You Can't Be Everywhere All at Once
Being the sole caregiver of a Chinese parent makes me want to clone myself
Midlife is a tumultuous time. Not only do we start to feel the impact of aging in our body, many of us also feel lost in our life’s purpose and are faced with heavy-duty caregiving responsibilities that no one ever prepared us enough for.
“Getting old is no fun,” laments my dear Turkish friend, as she cares for her husband in his 90s while facing health issues of her own. “There’s no relief.”
Her mini doses of reality and her stoic way of handling the drudgery of life often help me get through tough times.
Last December, I stepped into the role of the sole caregiver for my almost-80-year-old mom. Right before Christmas, she broke her kneecap and experienced the very first major surgery of her life.
This accident completely shifted our mother-daughter relationship — for the better. I’ll write about what it has done for us in a future post. Today, I want to address the dilemma a Chinese-American daughter faces while caring for a parent.
Being a Chinese-American who didn’t grow up in the United States means that I’m constantly feeling split between an inherited sense of cultural obligations and an adopted entitlement to personal freedom.
If my family and I had lived in a Chinese society all our lives, I might not have developed such an acute sense of this dilemma. I would have accepted without question the role of a loyal and dedicated caregiver and shunned my desire to enjoy a carefree life.
Self-sacrifice is considered virtuous in my culture. After all, your parents sacrificed their own lives for you. Why can’t you do the same for them?
The Chinese have a saying: “When people grow old, they become a child again.” This implies that the elderly need care just the same way a child does.
The Confucius Family Model
The Confucius principle of “filial piety” puts eldercare obligations front and center of our familial life. Not only does it demand obedience and respect for parents and other elderly family members, but it also expects devoted service to them.
Such responsibility falls on the shoulders of daughters almost by default. This is partly because of the patriarchy family structure found in traditional Chinese households, and partly based on the belief that daughters are better at caregiving and “closer to the parent’s heart.”
The patriarchal family structure is based on this Chinese axiom: “Men are masters of what’s outside the home; women are responsible for everything within.”
In the past, the role of married women was limited to homemakers while their husbands worked. It was an unspoken rule that they picked up whatever caregiving duties arose at home. And home was where the extended family — including elderly parents — lived.
By default, sons would move out of the home of their family of origin. But when daughters got married, it wasn’t uncommon for their parents to move in with them and their husbands. As a result, Chinese daughters got the brunt of eldercare duties. (Note that I used the pass tense here, but this practice is still alive in some households. I just don’t have the statistics for it.)
An adult child caring for their elderly parents is not only considered a self-evident practice, but it’s also an economic necessity — not just in our traditional society but even today.
From the moment I was born, I was taught that children were insurance against old age. Our role as children was to care for our parents when they got old because they wouldn’t be able to support themselves economically when they lost their ability to toil.
However, I came to feel uneasy about the filial piety concept once I became a part of American, and later, Swedish society, the latter of which excels in cradle-to-grave welfare provided by the state.
These Western societies provide different degrees of protection when a person reaches retirement age. Although such protection seems to have dwindled over time, it alleviates the mandatory eldercare obligation of adult children. In practice, such safety nets are far from perfect, but when I compare them with what we have back in China and Hong Kong, they are far superior.
The nature of kinship care in traditional Chinese culture can sometimes play itself out in a “coercive” way. That’s because children’s free will and desires aren’t necessarily considered. In the traditional hierarchy of human relations, children are viewed as subservient to their parents, and “possessions” without independent minds. They don’t have as many rights as the people who come before them and have more life experience.
Breaking away from this “norm” would often be regarded in a negative light, such as being “selfish.” In fact, caring for an elder isn’t an option. It’s an issue of morality.
Bu xiao, meaning, not pious toward your elders, is a severe condemnation. It’s something that warrants the strike of a lightning bolt (a warning often used by parents and seen in old-fashioned Chinese TV dramas, too).
On the other hand, if you are xiao shun, meaning, pious toward your elders, you would be considered a good daughter or son, and highly regarded by your extended family and friends.
In other words, everyone is watching your behavior around your parents. The social pressure is intense.
With this backdrop, children born into a Chinese family can experience formidable cognitive dissonance when they adapt to the American way of living.
American children, to my surprise, are not expected to care for their parents when they are old. They can rely on nursing homes, home health aides, social security and pensions to take the brunt of eldercare off their shoulders. Of course, this isn’t necessarily true in practice, as I have observed a similar struggle among my peers. But this was my early assumption when I encountered American culture.
A kind of envy grew in me throughout my adult life as I gradually assimilated into U.S. society. In my 20s, while I found myself filling the role of my parents’ interpreter and overseer of all the practicalities of life in their adopted country, I saw my American peers enjoying themselves in myriad ways. I decided to rebel by moving as far away as possible.
When Duty Calls
Fast forward 15 years, I returned to the family home after a divorce and a life away from my parents in two countries. During the period when I lived abroad, I came back for a few months to care for my father, who succumbed to an acute form of leukemia. My mother was busy working, and the responsibility landed on their “good daughter” (but not their son).
And now, seven years after I came back, it’s my mother’s turn to require caretaking. I looked after her for several months after her knee injury. She hasn’t completely rehabilitated yet. During her recovery period, she had two emergency situations that took her to the ER.
I live 3 hours away from her so I wasn’t in a situation to be at her side. She needed me to call the ambulance for her and to interpret for her. Even though Chinese interpreters are available on the phone, it would’ve been a hassle for her. The procedure to get her an interpreter would’ve been clunky. I know that intimately because I worked as a Cantonese-English medical interpreter during the COVID-19 pandemic. I also knew that my mother would rather that I interpret for her. And interpreting for her would allow me to monitor the severity of her condition and decide what I needed to do to help her.
I was terribly anxious during those nights when she spent long hours (up to 12 hours) at the ER. I had physical symptoms of anxiety while trying to stay calm and monitor the situation. I lost sleep and worried incessantly.
The second time, which happened on the day the air quality index was off the charts in New York City, mom got violently sick. I was out of state and had planned to be away for another two weeks.
I felt both guilty for not being able to be there for her and irritated that this happened just a few days into my long-awaited trip.
“Could it have been an anxiety attack?” I thought. “Did she feel abandoned?”
And then my next thought was: “I’m such a bad daughter. How can I be caring for my friend’s elderly mother while neglecting my own mother?”
That was capital-letter Guilt speaking to me.
Ultimately, after a tug-of-war inside my head, I decided to put these thoughts aside. As my wise Turkish friend advised, “You’re lucky she has friends who help her. You can’t be everywhere every time. Just accept that, and be grateful that her friends care for her.”
I am incredibly grateful that my mother has a few good Chinese neighbors on the same floor of her apartment building. They have helped her in various degrees with great enthusiasm. She also has some church friends who live in the neighborhood. I am so glad they’re in her life and love her the way they do.
It’s true that we can’t be everything to everyone, everywhere and all at once. This may exist in a fictional multiverse. Maybe one day, technology will allow us to clone ourselves. But, in my mother’s lifetime, this probably won’t happen.
Accepting the reality that we can’t control every aspect of our life means factoring in the possibility that something grave may happen to my mom one day, and I may not be there to avert potentially severe outcomes. But it also means that I can be at peace with myself and live my life without feeling as if I were wearing a straitjacket. And that is perhaps what freedom ultimately means for those of us with aging and ailing parents.