Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 23 January 2012 issue)

Dear Kam,
My son is breaking my heart. He wants to move out of the house but I keep telling him he’s not ready yet. He’s only 45 and how will he survive without his mother? What can I tell him?
Mummy Dearest

People are the same all over the world, sharing the same basic concerns for the future, for themselves and for their families. But there are cultural differences. Sometimes we can make too much of these differences and start to think it means that different cultures are different species, and that some are inferior. One thing that is very different between the East and the West is the attitude to kids leaving the home, getting their own place and leading their own lives. When should they leave? Should they leave at all?

In the West, or at least in Britain and America, it is a great source of embarrassment for everybody if the child is still living at home beyond the age of, say, 20. I was just watching Astro and there were two Hollywood movies at the same time that were about the exact same issue. In one movie, a young man (maybe 18 years of age) had not gone to college but had moved out of his parents’ home and was making his own way in the world. His parents were never even mentioned, and it all seemed very natural. In the other movie, a young woman had returned home after graduating from university. She didn’t have a job and didn’t appear to know what she wanted to do in life. Her parents were very loving but they were already worried that she was not independent enough. When will she leave, the parents kept asking. Everybody was very embarrassed. Can you imagine the same scenario in Asia? It would be a very short movie. You’re back from college, you’re going to live at home and your mother is making your favourite laksa. The end.

I can vouch for the fact that it is a very real thing — parents in the West want the kids to leave as soon as possible. It’s not because the parents don’t love their kids or that their parental obligations end when the kid is old enough to buy his/her own alcohol, I think it’s because of the belief that an essential part of the parents’ responsibility is to make the kid independent, to prepare the kid for the cut-and-thrust, dog-eat-dog world of a capitalist meritocracy where no job will last forever. Back in the 1970s, which was not so long ago, it was possible to imagine that one could easily get a job for life, one with a good pension and near to home. Those certainties are long gone and if the child sits at home expecting a decent job to come to him/her, then everybody will be losers.

In Japan, there is a recent phenomena where young men (and it’s always men) are refusing to leave the home. Many are not just refusing to move out but never even go out of the house. I’m not entirely convinced that this is a real social issue and it’s quite possible that a few isolated cases have been exaggerated into a national crisis, but my Japanese friends all swear that it’s a very real issue and it’s called Hikikomori, which apparently translates as withdrawal from society. If it is a real thing, then it’s possible that the collapse of the old predictable job-for-life, salaryman economy has hit men hard because they are simply not raised to be able to cope with a new economy that is based on short-term jobs and freelancing. Having said that, not everybody wants to work for Sumitomo Corp for 36 years and many will relish the new possibilities, but it will take a while for everyone to get used to the new economy, and a friend of mine in Japan points out that Japanese culture has not yet identified meaningful role models for this new age.

I was on the streets of Shanghai once when I saw a teenage girl shouting, practically screaming at her parents, and in front of the whole world. The parents were silent and simply took the abuse. I don’t like to see anybody shouting at anybody but normally I might see parents shouting at their child, not the other way around. But before you start tut-tutting about how the parents have no control over their child, remember that China has the one-child policy. The two parents have, and can only ever have, that one child, and there will also be four grandparents who only have that one grandchild. Six people depend on only one child for their future. It must create an unnatural pressure on that one child who must work not only for herself but for six ageing adults.

In Malaysia, I think I’m right in saying that many parents will be joyful if the children live at home forever (well, maybe just the boy-child). It seems an eternal Asian value, a bit like Southfork in Dallas where the whole Ewing family lived under one roof. But it hasn’t always been the case. In old P Ramlee movies, his character was usually living alone or sharing the place with male friends. Back in his day, there were thousands of young people leaving the rural areas and heading for the big city. They were independent and excited by the new urban possibilities, and they were twisting the night away.

Now KL is settled and expensive. Why take on the unnecessary expense of rented accommodation when you can live at home for free? But it’s possible that things might change. There has been a political effort to create job certainty, to create a very predictable and dependable landscape. But what if many of these jobs are propped up unnaturally? What if it all fell away? Maybe parents would want to raise their kids to be harder, more independent, more able to cope with a world without certainties. And a world away from home.

Dear Kam,
I am very worried about my son. He still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with his life. He says he wants to be a cowboy even though I tell him he must be thinking about a proper career. He’s six and I’ve been sending him for extra tuition since he was three days old. What more can a parent do?
Super Achiever

I wouldn’t worry. Your son is very wise because this is one of the few countries where you can make lots and lots of money as a cowboy (or cowgirl).

Reprinted with the kind permission of