Culture and Generation
Hello again everybody. This is Mauricio at Tree of Life Counseling, and this is going to be a slightly different video than what I normally do.
Today, I'm going to ask the Millennials and the Gen Xers to see who else remembers this. I have a very vivid memory of watching cartoons, watching television shows, and having there be a relatively consistently older character—like an elderly or a senior citizen character—who would complain about how easy the kids these days, quote unquote, have it. You know, the joke that I feel like I heard more than once was having to walk 15 miles in the snow uphill both ways every day just to go to school.
I'm not sure that's happening anymore in the media, but it made me really notice something in the work that I've done with all the many families who've had to immigrate to this country and then raise a family here, or the families who are in the midst of struggling with immigration. I noticed that particularly the families who would talk the most about how hard they worked to create a better life for their children, or how hard they worked so that they would be able to raise their children in this country, would often similarly bemoan how their children didn't have to struggle in the same way that they struggled in their country of origin.
This would become a pretty big point of resentment and contention in the family, where it would lead to discussions, arguments, and fights—all within the family—where the parent is expressing not feeling, you know, that their efforts are being validated, and that their children are taking for granted the opportunities that they're given in this country. The children essentially respond by letting them know, “Hey, I don't know what it was like in our country of origin because you chose to raise us here in the U.S.”
I noticed this a lot, and in working with these families, I struggled a bit to find consistently something that would help bridge that particular gap. For some families, it was helping them to see that yes, they did work very hard, and validating the incredible effort that some families have to go through to immigrate here, and letting them know that their children having, quote unquote, an easier life was exactly the end goal—you know, it wasn't a side effect; it was the end goal of their efforts. Then essentially congratulating them for, I don't know, job well done, like “Mission successful.”
For other families, it would sometimes help to let them know that the struggles of children in this country are very different than the struggles of children in their country of origin, but their struggles are nonetheless real. Although the stakes might be lower here—you know, the stakes may not be as life-and-death as they were in their country of origin—there are still struggles. Just because somebody doesn't struggle as difficultly as you did doesn't mean that they're not still struggling.
I would love to hear from people down in the comments—people who have experienced this kind of thing in their work or in their own lives. Me being a child of immigrants, I also had my own version of this particular conversation with my family. So yeah, feel free to get down in the comments and let me know what your experience has been, and if you've been able to kind of get past it or work through it with your families.
Thank you so much, and I look forward to hearing from all.
