A Business to Solve South Asian Family Dysfunction
What could systematically and sustainably heal our wounds?
Disclaimer: I, of course, have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m no expert on South Asians or family dysfunctions or businesses. I have my lived experience and the intuition born from it, and that’s the place from which I do all my writing. The nature of this essay requires me to make extreme generalizations regarding South Asians to make my points. I know many South Asian families that defy all of the generalizations here (my own family defies many). As I try to capture the complex, nuanced lived experience of the diasporic population originally from an incredibly diverse geographical region, many of whom could have immigrated to the West some 50 years apart, there will likely be no reader of this essay that identifies with each of the assertions made. This is by design as I try to get some general ideas out into the world. I believe most statements apply to enough South Asians that my statements are still relevant and illustratively meaningful. If you’re looking for PhD-level exposition with hyperlinked sources, please read someone’s dissertation. This is just my ramble-y newsletter.
Introduction
South Asians make up roughly 20% of Greater Toronto Area (GTA) residents, and about 53% of residents in Brampton1, the specific suburb in which I’ve lived since I was three. Out of a high school graduating class of around 250 kids, there were less than a dozen white students, the rest mostly South Asians.
I’ve been hearing the same stories of dysfunction my whole life. Distraught, anxiety-ridden families tend to struggle with a combination of the same few issues. Ingrained cultural attitudes and cycles of behaviour produce the same unwanted results. When hundreds of thousands of ethnically similar citizens in an otherwise diverse region struggle with related issues, systemically fixing those issues could have seismic and long-lasting positive results on the broader community for generations.
This leads me to one of my favourite thought experiments: if a business existed that solved the epidemic of South Asian family dysfunction, what would that business look like? How would it stipulate its mission and objectives? How would someone market such a business? How would the market react?
This newsletter is an unconstrained and hasty exploration of this idea. Of course, South Asians have no monopoly on family dysfunction, but effective solutions must be tailor-made for this community’s unique attitudes, biases, and preconceptions of what healthy functioning looks like. To further qualify, this newsletter’s ideas are idealistic; the following plans wouldn’t work as described. I know that. Thinking through an idealistic version, however, allows me to blue-sky-imagine what’s possible. It’s a fun starting point before compromises must be made for pragmatism. Now, let’s begin.
Core Business Philosophy, Mission, and Objectives
Unfortunately, high-profile, media-trumpeted depictions of South Asian dysfunction are slowly dismantling our model minority status and its privileges. The negative stereotypes are beginning to crystallize. Too many members of the community are stuck in unsupportive and under-resourced environments without the tools and the will to improve their circumstances. A quick Google search of my home town, Brampton, will flood your feed with recent stories of South Asians committing crimes of all types. Our people are capable of so much more.
The mission of this business would be to minimize trauma and relational conflict in the South Asian family structure, such that members of the community can achieve their goals unencumbered by layers of maladaptive thoughts and behaviours. The business would enable target customers to build strong, authentic connections with their family members inside the home, and navigate life in this new social and professional context outside the home. Through this strong and secure family structure, South Asians will have a reliable foundation from which to confidently strive for well-respected and constructive ambitions.
This business, and all its related programming, would not wish to assimilate South Asians to the point of forsaking their own culture and heritage. On the contrary, the business would seek to enable customers to refine their belief system and mental frameworks, clarify their values, and live in accordance with them more stringently. The goal of the business is to make South Asians proud to be South Asian, and to mould Canadian (or North American) citizens who inspire and elevate their community through versatility and resourcefulness.
The core business would be a course-based program with lectures, take-home work, and plenty of patience and hand-holding from trained, specialized facilitators. Through these courses, participants would learn tools and tactics across a variety of subject areas that will help them understand the root of dysfunction and how to cultivate more resilient and rewarding relationships. Although family relationships will be the primary focus, the principles learned through courses can be applied to all close or intimate relationships, forming a strong web of social support over time.
Creating a psychologically safe environment where it is easy, and even encouraged, to accept fault and admit ignorance will need to be a central theme in the program. This will also be a central challenge. Telling people they are wrong is easy, getting them to internalize that and change is nearly impossible.
Below are the major categories/“classes” in this course-based program. Each “class” may be a component on a “learning path”, along which classes grow increasingly advanced, requiring pre-requisite classes like any post-secondary format. I don’t attempt to sequence the content into learning paths below as this would require a fair degree of expertise, but I try to, in large swaths, describe the kind of content that might be helpful to the target South Asian participant.
Subject Matter Categories
Emotional Infrastructure Lessons
In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance writes “There are no villains in this story. Just a rag-tag bunch, desperate to find their way”. Dysfunction is nobody’s fault; it’s just hurt, incompetent, and uninformed people, all trying to do their best. This is easy to forget when we’ve been harmed but easy to recall when we do the harming. This model of patience and charitable interpretation must be used to dissect and understand what I believe to be the bedrock of home life, which is the parent-child relationship. In many South Asian homes, parent-child relationships fuel resentment, shame, and self-confidence issues for all involved and are in dire need of intense rehabilitation.
Parents behave in ways they believe will protect their children in this scary new world and optimize their children’s chances for bringing the family honour and financial prosperity. Parents, however, lack an understanding or appreciation for Western culture, underestimate its differences from where and when they were raised, educated, and employed, and fail to meet significant emotional needs.
Despite good intentions, parents fundamentally misunderstand how success is defined in this new social, academic, and professional context. Further, parents’ who immigrated decades ago grip to an outdated and idealized version of culture back home. It’s common for newer immigrants to be more liberal and less adherent to stricter traditional values than older immigrants (read: parents) since the home country’s values have progressed while parents have stagnated after immigrating.
Children, on the other hand, behave in ways they believe will earn their parent’s love and respect while maintaining a sense of individuality and agency to which they feel entitled. They, however, don’t understand the difficult emotions of immigrating to a new country, underestimate the burden of adulthood, and are blind to the complexities of child-rearing without the social structures inherent to life back home.
Children also slowly evolve as they grow older, exposed to grand ideas and influential people outside the home. To avoid any difficult emotions and challenging conversations, children begin to reject everything home life represents. First quietly, and then loudly. They begin to lash out at the adults at home, leaving parents confused and worried. Parents lack the context to understand and children lack the courage and maturity to explain. Before long, the parent-child relationship is devoid of any positive emotion. All communication is directive and logistical. No one shares an authentic moment, and no one admits defeat.
To break this predictable cycle, family members in all stages of life must be exposed to some foundational concepts. Through these concepts, participants will gain a deeper sense of self-awareness and awareness of vast emotional worlds inside us all. This foundational class will expose participants to concepts which can be further discussed on an individual basis as talk therapy with a trained professional. The core objective of the foundations class will be to explain the power these ideas can have on our lives, equip them with language to describe their experience, and normalize their experience in a way that enables them to process them.
Core Curriculum Concepts
Shame and guilt. These two emotions have an unmatched power to shape our behaviour and self-concepts. We must understand how our life experiences make us feel unworthy of love, attention, and good fortune, and begin the long and arduous journey of ridding ourselves from these crippling, suffocating thought-loops.
Vulnerability. Sharing authentic emotion and weakness is the seat of genuine connection, giving purpose and meaning to our lives. Having vulnerable, humanizing conversation, however, is a skill, and requires additional skills like active listening, body language awareness, and affirmation/validation. Parents and children avoid vulnerable conversation because stakes are high and historical evidence does not suggest emotions will be respected and treated with care. With proper coaching and instruction, connection can begin.
Attachment theory and self-confidence. The bonds we form with our parents within the first few months and years of our lives strongly influence our relationships throughout adulthood. We understand how to receive and give love and attention based on the blueprint established by these early connections, and this blueprint predicts the stability and nature of these relationships to a startling degree. Further, the way shame and guilt destroy, confidence builds. People tend to access high self-confidence (and self-esteem) based on how they were congratulated and celebrated in childhood, but this vital skill can be learned in adulthood too. Only with self-confidence can we take a risk, assert ourselves socially and professionally, and whole-heartedly invest in ourselves.
An emotionally rich vocabulary: Many conversations between parents and children are purely logistic; do this, don’t do that. Conversations must be elevated to the emotional realm for connection, intimacy, and feelings of safety. This, however, requires a new vocabulary that enables enriching, tough conversations, and words need to be thoroughly understood so each party is confident the correct message is being sent and received without the distortion of bias.
The influence of early childhood experience and cycles of generational trauma. The effects of trauma and early parental attachment are persistent and ubiquitous. Like shame and guilt, once we better understand the invisible forces here, we can unlearn maladaptive patterns, learn healthy social and emotional behaviour, and cultivate a sense of compassion for one another. Further, unfortunate life circumstances are nobody’s fault but are everybody’s responsibility. Decisions made by our forefathers have rippling effects today, and our decisions will have the same impact. We must confront our families’ shameful pasts with an open mind and a sense of ownership to halt the transmission of suffering from one generation to the next and begin the cycle of honesty and nurturing once and for all.
Next steps
After completing this course, all participants of the program would have a session with an intake counsellor. Now equipped with some foundational concepts and vocabulary to describe their experiences, participants and the intake counsellor could identify whether additional time with a therapist would be helpful to work through specific issues. Given their severity, participants would be matched with a social worker, psychotherapist, or a psychiatrist, and would be moved between the different professionals based on evolving needs.
If no issues are identified, maintenance sessions with a social worker will be scheduled (i.e., like check-ups with a primary care physician). If issues are identified, participants will be strongly recommended to begin regular sessions with a professional, but committing to ongoing therapy is not a prerequisite to continue in the program.
Financial Literacy Lessons
Poor financial decisions can destabilize a family for generations. The GTA is overrun with get-rich-quick schemes (e.g., real estate, general contracting, and cash-run small businesses) and many straddle the line of legality. Many well-intentioned immigrants are met with the harsh reality of life here and are enticed by legally ambiguous opportunities or forced into precarious working conditions. Without proper guidance, rising above these circumstances and into financial stability is a pipe dream. Understanding the importance of establishing a reliable income source, saving for the long-term, and investing in predictable, proven assets can alleviate tens of thousands of families from financial anxiety.
Financial stability is a cornerstone to emotional stability. People make grave mistakes out of desperation, contributing to stress and turmoil at home. Poor financial decisions also drive significant shame and guilt in the South Asian household, creating emotionally distant and wounded fathers and mothers unable to fulfill their parenting responsibilities.
This class would be gender segregated for two separate and opposite reasons. Women are often dismissed and made to feel like they shouldn’t concern themselves with financial matters in a South Asian household. Men tend to get irritable when asked about the family finances and imply questions from their female counterparts are unwelcome.
Countless South Asian mothers are clueless regarding the financial state of their family, they just trust their husband and sons are managing it. Over years, this lack of awareness breeds a lack of confidence; many women don’t feel capable of understanding basic financial concepts and don’t feel they can meaningfully contribute to family discussions regarding finances. The classes for women would prominently feature messaging that affirms ability and instills confidence.
The classes for men would feature the same personal finance-related content, but will emphasize the importance of including the entire family (especially the women) in financial decisions that affect the entire family. Men suffer from an overconfidence when it comes to personal finance knowledge and routinely squander precious family funds on risky investments and unnecessary purchases. They’re conditioned to believe they should handle the family’s finances without needing help or asking questions. Like women, men will be encouraged to ask clarifying questions to test assumptions, but this will require a psychologically safe environment where the men will not be looking to impress with their expertise or shamed for admitting ignorance.
Core Curriculum Concepts
Basic daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly budgeting
Methods for increasing income (e.g., in-demand and lucrative professions and educational paths required)
Methods for decreasing expenses (e.g., how to avoid debt and superfluous interest payments)
Real estate and the true cost of renting vs. buying, including determining the amount of an affordable mortgage
How different savings accounts work (e.g., TSFA, RRSP, FHSA)
How to safely invest money for the long term (e.g., index funds)
How credit cards and lines of credit work
The power of compound interest
Writing a will and estate planning
Since professional skills are inherent to increasing reliable income, there will also be opt-out language, professional document writing (e.g., resume and cover letter), and professional etiquette support. Many South Asians emigrate with marketable skills but fail to make use of these valuable skills, stifling their earning potential in this new country.
They also underestimate the importance of learning professional etiquette and norms in this new, multicultural context. Many South Asians adhere to working for and working with other South Asians, creating an insulated social environment in which their ability to adapt to other environments begins to atrophy in adulthood.
Staying with our kind, of course, is comfortable and familiar. All ethnic groups do this. In the multicultural context, however, the temptation to do this must be resisted over the long-term to remain open to new perspectives, opportunities, and fulfilling relationships. Children who witness their parents interacting with people from all cultures and walks of life grow up with an open-mindedness and sense of community since those that are different aren’t seen as unsafe or strange but citizens of the global community we all share.
Sexual Health Literacy Lessons
Due to a lack of parental knowledge, a cultural conservatism, and no confidence on either side to confront the awkwardness, South Asian kids learn nothing about their reproductive systems from their family. This makes sexual health and sexuality radioactive. Ultimately, no one dares to broach the subject. Prepubescent children to senior citizens have questions and concerns but have no one to whom they feel comfortable turning, leading to shame, ignorance, and in the worst case, violence.
Girls don’t understand menstruation or how their bodies change through puberty, boys don’t understand how to healthily metabolize their natural and aggressive thoughts and feelings, and everyone steeps in a visceral, lifelong shame. We’re taught all sexuality outside of procreation should be villainized to preserve some sense of family honour, and to admit the pleasures of sex is one rung from selling your body on the streets. There’s no nuance in the conversation. Young people are tormented by the pressure to cram a multitudinous, complex life into a convenient binary parents can understand.
Devastatingly, sexual violence and intimate partner violence (IPV) is painfully common in North American South Asian communities. Adolescents and young adults are never taught how to develop healthy sexual dynamics with an intimate partner, and often, the first intimate partner is a lifelong one, making all parties unsure of what acceptable and healthy feelings and behaviours should be.
Good research is sparse and most research pertains to US-based South Asian women, but some community-based studies show that a staggering 21.2–40.8% of South Asian women experience some type of intimate partner violence (IPV) over the course of their lifetimes2,3,4,5. Of course, this doesn’t paint the full picture but it helps shed some light on the depth of the issue and the need for intervention.
Generally, men are taught women have no sexual appetite, so the only way to be intimate is to force themselves onto a woman, dismissing her boundaries. Women are not even sure whether they are allowed to have boundaries, given social conditioning and deference to male authority. Parsing this complicated and highly sensitive subject area requires time, patience, and a dedicated space for discussion.
Sexual health literacy classes should be gendered for obvious reasons and divided into age-based cohorts. The youngest age-based cohort should align with the onset of puberty (or whenever the literature suggests). As always, participants should be encouraged to ask facilitators questions about either sex’s reproductive health and generalities regarding their emotional states at various stages.
Core Curriculum Concepts
Physical, emotional, and cognitive changes before, during, and after puberty
Sexuality as a spectrum, and heteronormativity in our culture (the West and India)
These concepts should be explained through Hindu mythology case studies and historical figure exposition where figures with ambiguous sexualities are understood and celebrated
Rape culture, consent, and healthy boundaries
Conception, pregnancy, common postpartum complications
Prominence of sexual abuse in local South Asian communities and basic tools to support survivors
Anti-Colonialism Training
In 1700 AD, India alone was 27% of the world economy—more than all of Europe combined. By 1947, it had shrunk to just 3%6. British occupation drained the subcontinent of almost all its financial and cultural wealth. Today, many “South Asian” cultural attitudes are not originally South Asian at all, but are artifacts left behind from a colonial era India never outgrew. Stigmas regarding homosexuality and caste, for example, are British inventions created to divide and subjugate the Indian citizen.
Brainwashed and traumatized Indians work to this day to emerge from the population-wide starvation and destitution British colonial powers left in their wake. Modern estimates claim the British stole $35–45 trillion7 from India during its occupation, leaving the world, and most of all, South Asians, to imagine what the country would be today had occupation never happened.
This training would be designed to galvanize uninformed members of the South Asian diaspora against the long-lasting impacts of colonial powers and enable participants to empathize with the plights of other colonized peoples internationally (e.g., Caribbean, African, and Indigenous peoples). This new empathy would ideally help South Asians understand underprivileged Canadians/Americans and be their first step on the long journey of becoming anti-racist.
Core Curriculum Concepts
Key historical landmarks beginning in 1700 AD to independence in 1947
Cultural attitudes and Indian laws (e.g., criminalizing homosexuality) that were originally British that never fully were repealed after Independence
Other significant examples of colonial atrocity (e.g., Spaniards in Central America, Dutch in Western and Central Africa, the French and English in North America)
Of course, these ideas are gargantuan and include several semesters worth of material to sufficiently review. Severely paring down the content into digestible pieces and injecting the coursework with actionable insights will be crucial to making this content feel relevant and valuable.
Mediated Parent-Child Discussions
After participants have completed the required course material in the aforementioned sections, families would have the option to have professionally mediated discussions where children and parents get to confront each other equipped with the foundation and the vocabulary featured in prior course material.
Children and parents would have a dedicated space to discuss expectations, concerns, and boundaries. As needed, children would also have an opportunity to confront their parents about past experiences to initiate the process of healthily metabolizing those experiences. No memory too old or feeling too trivial.
This wouldn’t be an opportunity for children to unload on and berate their parents, but for parents to receive their children’s thoughts, process, and respond thoughtfully in a controlled environment. Parents then would be encouraged to do the same to humanize themselves too, discussing how they’ve been hurt or impressed in the past. Children may also be encouraged to ask their parents questions that facilitate genuine connection and humanization (e.g., what would you study and do professionally if you could do anything? What is your earliest happy memory after coming to this country? What are some cherished memories from your childhood?)
Operationalizing the Business
Businesses are exceptionally challenging to run, let alone make profitable. With commitment to the mission and values, staff would have an opportunity to make a tangible difference in their communities, but this would only be possible with a well-run, financially sound operations plan that leverages modern management techniques. The business would require advisory services from great accountants, policy and content experts, and veterans of the education industry.
Education is a dangerous industry to enter and extremely tricky to get right. Phenomenal ideas undergo compression to be made into lesson plans, communicated to participants by a facilitator, and interpreted by participants with all the bias gained from their lived experiences. There’s three levels of compression in the best of cases, with the most committed and attentive students; it just gets harder from there. Subject matter as sensitive and emotional as the content looking to be shared with participants here would just exacerbate existing issues with educating a classroom of participants, plus introduce a host of new and murky ones.
Many heavily funded and innovative educational platforms have sprung up over the internet these past five years with lofty promises and ambitions, only to have membership wane once the initial excitement fades. The programming would need to borrow from education principles refined by organizations like Duolingo, leading online education platforms (Maven), and successful massive online open courses (MOOCs). Without getting too detail-oriented and overstating my knowledge of how a business like this would run, below are some finer points about operations.
Program Format
I imagine this program to be a 2-3 year commitment with logically sequenced courses that mirror traditional didactic school. Classes would be held in the evenings and on the weekends to accommodate busy work schedules (with classes also offered during the day to capture participants with off-hours shift work). Completing courses (e.g., Financial Literacy 2 or Sexual Health Literacy 1) would earn participants credits required to enroll in the next class.
Staffing
The program would need to be facilitated with subject matter experts capable of communicating with participants patiently, knowledgeably, and in the language the participants need. This is a tall order. Leveraging community-based expertise from not-for-profits already doing versions of this work might be a worthwhile early experiment. Eventually, as the mission becomes more well-known and there is a proven track record of success through case studies, we can begin recruiting in-house talent for coaching and subject matter facilitation.
Like all voluntary classes, success of the program would hinge on the quality and reputation of its facilitators. If early cohorts have negative experiences future cohorts will not be willing to give the program the benefit of the doubt. Facilitations must be thoroughly bought into the mission—stakes are extremely high.
Financing
Participants would be paid to participate in this program. No cost at all to the participants.
Unfamiliarity with the emotional and sexual health concepts taught through the program costs our system money through additional healthcare and social welfare costs. Poor financial decisions cripple families and make them dependent on social programming to make ends meet. Taxpayers and other privately funded institutions would ideally be saving money through the success of this program. Further, emphasis on financial literacy and increasing earning potentials would also result in increased tax revenue for the government over the long-term. As such, participants should be able to participate in those cost-savings and revenue gains, and redirect those funds to what would help their families the most.
The business would partner with federal, provincial, and municipal governments to receive grants to hold programming. As data becomes available regarding the system-wide cost savings, the business will lobby for increased cash infusions from various levels of government to expand geographies and content offerings. The business would begin keeping a percentage of these cash infusions as profit, passing the rest on to continue offering and refining programming.
Like venture capital-backed start-ups, the business would initially run at a loss as it pilots new classes, organizes business infrastructure, and markets its offerings. Within a decade, with a strong track record, positive word of mouth references, and emotive case studies, profitability may be possible.
The financial incentive would ideally entice more participants to join the program and receive the content. Families who would value the financial reward (e.g., $10K/year) offered by the program would likely be the target demographic of the program. The amount offered to participants would need to be enough to be attractive but also not jeopardize the long-term health of the business.
This business is unlikely to make anyone wealthy like the infinite list of tech-based start-ups, but I think it’s impossible to overstate the level of fulfillment being successful with this work.
Research
The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) lacks high-quality, actionable research on South Asian trends and habits that can inform policy and structural change. South Asians make up roughly one in five citizens in the GTA, yet education, social program, and infrastructure policy makers don’t understand the unique socio-cultural make-up of this demographic. Although the pool would have its obvious biases, we could use this group to better understand the larger demographic, or use cost-savings through the system to fund high-quality research outside the program.
Conclusions
Setting up a business like this would be a decade-long journey with many unforeseen issues, the financing for which is a glaring weakness. And setting out to strengthen the emotional fabric of a community is inherently messy, unpredictable, and individualized. So many South Asian families are emotionally broken even if the nuclear family structure is still intact. This requires a perfect blend of intense, focused rehabilitation and accessibility to correct.
But I think if we can effectively disseminate the key concepts stipulated above, we can begin the long, slow, and painful process of healing the unique systemic issues that plague the diasporic South Asian community.
Like I mentioned in the intro, writing this is an exercise in generating an idealistic vision to work towards. For me, it’s wildly helpful to understand what great looks like before going out and building anything. To also reiterate from the disclaimer, I know I’ve made wild generalizations about an inconceivably diverse group of people. To avoid a 50,000-word newsletter, nuance needed to be stripped and qualifiers removed. I hope there were still some parts that resonated with you.
If, while reading this, you have any additional concepts/frameworks that you think are fundamental to the health of a society that are distinct from the ideas mentioned, I’d love to hear from you. Also, if you’re a practitioner of any of these things in the GTA and you’d like to mind-meld over any of these ideas, please reach out. I’m always looking for more cool people in my city.
Rehabilitated,
Vandan🏡
@vandan_jhaveri
please keep up what you are doing, i love it!
that moment when he says
oh my good
poor guy realises he has no chance with her as shes just obsessed that its her way or no way