Why are we rejecting the Indian family-friend group?
Amongst Millennials, Indian-American Community is dying. That may sound harsh but it’s true. Where are our cultural roots and how are they carrying on?
On big reason is that we’re not actively recreating one of our parents’ greatest achievements: the classic family-friend group. Instead it feels like we’re running from our past.
The family-friend circle: not a happy time for all, but one that shaped us
Most of us had the close-knit family friends group that we spent elementary through high school with. Usually this meant frequent dinners and often trips together, sometimes also with talent shows and plays at home. These were the bonds that forged us.
It was in these circles that we first learned to straddle the line between Indian and American. It was with these friends that we felt comfortable truly expressing ourselves. It was these aunties that gave us our first internship and those uncles who chided us for maturing too quickly or not fast enough.
It was with this friend circle that we could truly commiserate. Our Indian friends also had to carry on secret relationships, drag their parents to Abercrombie, and become experts at changing in the car. They too had to hide the McDonald’s burger wrappers and pretend to be at after-school debate practice when really they were with a “friend”.
We had our “Indian friends” and we had our “school friends” (usually White ones) with bright lines delineating the two. We only half knew then that the family-friend circle was our first safe space. We didn’t have to pretend to fit in because we were already, in.
Yet many look back at these family circles as times of high anxiety, especially as they grew from adolescents to teenagers. Unrealistic expectations ballooned due to comparisons with other kids in the group. Family bonds corroded as money and business tied together and deals went bad. A thread of jealousy wove together the sub-groups as high school achievements correlated with self worth.
At its best, this friend group truly allowed us to express ourselves while also pushing us to be kids of higher character. At its worst, the information superhighway of kid –> mom –> auntie –> kid meant nothing was sacred; our sense of self esteem got driven down. Log kya kahenge.
On some level, we just knew each other too well. We were at school with the same people we saw at bi-monthly dinner parties – there were few stones unturned. Gossip that should have stayed between moms having chai found its way to the family dinner table. Secrets that should have stayed private, especially around boyfriends, sexuality and money often got out to the broader community. A safe space indeed.
So was it formative or was it traumatic? It was both, and that’s what childhood is.
We hold in our mind eye an idealised version of what childhood should be. We think that our white friends never had to deal with what we did. We tell ourselves “the pressure was immense”.
And yet others simply had a different kind of intensity. The divorce rate for Indian Americans is <15% while it hovers around ~45% in the white community. My non-Indian friends had a pressure to act the same when they were visiting Mom instead of Dad. That’s not something our community knows much about. And yet the pressure similarities don’t stop there.
The pressure Suchi felt to get an arangetram is the pressure Susie felt to get confirmed in the church. The pressure Sachin felt to get a gavel at model UN, Sam felt to make varsity baseball. The rumors that Rashmi had a girlfriend also plagued Rachel – they both just wanted a secret date at the mall theater but happened to run into that random uncle at an American Pie 2 Thursday matinee.
No childhood is perfect. In an age where we unpack our trauma, overuse the word then put it on display for all to see, it’s convenient to blame the Indian family friend group as a source of your woes. And maybe it was! But everyone’s childhood was, on some level. Whether they were rich, poor, Indian, or White, everyone looks back on their childhood with some pains and regrets.
It’s the story we tell ourselves today that truly shape how we see our past. The story I urge you to believe is that there were many many bright spots to the family-friend circle.
There’s no further place to look than to look how you turned out
If our childhood was so traumatic, and the Indian family-friend circle is to blame, then why did you turn out so well? Why is it that Indian-American millennials continue to be amongst the highest educated, highest earning, most often married, etc etc groups in the country?
Because we rejected it, you say. “Our success is in spite of that traumatic childhood, not because of it” you tell yourself. And on some level that is probably true. There are many underlying toxic elements that make up a high achieving community. Rejecting those elements was a smart thing to do.
At the end of the day, both things are true. You were molded by something beautiful that also hurt you. You look back fondly at your friendships but also resent them.
So what will it be? Reject your childhood community or seek to recreate it?
Here we find ourselves in the modern day, culturally anchor-less and adrift at sea. We are a community with few grounding roots. We don’t go to temple, there are very few active Indian community centers, we’re losing our mother tongues and tightly controlling how much our parents influence our lives. We find Bollywood entertaining but lame and only cook our native food when its convenient.
As many millennials are having kids, they are craving that sense of community and belonging. No professional meetup group will fill that hole, nor will a book club or hobby. On top of that, these millennials want their kids to be raised with the same drive and cultural grounding as they were. Yet the rejection of family-friend-group trauma is at odds with these needs.
Therefore the smart money is recreating the family-friend group, knowing full well you’ll add your own twist.
Everything you do it inherently different from your parents. Though recreating the family-friend group may seem structurally the same, in practice it’s not. You won’t berade your kid in the car ride home for forgetting that line in the play. You won’t force them to wear certain clothes in public and take pictures. And most of all you won’t shame them for not getting into the competitive high school their peers did.
Our parents did what they did because that’s all that they knew. They recreated the “colony” they were raised in, shedding the miserable parts and adapting it to the modern age. You will do the same.
And just like them, you’ll mess up, hard. Your kids will lament how you forced them to not have their cell phones at dinner. They’ll remember horrible things you made them do for Diwali in front of their school friends. Their trauma will be about your actions (or inactions) in the metaverse. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
We’re all better for it. This is the beautiful, virtuous cycle of cultural preservation. This next half-century is the Indian Moment. Building strong anchors, families and communities is the basis of how we ensure that.
