Helen's father encouraged her to study, to have ideas, to be self-reliant. But he also expects her to behave more traditionally as an Armenian woman, daughter, and future wife. And Amalya Tagakchyan, an Armenian-Americans therapist, speaks on resisting gender norms and navigating the pushback from parents.
Featured Expert:
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Amalya provides a warm, non-judgmental, and direct approach to children, young adults, adults, and families in order to empower them to achieve their goals. She utilizes both holistic and evidence-based practices, helping each client with a unique plan to achieve their desired outcome. As a mental health professional of Armenian descent, Amalya is fluent in both Armenian and English, and in her practice supports people through a multicultural lens to help break through cultural barriers and arrive at insight and self-awareness. Learn more about her work here and here.
Our expert this week is Amalya Tagakchyan, a licensed clinical social worker based in California. Learn more about her work here and here. If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to She Has a Phd. But Papí Still Wants Her to Serve Him and When Feminism Is a Dirty Word.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi, everybody. Today, we welcome Helen. Helen grew up in an Armenian American family, where old fashioned gender norms were strictly enforced by the man of the house, her father. As a result, Helen feels pressured from all sides by the expectations and duties, her culture and family imposed on her, both as a daughter and potential wife. Let's get into it.
Helen: My name is Helen Bezikyan. I am a first generation Armenian American. And in my family, we call mom and dad, mama and papa. So the relationships with my mom and dad, they've been very loving, caring, supportive. I've always looked up to them because they're immigrants from Armenia. They came when they were in their 20s. I wanted to make them proud, I wanted to please them. It's something that now that I'm older, I'm breaking out of.
Helen: The Armenian culture, it's a patriarchal culture, and it's a lot of what the man of the house wants. If you are a female in that household, it's difficult. With my dad, it's like the expectations. In my culture, men really want to have a son and he didn't have one, so I grew up a lot like, in a way that he would've raised a son. I was very much a tomboy, I played sports. I would help him when he would fix his car, because I'm not very much housewife material.
And that's frowned upon in my culture because to be the perfect or traditional ideal Armenian wife, I don't fit under those standards. How I express myself in the modern age as a and woman, as opposed to what he expects, I have my own mind and I have a tongue that will allow me to speak and say certain things. One of the conflicts will be about maybe ... So there's a few. Growing up, it was just before we left the house, type of thing, he would want to make sure we're dress modestly and our clothes aren't too revealing. And I knew, even when I would go shopping, this is not okay to wear. Dad wouldn't let me wear this type of thing.
Helen: There have been instances even in the past few weeks or so, I had bought this new pair of jeans. It's this thing that I would do when I was a kid, you're excited, you show your family, look what I got, new pants or new shoes, whatever. I showed him like, look my new pants. And he goes, Helen, your jeans look a little too tight. And I was like, "I look great." And I think because I said it in a little bit more of a playful, calm manner, that he was like, oh, okay. In my mind, I was like, really, that was it, he's not going to say anything?
I think he's also coming to the realization, and sometimes, recently he'd been saying it, like, "Helen, you're 27 years old, you have a good head on your shoulders." He tells me, he's like, "You're smarter than me. You know what you're doing and why you're doing it." And it was interesting when he said, he said, "You're smarter than me." Because my dad, he didn't go to university, he's not college educated. And I think that's one of the reasons why he really pushed me to go to university. I was still in my masters, in my grad program. And he was like, “Doctorate next?”
Helen: He definitely challenges me to do better and strive for more. I have talked to him about the double standard of the expectations of this is what I want for you academically, but then I want you to dress this way and behave this way. I expect this from you, he tells me in regards to academics and my career and speaking up for myself, but it's this thing of, but you don't talk back to me, type of thing.
And it's not even just Armenian dads. It has moved on to the following generation of Armenian sons, who believe the same thing, except unlike their fathers who want their daughters to be educated, I've found that Armenian men in my age group, are not attracted who, not all of them, but the ones that I've come across, they do not find it very attractive that I have a higher education than them. It’'s kind of like a turnoff in a sense.
The way that I carry myself with being very modern and how I dress and how I behave and all that, my dad does worry actually, about it ruining my chances of marriage, 100%. For myself, or my sister, because we have fire in us. And he always says like, "Where did you get this from?" And we look at him, we're like, “from you!” That dominant personality. And that's something that totally, totally bruises the Armenian man's ego.
Helen: And I know, I've said this to my sister, getting to know Armenian guys in my own age group and the younger generation, I have found that I am not meant for an Armenian man. I am not built for them. And even how to speak kind, it's seen as inappropriate or shameful to curse, right? Oh, you're one of those girls. You're not pure. You're not clean because of the way you may dress or the music you may listen to or the way you may speak. It's not going to work.
Helen: What I think will bring my dad at ease in this world, I think he does feel at ease for the most part, till it gets to that point of that marriage, right. That's that last thing, that's that missing piece in my life, honestly. And I think when I have a partner, then that's when he'll go, okay, so she has a protector. She has someone to take care of her that she can depend on. And I think that will make him feel like, okay, my job is completely done as that man figure, that father figure. Now she has that partner, that is the missing piece for my dad.
Lantigua: So I'm Dominican, but Helen's story really resonated with me. As first gens and especially as women, how can we talk to our parents about the burden of gender norms, especially when they're the ones enforcing them? How can we navigate these gendered expectations, and instead help create an environment where we can be ourselves and thrive? I definitely need help with this one. So, you know what I did, called it an expert.
Tagakchyan: My name is Amalya Tagakchyan. I'm an LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker. I've been practicing for a little over a decade, decade and some change. And I primarily work with individuals, adults for the most part, of all backgrounds and couples.
Lantigua: You heard Helen's story.
Tagakchyan: I did.
Lantigua: What did you hear as you listened?
Tagakchyan: She painted a picture that really resonated with me as a first generation Armenian American. It sounded as if she had a glimpse into my own life and my own upbringing. So it was the expectations and responsibilities that come with being a woman, a girl growing up in a Armenian household in America. She was able to highlight a lot of the push, pull challenges.
Lantigua: Let's talk about that push and pull because you've experienced it, she talked about it really beautifully and it is something that is very familiar to first gens across ethnicities and nationalities. What is it about the immigrant experience in the context of Armenian culture that creates that tension, the push and pull?
Tagakchyan: Across the board, when we're looking at really any especially minorities, within the culture of looking at first gen, a lot of these mimic each other. You so much, especially knowing, and I think Helen touched on this, knowing the immense sacrifices that were taken by your parents. You so much want to root yourself here, while sustaining that identity of who I am, who I grew up, who my parents are.
Tagakchyan: And then you get pulled into it as you start school, you start work, which one of these makes sense, which one of I am I more of or less of, or I can be both, I just need to find my footing. It's almost like you want to be loyal to your parents and your culture and where you come from and who you are, while at the same time saying, but I want to assimilate.
Lantigua: So do you think it would be fair to characterize traditional gender norms as one of the last holds that people from other places might have on their identity? One of the easier things to assert about who I was and who I am in this new place, because I'm really trying to understand what is the usefulness of gender roles in this context?
Tagakchyan: Perhaps, perhaps because I don't know necessarily what role it serves, if any, as far as anchoring us into our culture and sustaining that part. But when your parents make all the sacrifices, uproot you, and come here, they want what's best for you. And part of that, what's best for you, falls in line with the life that we couldn't have or the opportunities we couldn't have.
So if you could go to college, like myself included, go to college and then go to grad school, and then what's after grad school, which is exactly the steps that I took. No one stood there and said, what are you doing? It was encouraged, but it was foreign. But to be completely frank, I know many women who are incredibly happy with that expectation of be a homemaker and marry a nice man and have some children. And that is happiness and that is your culture, I just did not happen to follow that mold.
Lantigua: Yeah. I love how Helen is like, "I'm not really housewife material." And I really wanted to be like, girl, I've been a housewife, I hear you. Right. But on a more serious note, I want to talk about her example because you were encouraged to go to school, you were encouraged to pursue higher education.
Lantigua: You were encouraged to become a professional woman, while still maintain your sense of identity. So was she, and she was specifically encouraged through all of those things by her father, who is also the person who wants to assert the traditional gender norms also.
Lantigua: And so we said there was this cognitive dissonance. So when you deal with folks who are in this space, what is your advice to them? How can they begin these conversations? How can they make them fruitful?
Tagakchyan: I think there's going to be, hopefully a great deal of productivity that can come out of that, out of having a conversation. And I can imagine listeners saying, that's much easier said than done, but I imagine the harm that can come out of that is the challenge back, the pushback to that of, “I don't agree or we're not going to see eye to eye.”
And where we kind of stand with that and with clients, when we're looking at trying to figure out the, who you are, the pushing back to anything like gender roles and expectations, is having the understanding of really managing expectations, your own expectations. So knowing that, so if you're going in there in a goal oriented fashion of, once I have this conversation, they hold space for me, then we can move forward in understanding each other, and now they'll clearly understand me.
Tagakchyan: That might not be the case, but what that doesn't mean is that you, meaning, either my client or anyone who's struggling with this first gen identity and all of the challenges and barriers that come with it, it's not true or it's not real. To that I would say, while that may not be validated, there has to be a lot of self validation that comes and there's that part of it that's almost like the silent undertone of, they may never understand.
Tagakchyan: That's incredibly hard at times, given the standards of the culture and the expectations of the culture of, you seek out that validation, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to make the choices that you're making or take the steps that you're taking. Break those barriers, anchor yourself in your own culture, while still continuing to assimilate to the American culture.
Lantigua: Yeah. Whew.
Tagakchyan: That was a lot.
Lantigua: They all sound so doable when you explain it. You're like, yes, I'm going to go and do all of that. But here is a complicating factor and we've heard this often when we talk, especially to women who are not yet married, who don't have children yet, who are still at home, even though they are college educated professional women. And it just seems like certain expectations get reinforced because of proximity.
Tagakchyan: Because you are under the roof sometimes of the family, you still get to work on that, finding myself, finding what matters to me, but it's a little bit more, for lack of a better word, in your face. I know at least per firsthand experience. It felt that way of continuously seeing what, at a dinner table, for example, myself, mom and dad eat, who's going to clear the table? Who's going to do the dishes? It's going to be myself. It's going to myself or it's going to be my mom.
Tagakchyan: Fast forward, I am now married. I do have a child. My husband too is Armenian and that's something that we navigated through ourselves. What's the expectation now? It's a shared responsibility. Something that, let's say my father or my grandfather would look at me sideways of like, or look at him rather, with severe judgment of what is he doing in the kitchen next to you?
Lantigua: Yeah, I think that there's definitely a generational evolution that happens. One of the funniest things I ever experienced as a young wife, this was maybe year one or year two of my marriage. We were at a family gathering, my family. And I walked over to my husband and I said, "You have to let me serve you a plate of food because the aunties are getting on my case and if they don't see me bring you a plate of food, I am never going to hear the end of it."
Lantigua: And he was like, "But I'm not hungry." And I was like, "It doesn't matter." And it was that, it was the pressure to conform to the gender norms of the wife has to serve the husband and he could have cared less.
Tagakchyan: It's real. I think a lot of people would completely relate to that, myself included. There is this immense sense of pressure when it's a gathering, it's different. And it is incredibly foreign if certain things don't take place, because it almost seems like things aren't harmonious. No one knows, almost how to operate. I only know how to operate this way, so if you're operating that way, I don't know what to do with that.
Lantigua: So actually I wanted to ask about that because the more conversations I have about this, I realize that some of these norms are to reassure people that they have a place and that their role is secure. Do you see that maybe people find themselves enforcing norms and roles so that they can continue to secure their place and their standing?
Tagakchyan: Absolutely. This is incredibly common. And I think it almost speaks to this sense of almost being rooted, being anchored, and it feels safe. And of course, we are comfortable with repetition. We are comfortable with our known environment. So anything outside of that, rattles us. So we need to repeatedly do what makes us feel safe and secure because it makes us feel safe and secure. So we need to constantly reinforce this environment that we know, otherwise it starts to feel shaky and our identities wouldn't almost feel true and feel real anymore.
Lantigua: All right. Last question, because Helen is very keenly aware of how differently she was socialized because she's a daughter, as opposed to being a son. And without saying this is true for everyone, talk to me about how gender plays into not just the expectations, but also the enforcement of some of these gender norms, even in this quote, unquote Americanized context.
Tagakchyan: I think when we're looking at male, female, women, men expectations, if you have a son, what I've seen, at least throughout my practice, as well as in my personal life is, the rules are a little bit more lenient, almost as if, the best way I could describe it is they almost expected the challenge. They almost expected that pushback because there is this sense of, if there is something that I, let's say dad, did that doesn't work here, then you, my son, go ahead and try something new so you can step outside of the boundaries that I have set for you.
Tagakchyan: Whereas with women, the antiquated, backward, expected roles continue to remain true. And if you're a daughter, you're my daughter and you're 25 and you're still not married, what would people think? So there is this external pressure, external expectation, sense of judgment, which I think women tend to bear more. The daughters tend to bear more than the sons tend to because they're allowed to break those barriers a little bit.
Lantigua: That whole what would people think, we hear that from everyone.
Tagakchyan: That resonates across the board.
Lantigua: Amalya, what a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us.
Tagakchyan: Thank you for holding space for this topic. It warmed my heart that there's space for this, so thank you.
Lantigua: Okay. Here's what we learned from Amalya today.
Understand their basic needs. The need for safety and security runs deep in all of us. So be aware that much of your parents' resistance, maybe coming from a desire to do what has always felt safe, familiar.
Consider the group dynamics. Larger family settings often create additional pressure. Conversations might be more fruitful when connecting one on one with your loved ones.
And remember, manage your expectations. Your family may never share or even understand your point of view, but know that your feelings and experience are real and the fight is worth it.
Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to talk to Mami and Papi About Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's Producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our marketing lead. I'm the creator Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi. Bye everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Raised to Be a Modern Woman, But Expected to Follow Tradition” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything, LWC Studios., April 11, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.