I recently listened to a podcast of Dr. Gabor Mate who spoke of the effects of trauma endured as a child on our adult present day lives. A child has four basic needs that need to be met as part of their normal development. One, they need to be loved unconditionally and accepted for who they are by multiple adults. Secondly, they need to be able to express all their emotions ie anger, fear, lust, envy, grief without fear of being shamed. Thirdly, they need to have rest and not have to work for the love that they are receiving. Fourthly, they need to play without having an agenda, to feel free to create and use their imaginations. These are all conditions that parents need to ensure are met for children to grow into emotionally grounded, loving adults themselves.

The duty of parents is to help guide the development of their children. But do the children then have the duty to take care of their aging parents? Is this an implicit transaction in the parental – child relationship driven by society’s norms or driven by nature? Do children owe their parents for the care they received and sacrifices parents made for their child and eventually, are these roles then reversed so that the child must reciprocate this care for their aging parents?

To a rational, modern person, the most obvious fault to this logic is the point that children don’t ask to be born. Parents have control over the decision of having children, save for people who live in restrictive, patriarchal societies or who are victims of sexual violence. If children don’t ask to be born, they never agreed to this “transaction” and parents should raise their children not expecting anything in return from them.

A child borne into an Asian family, usually immigrant or first generation, typically knows these dilemmas all too well. These questions or ideas of reciprocal obligations and burdens in parent – child relationships are based in Confucianism. And in traditional Vietnamese Buddhism tradition, in which my mother raised me and my siblings, filial piety is practiced in three ways: to repay the gratitude toward one’s parents and earn good merit; to pay karmic debt, and as a way to contribute to and sustain the order in society.

Additionally, if you perceive these questions from a Buddhist point of view, children don’t ask to be born but their spirit does choose the family they are born into, specifically the parents. A child and their parents are linked by their individual karma. Parents who are difficult to their children is considered a welcome exercise for the children towards becoming a Bodhisattva. In Buddhist teachings, it is in the struggle to be filial to their parents, that the children gain wisdom and patience just as diamonds were once coal under pressure for long periods.

In traditional Vietnamese culture, aging parents were typically cared for until death by family members. Even now in California where resides the largest Vietnamese community outside of Viet Nam, nursing facilities catering to the aging Vietnamese is a recent phenomenon. Those who choose to place their loved ones in such facilities experience a different level of guilt, one that is compounded by Vietnamese cultural expectations that family is insular and care for their own.

It behooves every generation to question why norms and cultural expectations exist, to inquire what has changed in our society, and whether we need to create a new reality that serves our current needs.

What is filial piety according to Wikipedia? “filial piety means to be good to one’s parents; to take care of one’s parents; to engage in good conduct, not just towards parents but also outside the home so as to bring a good name to one’s parents and ancestors; to show love, respect, and support; to display courtesy; to ensure male heirs; to uphold fraternity among brothers; to wisely advise one’s parents, including dissuading them from moral unrighteousness; to display sorrow for their sickness and death; and to bury them and carry out sacrifices after their death.”

It’s easy to want to take care of our aging parents if they treated us well. But what we do with aging parents who were terrible role models, abusive to their children, neglected them, caused their children trauma, and thwarted development of their children, essentially abdicating their duty as parents? One or any combination of these conditions may warrant detachment from their parents. Even as we understand generational trauma, do we have the courage to end it now with us being the one to initiate change? I understand that my mother is who she is because of what happened to her. I have compassion and love for the child who was traumatized by two wars, who was traumatized by my grandmother who was abusive and showed little love and affection, and who was raised to care for her family without knowing how to care for herself. I feel love and compassion for the deeply flawed adult who she came to be, whose strongest instinct is her own survival at the cost of her children. What do I do now as the adult child, now that she is vulnerable and requiring care for her basic needs? I’m not seeking an answer about the legal implications which is a morass in itself. But more importantly, how do I live with myself and conduct my actions with integrity being the child and having experienced my own traumas with her? What are my moral responsibilities?

I forgive her for being a mother who was often times neglectful, cruel, mean, and selfish but I also honor for what she gave me, a model for resiliency and strength of will and mind, demonstrating compassion and generosity to those less fortunate even if those virtues were usually only directed to others outside of our family.

At minimum, children can strive to ensure their parents are safe and in a secure environment. Beyond that, each adult child must make their own individual decision about how to care for their aging parents. There are the foundations of the cultures we grew up with whether it be Confucianism, Buddhism, Islamic, Christian values and virtues to help guide us towards making the rational decision but in the end, we are left with the feelings of our own heart. What does our heart tell us? What does our body tell us as we make these decisions? Are we pained or are we liberated and free? What we do out of love is our guiding light and no one and nothing can force us to do otherwise.

My own heart leads me back to myself. I choose now to strive to live a life that is my own making, choose to make decisions that propel me forward to be independent, choose to make love my guiding force, and I choose to do it according to my own timetable, even if it means I’m stumbling along at times. Ultimately, I choose to take care of myself before I can take care of my mom. It’s a choice that I only recently since the pandemic started, am comfortable to even contemplate making. It’s a choice that is absolutely necessary but so often neglected in favor of taking care of others, another dilemma that women in particular are conditioned to accept. Yet it is what good parents wish for, to nurture their children so that they can one day take care of themselves. And I suspect my mom, while she doesn’t like it when I say no to her demands, has grudging respect for me, respect she will never admit to me or even to herself. And if she doesn’t, the most important person to give me respect is me. I finally understand that now. My mother was strong once with my grandmother, leaving her family, her homeland, everything that was familiar to her to go to America for a chance at a different, better life. She’s never been back to Viet Nam even for my grandmother’s funeral. She knows what it means to make decisions that isn’t popular or meeting convention, to make decisions that are right for her, even if it meant disappointing her most beloved ones. I’m learning to be true to my essence. That’s what she raised me to be. Even if she didn’t intend it to be against her advantage one day.