[lit-ideas] Re: Growing Old the Hard Way: China, Russia, India

From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:14:54 +0900
On 4/19/06, Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> I wonder how much of family taking care of the elderly is mythology.  I saw
> Tokyo Story on Saturday, 1953 movie, Japanese.  It was one of those nothing
> happens movies but it was quite the study in Japanese family life.  I was
> surprised.  In 1953, and I suspect it's worse now, there was a big
> disconnect between generations and not much bonding within families.  The
> parents in the movie lived long distances away from their grown children,
> and did not know their grandchildren.  The parents go to visit their grown
> children, and they are treated politely, lots of bowing, but clearly they
> are a burden.

Finally, a topic on which I can offer some useful information! Be
warned that what I'm about to say is far from definitive. It is hard,
infact, to imagine how anyone's opinion could be definitive in a world
as complex and as rapidly changing as the one we we inhabit. Still,
while doing a Ph.D. in social anthropology I learned a lot about this
topic and have kept up sporadically ever since.

First, a global perspective: For most of human history, the majority
of human beings have been peasants or the lords, masters or priests to
whom they paid taxes. For both groups obtaining, holding and passing
on land has been family priority No. 1. What we are likely to think of
as "traditional family values" reflects this situation, in which the
basic social contract between parents and children is, on the one
hand, we raise you and give you the property you need to survive and
carry on the family line; on the other, the children's position, we
owe you and promise to take care of you in your old age.

From this perspective, the critical consequence of modernization has
been the shift for the bulk of urban populations to paid
employment--jobs--instead of real estate as the primary source of
livelihood. Add that in most cases the jobs in question cannot be
handed down from parents to children, and the social contract
described above breaks down. Parents can raise and educate their
children; but adult kids are actively encouraged to move out, to find
their own jobs, to become independent. Culture lags; we continue to
say that children should love and care for their parents, but the
economics of modern life and the values of consumer driven economies
that focus on personal gratification no longer support these values.

That said, to understand how this generic process works out in
particular times and places, it helps to dig into the details of the
traditional family values in question. A number of interesting
variations predictably reflect the ways in which family property was
or was not divided among the children under the old
peasant-agriculture-based economic regime. Consider, for example,
three possibilities: (1) land is divided equally among sons and
daughters, a practice common in Southeast Asia; (2) land is divided
equally among sons--daughters must marry out, with their share, if
any, becoming a dowry, the traditional pattern in China; and (3) the
land is passed on to a single heir, typically the oldest son, and
other children must either depend on the heir's generosity or, more
commonly, go off and fend for themselves, the Japanese case. (1) is
associated with bilateral kinship (treating relatives on both sides
equally) and a relatively strong position for women. (2) results in
recurring fragmentation of family assets but sustains strong networks
of largely patrilineal, lineage and clan relationships like those for
which overseas Chinese business families are famous. As daughters and
brides, women are in a weak position. As mothers and grandmothers they
can become formidable through the control they exert over sons and
grandsons. (3) feeds an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude that
creates the apparent paradox of enduring households coupled with
relatively thin and shallow kinship relations.

Adding to the complexity is, of course, the fact that material wealth,
in real estate or other forms, is a magnet that holds families
together. Conversely poverty eliminates the magnet, driving family
distintegration.

And one further caution: In all of these societies, but especially so
in China, the folklore that surrounds traditional family values is
filled with tales of ancestors who, while poor, worked hard, overcame
their poverty, and created the estates that make maintaining kinship
ties worthwhile. The same folklore is also filled with tales of
wasters, typically sons, who grow up wealthy and soft, turn to sex,
drugs and other enjoyments, and destroy what their ancestors built.

Cheers,

John

--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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