The cost of sacrificial love in Asian American families: honoring parents while maintaining boundaries

By Angie Kim

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n the book, “Boundaries,” by Cloud and Townsend, the authors utilize a faith-integrated family therapy approach to address challenges in family relationships, friendships, and other interpersonal relationships. They offer helpful and practical guidelines on family relationships. However, these guidelines do not consider the unique cultural characteristics of Asian and Asian American families. A uniform approach to healthy family boundaries may not apply in our multicultural society, especially in families shaped by the immigrant experience. It would be most appropriate for Asians and Asian Americans to prayerfully self-reflect on their cultural upbringing, embrace or reject the cultural values that have passed down from prior generations, and define their narrative through the redemptive story of the gospel. Then, one will be able to decide for oneself what a healthy boundary looks like in familial and interpersonal relationships.

The cost of sacrificial love

One important distinction of Asian familial values is that an individual from a collectivistic culture is taught to at times prioritize the needs of the family and of the community over their own. As a 1.5 generation Korean American, I have often struggled to draw healthy boundaries in my relationship with my now aging parents. When I moved away for college, I found my own voice to religious, social, and political matters, which shaped the lens in which I looked at myself, others, and the world. Notably, my relationship with Christ was deeply formed during this time. I saw myself as an independent individual from my parents, free to exercise my rights to choose my own career as well as where and how to live. 

Many in Western society may view my personal change as a healthy developmental step in a young adult; however, at home, achieving individuation was discouraged by my first-generation immigrant parents. As a family, they longed for me to remain physically, emotionally, and financially codependent on them and vice versa. What was theirs was mine and mine was theirs. They demanded that I put my post-college career goals aside to help run their small business.  I still remember my mother’s words that struck me to my core: “you don’t have a future if we don’t have a future; whatever we are asking you to do will benefit you and the whole family.” It deeply wounded me when I realized my parents, who were steadfast pillars of my life, tried to drown out my voice and my right to make my own choices. 

When I confided in my Western counselors, supervisors, and friends regarding my conflicts with my parents, some of them advised me to distance myself from my family of origin. They explained that it was healthy for me to leave home and pursue my goals. However, going against your parents is not easy for many Asian Americans, who have been raised to embrace filial piety and unfailingly obey their parents. 

Many Asian immigrant children grow up watching their parents sacrifice their well-established careers as well as cultural and linguistic comforts to provide a better future for their children. Some witness how such loss of social status and connection lead to negative psychological wellbeing of their parents. In return for their sacrifice, immigrant parents like my own expect their children to prioritize the family’s needs before their own. It is not uncommon for Asian immigrant children and adolescents to serve as their parent’s linguistic and cultural interpreters, translating documents and phone calls for their parents. It is not uncommon for Asian adult children to carry on their parents’ small businesses, support them financially, and cohabit with their elderly parents.

Jesus exhorts us to put the needs of others before our own (Matthew 23:11). Self-sacrificing love exemplified by Asian parents, families, and collectivistic communities is a cultural strength that is aligned with Scripture. The deep connections that Asian families pursue is an embodiment of what the Scripture says about the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:26: “if one person suffers then the entire system suffers. Everyone in the unit is connected to its members and plays a role in helping the healing process of a suffering body part.” However, it is unbiblical to unquestionably obey our earthly parents and unequivocally endure abuse in family relationships. The Bible is clear about sin affecting all realms of our lives and relationships, including family relationships, and at times separation is a necessity (2 Timothy 3:1-5).  

Honoring your parents while maintaining boundaries

I recall being troubled when I first read Matthew 10:37: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Perhaps any children and parents would feel conflicted when they first hear this. My parents were my world and their love was the first tangible love that I received from God. The same Bible that taught me to honor (Exodus 20:12) and obey (Ephesians 6:1; Colossians 3:20) my parents was reminding me that God is my priority, not my parents. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, left their father behind to follow Jesus (Matthew 4:21). This meant, I ought to leave my parents behind if God calls me to. Although at times it is necessary for adult children to physically distance themselves from their parents to heal from broken family relationships, this was not the direction that God has led me so far. I proactively decided to live physically near my parents because this is my way of loving and honoring them. I can endure through it all because I believe it is my calling to bear witness to Christ’s love for them.

Living near my parents means I must overcome challenges in communication. One of the time-tested cultural barriers between first- and second-generation Asian Americans is different communication styles. When they make a mistake, Asian parents rarely verbally apologize to their children; instead, they express their apology through positive gestures such as cooking their children’s favorite meal. Unknowingly, children may grow resentful towards their parents because they never received a verbal apology. However, they often do not openly express how they feel toward their parents because the family environment does not allow space to voice their opinions, especially those critical of their parents. Very few of my Asian friends could say that their parents have ever said “I love you” to them. Instead, parents expressed their devotion by working long hours in a foreign land to provide for their children’s physical and educational needs. That was their way of saying, “I love you.” For this reason, Asian families would benefit from having a cultural translator and an objective mediator (e.g., pastor or counselor) who could interpret the underlying meaning behind spoken words or actions to help bridge the generational gap. 

It would be more effective to reframe our Westernized understanding of what a healthy boundary looks like, to look beyond familiar ways of healing family and interpersonal relationships. When working with Asian American families, it is imperative to understand that first-generation Asian parents may differ in their perception of boundaries than their children raised in the U.S. First-generation Asian parents may hold onto rigid beliefs about the roles of each family member, often reflecting a hierarchical family structure. Some examples of these beliefs are that parents are inherently superior to their children and their wishes should be honored with obedience regardless of the children’s age. They care deeply about their children’s health and wellbeing. They care about the choices their children make because they want their children to have a better future. Asian children raised in America, while appreciating their parents’ cultural values and sacrifices, desire autonomy and independence. Despite fearing disappointing their parents, Asian children want space to navigate through their own choices and face the consequences to their own actions. 

An outsider looking in may conclude that the lack of boundaries in Asian family relationships is problematic. When implemented hastily, drawing boundaries in Asian families itself might be the reason for terminating a parent-child relationship. Hence, applying boundaries should come only after a thorough family assessment of the individual. It is not uncommon for Asian families to define their extended families as their immediate family. It would also be imperative to assess what environmental stressors the family experienced post-immigration. Only after thoroughly understanding the individual’s family relationships, immigration history, ethnic heritage and values, can individuals really guide someone from collectivistic cultures to distance or cut off ties with one’s family of origin and community. Leaving one’s endearing family of origin to respect one’s personal boundaries might lead to lasting guilt that one has selfishly neglected the desires of the family unit, a core component of one’s identity. Furthermore, a positive connection to one’s family of origin serves as a protective factor to one’s mental health. In the Asian family context, every effort should be made to reconcile rather than sever family relationships, however challenging and protracted the conflicts may be. This is in line with how God commands us to love one another: “Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

Photo by Dvir Adler on Unsplash

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Angie Kim is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a National Certified Counselor. She received her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) and her Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA).

Her clinical skills and expertise are in treatment of clients in community mental health settings, particularly with marginalized populations. She also has a long-standing passion for behavioral health prevention and intervention working with the Korean immigrant population in churches. Her scholarly research is in the areas of defining barriers and factors that impact underutilization of mental health services by Koreans and Korean Americans as well as examining the roles of churches and church leaders in increasing mental health awareness and care.

She serves as a speaker for a non-profit organization aiming to educate Asian Americans’ on the importance of mental health and access to mental health services. She presented at conferences hosted by Harvard Graduate School of Education and churches across the U.S. to educate Asian American communities of mental and behavioral health prevention and intervention.