Culture, Family and Community Relationships
An individual’s culture is responsible for shaping his/her values about family and community relationships. Such is evident among the Asian-American to whom the family is dear to them. In essence, an in-depth look at this cultural group’s values about the family and community relationships is the center of focus of this discussion.
As noted earlier, family relationships hold strong value to this culture. Such is the case due to the belief that with family, harmony, which is of great importance to the Asian-American cultural group, is inevitable. As such, in the Asian-American culture, the family’s interest supersedes an individual’s interest given that this is the only way that maintenance of harmony is attainable. Such a sacrifice epitomizes the concept of filial piety, which drives the actions of the persons of this culture to maintain family ties at all cost. It is the reason behind the tendency of the oldest Asian-American male sons and daughter-in-laws to take care of the more elderly parents (Poulin, et.al., 2012). Evidently, from these instances, it is undeniable that the Asian-American culture plays a significant role in the maintenance of familial relations.
On the contrary, the Asian-American culture’s effect on the value placed on community relationship that is worth noting. According to many scholars, the family relationships matter most to persons of this cultural group. However, with recent developments over the years, there has been a change as more Asian-Americans have started valuing community relationships than before (Poulin, & Deng, 2012).
In conclusion, indeed the culture of an individual is instrumental to his/her values about family and community relationships. A case in point of the effect of culture on such relationships is evident among the analyzed Asian-American cultural group. As such, the implication drawn is that medical professionals must take into consideration this finding as they provide care to this cultural group.
References
Poulin, J., & Deng, R. (2012). Informal support and the psychological well-being of older Chinese community residents. China Journal of Social Work, 5(2), 1–13
Poulin, J., Deng, R., Ingersoll, T., Witt, H., & Swain, M. (2012). Perceived Family and Friend Support and the Psychological Well-Being of American and Chinese Elderly Persons. Journal Of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 27(4), 305-317. doi:10.1007/s10823-012-9177-y
