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I know you acknowledged broad strokes, so just for the sake of context with another data point, in my current neck of the woods in Europe parents tend to provid
by vinay427 7y ago
I know you acknowledged broad strokes, so just for the sake of context with another data point, in my current neck of the woods in Europe parents tend to provide and expect even less than most Americans/Canadians. The variance within just western Europe is somewhat surprising to me based on others I've talked to.
- NikolaNovak 7y agoAbsolutely; I should've made my point clearer: there exists obviously a tremendous personal, but also a significant cultural variation in which generation gives how much and when. In the cultures I've been part of, it is so pervasive and subconscious it is completely not considered or thought about, let alone explicitly discussed; and yet, in many ways, also completely relied upon. You live your life based on certain basic assumptions on who will take care of whom, when and how much. People feel bad about discussing them and their conscious spoken words frequently don't match their actual ingrained expectations: e.g. a person saying "Oh no I don't expect anything from my children", may not have actually lived their life, prepared, or emotionally accepted possibility that their children actually wouldn't. Similarly, a parent saying "Oh, I gave my all to my children", might be surprised to see some other parents' extent of "all". And so on. Honestly, I only started even remotely pondering this once I had children, late in my life, after switching cultures a few times and marrying a partner from a different starting culture as well.