Divorce

Yesterday, I graduated...well not really, I walked though. I have one more final on Wednesday. Cursed UC Berkeley--terrible scheduling.

Anyway, my dad came to see me walk. I'm walking two graduations: the Public Health major commencement and the Southeast Asian graduation. I really wanted both of them to attend the Southeast Asian graduation because it is a much more personal commencement and because I was gonna be a student speaker. However, my parents are divorced, so it was kinda agreed (I was hoping that we could all be civilized adults and come to the same one, but my mom said no) that my mom would attend the one next Saturday and my dad would attend the one this past Saturday. My mom is now remarried. I was talking to my friend about this dilemma before, and my friend said, "Why don't they just both come to your graduation? Shouldn't it be about you?" I replied, "They can't" (although I was thinking the same thing...why can't we all just be civilized adults about this?). He responded with, "Why not? White folks do it all the time." I think about shows like Reba (in which the father cheats on the mother, remarries, and they live as neighbors and all friends) and think to myself, Can that really happen? I've never seen an Asian family do it. Maybe because it would threaten the family structure too much? What do you think?

My stepdad is insecure about his position in the family, and when my dad talk about my family, he only mentions my mom, never my stepdad. They're both in denial that the other exists and they never talk about each other to my siblings and me.

Something rarely talked about in the Asian American community is single-parent households. How common are they?

I feel like for traditional people, it's still something pretty shameful. My uncle in Vietnam said that him and his wife fought and had stuff happened (I kinda felt like he was implying cheating), but they still stayed together because that's what you do. He claimed too many people in America get divorced (50% is what it was when I last checked). 1 out of 2 chances you're gonna get divorced.

My maternal relatives never mention my dad. Maybe he's a taboo topic now.