Today being Father’s Day, I want to talk about Filipino families.

Mom & Dad with me and my brothers at a family gathering taken years ago.

Due to the importance of the family in Filipino culture, it is impressed upon every individual from childhood to adulthood that parents are owed a debt of gratitude for bringing one into this world. This is balanced by the belief and tradition that parents should make sacrifice for their children because they brought them into the world. Obedience to parents and to older siblings is taught early on and enforced until adulthood, whereupon it becomes one’s sense of obligation.

Children never attain equal footing with parents; parents are always treated with respect and the debt of gratitude is a lifetime one. Children are expected to serve their parents until their death. Through this system the older citizens are provided and cared for. There is…