest. She never really reconciled to my father because of that.
And even me, 37 years younger than my mother - I'm an only child. I can recriminations for not living closer - even though my mother KNOWS that we maintain our best relationship with a thousand or so miles in between us.
Parents are fun, yo.