American family and Malaysian family

A typical family in both the United States and Malaysia has similar family structure, with parents especially a father as the breadwinner and mother as a housewife. However, women are also seen to participate more in the labor force nowadays in both countries, and results in a family with both parents holding jobs. Another similarity is the parents are less likely to live with their grandparents or siblings.

American families differ from Malaysian families in a few ways. For example, I do not see that children in Malaysia have too much freedom compare with the American children. In other words, Malaysian parents are stricter to their children. Most of them plan their children’s schedule to take tuition or extracurricular classes such as music and dance lessons. Americans are free to choose what they want to do during their leisure time and their parents will mostly be supportive to their choices. As a result, we are more submissive and dependent to our parents. I am also impressed by how the interactions between American families differ from ours. Most of us do not have close relationship with grandparents like Americans do. We are more respectful and fearful of our grandparents, while Americans treat their grandparents as friends that they can talk to and share their thoughts.

In terms of intimate relationships within the family, I would say that both countries have stable families but different in some aspects. For instance divorce is uncommon in my country, while I do think that it is common in America, this implies that Malaysian families are more stable. On the other hand, a divorced couple in Malaysia is unlikely to be nice to each other. They will compete for children’s custody and wealth of the family that always ends badly. However in America, they occasionally bring their children to the other divorced partner’s home to stay over for the weekend. This shows the stability of the parents-children relationship in American families after they divorce.