A Gap

In class, we talked about what kinds of differences create conflict in a family relationship. One of the first differences my mind thought to is the generational gap between my parents and me. My parents are first generation, meaning that they are the first generation in their families to move to America and start living here. Usually, when you think of Asian first gen. parents, they are heavily accented with their native language and not fluent with the English language. That is generally true. My parents have been living here for at least 24 years of so and I know more of the English language, culture, and general information about America in my 17 years of living here than them. This shows how different I am compared to my parents and this difference comes with a whole lot of conflict.

Courtesy of Stock photos

My mom has a lot of “facts” she learned from the newspaper. I absolutely think the information she reads is utterly false. One of my favorite “facts” is that dyeing your hair causes cancer. Excuse me? I argue that this isn’t true and my mom starts arguing back and thus a conflict has arisen. My parents are also old-fashioned. Most parents start off with “back in my days…” but my parents start off with “back when I was in China…” so that’s a difference between American parents and my parents. One of the most prominent conflicts that happened in my childhood is that I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers. Now, I don’t think it’s a big deal, but back then, it was like “omg you’re not going to Jenny’s sleepover? What a shame”. I remembered I spilled a lot of tears and yelled a lot about this topic. Another big topic is that my mom can’t understand the social norms among teenagers, especially about fashion. She would look at my ripped jeans and thought I accidentally ripped them. I would explain to her that it’s fashion and she would just scoff at the ridiculousness of the idea that ripped jeans are intentional.

Other problems children with first generation parents have to go through

A regret that I have in my childhood is not being able to learn mandarin fluently. I remember skipping Chinese school and not doing my homework. My mom does not understand English well, and I can’t communicate in mandarin well. Thus, I can’t explain myself accurately during arguments and that makes the situation worse. This lack of communication skills is probably why there is rift in my relationship with my parents. So in a sense, I can relate to Manning when he writes about his relationship with his father; “our communication was physical”. My absence of communication skills creates this barrier in my emotional relationship with my parents. As sad as it may sounds, it is getting better. Now that I am older, I have realized that the necessity to learn my native language is at the utmost importance to mend the rift between me and my parents. :’)