It happened with Kalani and Asuelu. It was mentioned to Danielle when Yohan wanted to move to the U.S. Now, it’s Manuel demanding it from Ashley.
I understand that it’s a cultural thing, but why do parents want to put this kind of stress on their children? I feel like it’s a tradition that’s been passed down and since they did it for their parents, it is just expected. Even just a grace period to help them get on their feet before they start sending $200 or $300 a month could alleviate the stress.
I’m from Canada and it’s extremely financially hard here, I couldn’t imagine sending money to anyone every month. I don’t know exactly how it is in the U.S., but I would think $300 is still a lot for anyone to send monthly. Not to mention, these people only have one source of income since the person coming can’t legally work until they get their green card. I know that it’s really a lack of communication on their end, but it really seems that the family is demanding as well, like it is incredibly toxic. Is this a normal thing or is it just exaggerated for T.V.?
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I’m first generation Chinese American. Taking care of one’s parents is a cultural norm. My dad’s parents were very poor. Before marrying my mom, he used his small grad school stipend in the US to send money monthly to his parents in Taiwan. This continued after he married my mom, even though there was only one income and a small grad school stipend. Income can be tight but you find a way to make it work. My dad would rather starve himself than not send money to care for his elderly parents. I don’t know if they talked about it in advance but my mom knew my dad’s family background. My guess is, it was almost a given. Sending money home to Taiwan continued after they had 3 kids. Even after my dad passed away when I was young, my mom continued to send money every month to his parents. This was out of love and respect for my dad; and cultural veneration for ancestors and elders. As for Ashley and Manuel - i think he should have told her about any family financial obligations in advance. She also knew that he had kids and supported his family so she also could have asked.
It’s actually since he’s not allowed to work while here on the K1 visa. If he was working where he’s from I imagine he supports his family. He has children. If he has to go 90 days without working he needed to talk about that with Ashley so he didn’t just blindside her with that.
i want to know at what point do the parents stop working so they can leech off their child? do the rules apply to female children as well? or just the males?
from my understanding, this is very very normal and expected in latin cultures.
It applies to all children. The one most capable/well off is expected to help everyone. It doesn’t stop at parents either. Cousins, uncles, aunts, all expect help too. If you don’t give them money, you’re evil and selfish (ahem…Yohan). Also, what you do give them is never enough. I had a cousin ask me for $250 super casually because she claimed someone put a hex on her 2 year old and she needed to get the hex removed by a witch doctor (this really happened to me). I got so tired of it. I cut them all off. My family is from the Dominican Republic.
So I like … live those situations in real life.
My boyfriends cousin and aunt come over here to America on a visa, work for cash and save it all up, ~6 months, and then go back to Mexico and don’t have to work.
The hurricane that just passed thru Acapulco ruined my cousins house, so now he’s back here working to rebuild the house. It is 100% a cultural thing that I will not understand. My boyfriends grandma, who doesn’t work and is in the hospital more often than not, also sends money to her brothers on the farm in Mexico. Even tho the only money she has is from having sold her house 8 years ago. They spend the money on bullshit but she sends it anyway. Our dollar here is worth more than a Mexican peso, so around $1200 USD will get you an apartment , bills paid, and still having money left over, that sets you up for a year.
In some cultures, you have children so they can take care of you. That’s just how it goes. Indian culture is very similar.
This is honestly how it feels to me. And I think that is the absolute worst reason to have a child.
I’m not sure if you are aware that some countries don’t have pensions or retirement or social security, so your retirement is your children and grandchildren. Your parents take care of you when you are younger, pay for your food/clothes/etc, so you help them when they are older.
I am learning this now…
That makes more sense. Now only if my moms family had been more honest about my grandparents jobs and why they took care of them… migrant work didn’t have a retirement plan either. American born migrant workers, when they got too old to continue migrant work makes sense they settled down and had a couple more children.
My mom didn’t have retirement either or a job. She became disabled.
I am a crappy daughter.
It goes deeper than having kids so they can pay for us when we get older. I can speak on behalf of indian families- we are raised to all support and take care of each other. That is how we financially, emotional and mentally thrive. We work as a unit- not a single family household. Typically our parents have sacrificed to give us better education and career opportunities then they had and we utilize their help for this. Then when they get older we take care of them, but they are still there for us emotionally and if we get married and have kids. Typically it is our parents that help watch the kids when we go to work. It’s just the way we build and stay in community and family to help us all grow and thrive.
If you actually get along the parent being supported are nice about it and it’s a give and take meaning they take care of the house and help with childcare so you can work to pay the bills Could you imagine moving Asuelus Mom in with you taking advantage talking crap to your face and then expects you to hand over anything above and beyond household bills? No thanks
So this system works if we all live in the same village (ie the grandparents can walk to parents house and take care of the grandbabies several times a week).
But if the parents are in a different country, this would not work?
^ please forgive my curiosity x
Kids are the retirement plan in many cultures 😁 You take care of your kids when they grow up, they take care of you when you’re older. It’s a symbiotic trade-off
Q no problem I think Ashley house with us is that she doesn’t know these kids never met them. I think if she met them and she was speaking to them should probably feel differently. He keeps everything very privately and after 10 years that to me is suspicious I don’t know why he didn’t speak to her first before he moved to New York about sending that amount of money every month. And then if you did, it’s on her he’s very critical about the way she spends money, but she doesn’t have children or a lot of responsibilities. The whole thing feels very shady to me.
It’s cultural
Manuel stopped working when he moved to the US, so he lost the means he had to support his family. It should not come as a surprise that he would need help taking care of his kids financially at least until he is allowed to work in the US (really should have been discussed before the move).
Also, if you plan to marry somebody with kids, the kids are part of the package… you can’t just erase them…
It’s not a common concept generally in the US but there are actual laws regarding financial obligations grown children legally have to their parents: " Filial responsibility laws impose a legal obligation on adult children to take care of their parents’ basic needs and medical care. Although most people are not aware of them, 30 states in the U.S. have some type of filial responsibility laws in place."
Blew my mind to find this out since children come into this world without their consent and they do not get to choose their parents. States rarely enforce the policies but it can play a part in civil lawsuits. I guess the only way out of it is some sort of legal/financial emancipation order which is wild.
Maybe the emancipation part happens when the child is a grown adult, lives 5 states or more away and doesn’t make enough to cover the cost of a dependent without then being considered living at poverty level?
My mom received social services support when she had no means of income and I could not financially provide for her or cover her medical costs.
When I had this discussion with my OH about it he was surprised I didn’t give my mum money every month lol It’s cultural - for him where he’s from they simply dont have not a lot of money. Everybody pools together…as the oldest son there is an expectation on him to give money - his mum needs it. They don’t have a lot. Also there’s no pensions. It’s not a thing that exist where he’s from. As he put it- u don’t help the elders they die. My grandad also sent money back to barbados to his mum until the day she died for the exact same reason
This allows me to understand the situation more.
In many countries, there is no such thing as an old age pension. There is no social security. Job opportunities once you hit 50 are non-existent. This was a job ad in the Philippines just to serve fastfood. If you’re short and have wonky eyes and limited English, your opportunities become much more limited!
The family is the support network. My wife in the UK has those pressures and I support her in assisting her mother back home. The brothers and the aunts…unless life or death, I don’t like the support network extending to them. But parents, there is an obligation for them whether we like it or not.
Damn! And they had to market servers positions as “entertainers” to get around that “you can’t set out to hire just pretty young things, Frank.”
Damn, they even went for the teeth and complexion. Imagine needing to be a hottie to work serving potatoes. I thought I had it rough not being born cute enough to be a Hooters girl!
The helping your wife is key. I had to stop dating middle class white dudes because I’d send my mom and brother money. All American born family here. But I did have to help my family out. So that also meant I couldn’t afford to do the things my white middle class friends who made the same amount of money as me did. So when it came to dating the white middle class guys, they seemed to have more of a problem with me sending my brother and mom money. Especially since I was sending my brother money while he was incarcerated.
Then I got a Texican boyfriend. I mentioned my brother needed new shoes and I had to also help my mom, and actually had to fly home asap to see her because she had cancer. Texican shows up at my apartment with what he could afford $150. I didn’t even ask. But unlike previous boyfriends he didn’t question my sending family money.
He understood because he would send money to his grandparents also. We eneded up breaking up because he decided to move back to West Texas tiny town to take care of his grandparents who raised him and I couldn’t imagine moving to a rural town so soon, again.
He’s the ex all others ended up being secretly compared to.
In the US there’s also no pension anymore (except for teachers, police/fire, and government for the most part) and few if any job opportunities for over 50s. Hardly anyone can afford to retire in the US now.
I’m not qualified to talk about US social security. Every US member on 90DF seems compelled to talk about their 401K or something as part of the contrived storyline, so there is clearly more opportunity to save for retirement. I don’t think Potato Corner in Philippines are paying into their employee’s pension fund nor providing their employees the opportunity to earn more than is needed for day to day existence. And that is the big difference. A 50year old in the US or Europe has realistic opportunity to put money aside from their salaries to help later in life. A Filipino in a middle class job might have funds to help for a medical incident, but putting money aside to help in old age… well, not in this lifetime.
Of course you are entitled to bemoan the plight of American retirees and how your country should potentially take better care of them. But putting their plight in the same sentence as a retiree in a developing country is a bit of a nonsense.
Of course it’s easier in the US than in the Philippines. But it’s not easy here either and that’s a problem on this show with foreigners thinking everyone is rich and money isn’t a problem. Most people I know here in the States are struggling right now. Most have little to no retirement and have almost nothing or literally nothing to put aside every month. I don’t know a single person even over 40 let alone 50 that’s been able to find a job easily. There’s tons of age discrimination.
I’m 43… turning 44 in January. I don’t think I’m quite in the scrap heap when it comes to the job market if I found out I was fired tomorrow.
Perspectives in other countries can be difficult to manage. When my wife’s relatives think I’m earning between $60-80k (in GBP equivalent currency) annually, it’s not just their eyes which light up. 2nd cousin Rolando suddenly makes himself known and that he would very much like a place on this gravy train (and I’ve never told them how much I earn, but a bit of Googling makes it easy for them to get a ballpark figure).
If I earned that in the Philippines, I could live like a king. To them, I am rich. The bit which they don’t understand is the cost of living in the west and how much I lose to taxes. Even after nearly 6 years, they cannot compute that my mortgage has got 18 years left on it. The amount I pay in tax per month would feed and clothe them for 6 months. That said, even after I give them my 1st world problems, the struggles they have far outweigh the struggles that poor people face in the west.
Good perspective. Of course in comparison to poor countries, we look rich. But most often we’re not, and you see that play out on 90 day. I’m also over 40 and have faced age discrimination in the job market many times. I have little to no retirement. I’ve been in student loan debt for years. Rent and mortgage costs have tripled over the last couple years. Here in the US no one can even afford to get a car loan because the interest rates have skyrocketed even for those with good credit; and the car prices are out of reach for most people even used. It’s hard out there. People struggle to buy groceries even with an average income.
You do realize some people have children for the sole reason that they will support them when they get old. Adult children are assets to the entire family. And if you’re making money it’s not just yours, it belongs to them as well. It’s an overbearing wait of responsibility. But how can you look away if your family is living in dead shit poverty while you are in the US living the “high life”.
Most of these places have no social security - old age/disability/financial assistance, long-term care homes, or retirement homes. Younger generations are expected to care for their older relatives. It’s a completely normal and necessary aspect of many cultures around the world.
I understand this now.
It is clearly cultural and also the arrangement Manuel had with his family back in Ecuador. HOWEVER, he did not communicate this expectation beforehand, and MOREOVER, takes great offense to her financial priorities. He clearly would rather be sending more of her money to his family, which would make me hella uncomfortable if I were Ashley! I’d say the culture and ego divide between these two is too great.
That said, it feels awfully shady to me when people prioritize sending money to their family back home right away. It feels like “that was the plan all along.”
That’s exactly what Pedro did. He made his awful family his top priority, despite his mother being a lawyer that lived in a really nice place. I would’ve been pissed to be Chantal too.
When you get married, your wife should be top priority. I understand child support, but he’s been hella secretive and dismissive this whole time. Still trying to keep his family “private”. Shady as fuck.
