get the most out of approval of others while trying to avoid disapproval.”^119 Chu and Ju
make much the same point:“An important Chinese cultural value is filial piety. Tradi-
tionally, Chinese children feel a lifelong obligation to their parents, ideally exemplified
by an unreserved devotion to please them in every possible way.”^120
American Indians are yet another culture where the extended family transmits
ways of living and values. Taylor and Ballard point out that American Indian families
are“interdependent and interconnected, in regard to living arrangements, sharing of
resources and emotional support.”^121 For American Indians the extended family is
large. As Cheshire writes,“Individuals identify themselves not only as members of
specific families, but as members of a tribe, which creates a larger kinship structure
to draw upon, with many families interrelated.”^122 An interesting aspect of collectiv-
ism among American Indians is that“despite nearly five hundred years of destructive
contact with Anglo-European cultures, important differences in family practices per-
sist among Native Americans.”^123The Elderly
The family is the first institution to introduce the child to the notion of age grouping.
Learning about and coping with the life changes associated with aging is also, like
gender, a cultural universal. This universal nature of dealing with age and the elderly
is explained by Haviland and his colleagues when they write,“All human societies
recognize a number of life stages. The demarcation and duration of these stages vary
across cultures, but each one provides distinctive social roles and come with certain
cultural features such as specific patterns of activity, attitudes, obligations, and
prohibitions.”^124 The next section deals with some of those roles, features, and per-
ceptions that relate to intercultural interaction. Specifically, we will look at some of
the cultural differences found in various families as applied to the elderly.United States
We begin with the United States. For a number of reasons, most members of the
dominant culture have a rather negative perception of the elderly. Because of this per-
ception, members of the dominant culture attempt to avoid growing old. In addition,
many of the major values of Western culture celebrate youth and self-reliance. Hence,
as one grows old, one’s contributions to the culture often become devalued. The
English language has even created“derogatory terms”for the elderly. Reflect on the
images evoked by the terms“over the hill,”“codger,”“fuddy-duddy,”“geezer,”“fossil,”
or“old coot.”
It is, of course, much more than words that foster negative stereotypes. In general,
“Ultimately, North Americans retire from their paid jobs at a specified age and,
increasingly, spend the final years of their lives in retirement communities, segregated
from the rest of society.”^125 Since people are living longer, nursing homes and assisted
living facilities isolate the elderly even further from the rest of the culture and their
children. But the economic recession of 2007–2009 caused a noticeable shift in the
composition of American families. By 2012, the number of Americans living in multi-
generational households had doubled since 1980. Older family members traditionally
made up a higher proportion of individuals living in multigenerational U.S. families
than did young adults in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. But in 2011, of92 CHAPTER 3•The Deep Structure of Culture: Lessons from the Family
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