Hanging on by a Thread...

Which type of family is more functional? American or Iranian? I always used to think that wow, Iranian families sure know how to keep things together since they are just so family-oriented. In a typical American family, when the children reach the age of 18, the "legal" age, they literally go away to college. They leave home, go and dorm and start the rest of their lives by themselves. If there is a certain weekend or holiday that they may visit their parents then they do and if other things come up, then priority is priority.

However, in an Iranian family, it just makes no sense for the boy or especially girl to move out at any certain age unless he/she has gotten married or has to go away to a far city. Even then, they try to reach for every door to be able to stay within their family. But now these days I'm looking at more modern Iranian families both here in New York and Iran, and wonder if the sole reason for not moving out before marriage is wanting to stay with the family. Perhaps it wasn't that normal for a girl to start working at say, 20 years of age and be able to support herself fully financially without the help of a father or husband. So in the end, I ask: is it necessary for the children to stay with their families physically, before marriage, to be able to hold together the intimacy of the family?

I then look towards the modern yet traditional families who "seem" to hold it together by physically staying close to each other, in one house. I guess it's easy to judge and compare families from the outside without really knowing what's going on behind the walls. But for the most part, I'm seeing the families who have had a son or daughter moving out, is simply more functional. My best friend in Iran tells me that she has not spoken to her parents for about two months now, and she lives in the same house as them!! On the other hand, my own sister lives on the East Coast and somehow she talks on the phone with my mother and father more than even I do. Heck my parents know more about my sister's life who lives far away than me, who live in the same roof with them.

It's as if some idiotic person made up this law about families having to live together to be able to be close to each other (even if the sons or daughters are over 18 or 21 or 30 even...) and now it's so hard to turn one's back to that principle. Even if a family is only hanging on by a thread, perfect from the surface but all crumbled up beneath... what's the point for trying to make it work when everyone else has given up around you? Why care about what they have to think when they themselves, are being so damn selfish? No matter how hard I try to be a reasonably good "Iranian-approved" daughter, I'm always a step behind it seems...

So I ask once again: what's the point?