What do we owe our families?

Do you feel pressure to provide financially for your immigrant parents? Children of immigrants are more likely to be parentified, whether that’s by helping out financially or translating paperwork. And that feeling of obligation can carry through adulthood. This week, host Reema Khrais asks: what do first-generation Americans owe their families, and how do we balance caring for parents with caring for ourselves?

Khrais talks with Gigi Gonzalez, financial educator and author of “Cultura y Cash,” and Sahaj Kaur Kohli, therapist and author of “But What Will People Say?”

Key ideas:

• Gonzalez’ “quiero y puedo” framework: Do you want to help? And are you able to?

• Thriver’s guilt: Children of immigrants may feel guilt for having access to more resources, opportunities and choices than their parents.

• Reciprocal vs authoritarian filial piety: One’s feelings of loyalty to your parents can be shaped by internal (“I want to be able to do this for my parents”) or external (“I need to”) motivations.

• Collectivist vs. individualist culture: A collectivist culture prioritizes family and community, sometimes at the expense of the individual; whereas an individualistic culture prioritizes the individual, sometimes at the expense of others.

• Bicultural straddling: First-generation Americans can face the challenge of constant adaptation between two cultural influences.

Khrais posed a few real-life scenarios for Gonzalez and Kohli. Here is their advice (lightly edited for clarity and length):

• Question 1: You're dating someone from a different cultural background, and you feel responsible for financially helping your parents, but your partner resents that you're prioritizing them over your future together. How do you recommend people navigate that?

Gonzalez: My husband is half Mexican and half white, but he was raised culturally white, so he still questions that. I recently visited my grandmother in Mexico, and I had the cash to give her $500 – I wanted to and I could. And my husband’s like, “Why, Giovanna?” Because I want to, that's why! And because I can.

Kohli: I'm a cross-cultural couples therapist, so I literally work with couples where one is often American, either white or Black, and then the other partner is usually a child of an immigrant. I'm also married to a white American man. And when we think about this question, it’s not really about the money – it’s more about family values. It's more about how much should family be involved? How much should we be involved?

These are questions that we should be having with our partners very early on. When my husband and I were dating very early on, we had very explicit conversations around culture, religion, family, expectations, norms, all of these things, and he was on board from the beginning. And if he wasn't, we wouldn't be together. And I think these are the conversations we need to have, and money is a part of that.

• Question 2: What if you're in a big family and you're not on the same page about this stuff with your siblings? Let’s say your brothers don’t feel the need to help out your aging parents, so you’re stuck with dealing with it alone. How do you approach that?

Gonzalez: I've seen this play out with my aunts and uncles, with my grandparents. There's five adult children, and you think between five working, able-bodied working adults, there wouldn't be an issue to provide a monthly allowance for their parents! But there is an issue, because they have their own families and financial goals, and some contribute more than others. There's definitely some resentment that's built amongst them. I see that happening, and that's why I started conversations with my brothers early.

Kohli: When I hear that the siblings aren't on the same page, I want to know what's the dynamic at play and why? There’s a family systems thing happening here: each sibling, depending on birth order, gender, lifestyle, favoritism, etc. All these things will impact the way someone feels either more reciprocity with their parents, versus like this burden of having to, and then wanting to opt out and saying, “Screw this, I'm not going to, I can't do this.” So there's more at play here: Money is emotional, and there's a lot of stories that we're taught about money, but also family dynamics.

And so when I hear a sibling wants to opt out, for me, there's a curiosity of why: what happened that has caused you to feel like you don't want to support anymore? If you're the sibling who's frustrated, how do you approach that? Not from a place of “you need to help, I'm alone in this,” but rather in terms of: “What's going on with you? I want to understand more about where you're coming from.” So many of us aren't taught to have these direct, explicit conversations, but we need to.

• Question 3: What if your parents don’t need your support, but you still feel cultural pressure to give?

Khrais: Just to use an example in my own life, my parents visited me in Portland, and I ended up just for ease, booking their tickets and their Airbnb because, logistically, it was simpler. And so they eventually asked me to Venmo-request them. And I’ve been going back and forth in my head, I’m like, should I send the Venmo request?

Kohli: I think if you are giving to your parents because you feel a pressure that you have to, and you feel like if you don’t they might say something and there’s this kind of implicit, unsaid obligation there again, the therapist in me is going to ask why? What are you trying to prove? Who are you if you're not? Many immigrant children, especially immigrant daughters, tie their worthiness to how much they can do for others. So who are you when you don’t do that?

Khrais: Yeah, so that’s an identity thing. That’s tough because that’s how I see myself in the family, right? I’m the person who gives back.

Gonzalez: The self-sacrificing daughter.

Kohli: It’s so tough! But you can also be the fun one, the one who shows up with time, and the one who can play games, the one who can make people laugh, the one who can model these things for the next generation. There's so many different ways we can tie our identity, but it doesn’t have to be how much you give to others.

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