People don’t just give money away

My parents are both very smart and hard working individuals. Because of that, they’ve accomplished quite a bit in their careers in terms of building a comfortable way of life. We’re not wealthy or rich by any standards, but there’s enough money there for them to retire and, because they’re Chinese immigrants (and so relatively frugal), they tend to be pretty good with money. It just sort of worked out well financially for my parents with the immigration process, the booming Silicon Valley economy in the 90s, and the rising Bay Area housing market.

Growing up, my parents would exert a psychological form of control over me with the money they earned in a way befitting of the Chinese. It was a sort of, “we’re not telling you what to do, but if you do what we say we’ll pay for everything” kind of situation. In many ways, I didn’t have a choice on a lot of important decisions in my life because it wasn’t like I, as an 18-year-old for instance, could afford my own college tuition. Thus, it was, again, a duplicitous form of control like someone doing something insidious behind your back.

This form of control has persisted in the sense of my coming out of the closet. For instance, my parents have threatened to give my anticipated inheritance to another family member, even though I am their only child. Being gay, to them, was seem as enough to be cast out of the family fortune. In many ways, I think that is another old and somewhat outdated way of thinking. With the legalization of same-sex marriage, we will surely begin to see the relatively peaceful incorporation of same-sex couples into the family unit, though that may still take some time. After all, money is an important aspect of both marriage and family.

Yet, the topic of money and its ability to exert control and influence over a more vulnerable person, such as a child, has always interested me. It is true that a person’s money is theirs and not another person’s to dictate. However, when it is used as a means to control or influence someone (such as in a parent-child dynamic), perhaps a non verbal contract gets instigated where that pool of money is now starting to be shared between both parties. That just seems the more righteous course of action.