When Financial Independence Isn’t Always the Goal

It was the summer of 1996 when I was 16 years old, I was 16, and my friends were offered jobs in our nearby mall in Jacksonville, Fla. We all came from middle-class families, so the position focused on building character and money for spending, not out of financial need.

I was a music lover, so I thought of being employed by Blockbuster Music, a now-defunct record store, when I was in my vehicle with my mom, an Iranian immigrant. When she learned of that, she swerved off the road, put the car in park, and yelled at me.

My mom advised me to instead focus on jobs and other opportunities to help me achieve my academic and professional goals and not detract from them. The money aspect was not as important at that time.

After being shocked, I decided to drop the topic. My Iranian mother’s beliefs about how the world operated frequently conflicted with my American childhood.

I realized that academic achievement was how to get a job that would provide me with financial success. For my mom, however, education was an achievement. SHE SUPPORTED MY FINANCIAL NEEDS when I didn’t have the required degrees. However, I was also aware that the more you learn, the more you cannot earn — which is a better degree of status within American society.

The trade-off is worth the cost for my mother and many Iranian parents with money. But if education doesn’t lead to a job that pays well, as I did with my Ph.D. in English literature, the children of their parents could not be branded as a victim of financial dependence.

Some aspects I experienced resonated with many Iranian Americans I spoke to. Farnoosh Torabi is a financial expert and an author who had the exact expectations about schooling from her mother and father. She. Torabi, 43, stated that her parents expected her to attend graduate school regardless of the subject she planned to pursue. The result was an advanced diploma in journalistic studies.

Jason Rezaian, a writer for The Washington Post, received financial assistance from his grandpa. He was also aware that his father ran a Persian rug company and would help him if needed.

“If I tried to go get a loan from a bank when I needed money at some point, my dad would have done terrible things to himself,” Mr. Rezaian, 47, stated

Immigrant Parents Supporting Adult Children

The majority of research into the financial lives of immigrants and their families is focused on filial obligation, where the children must provide for their parents, according to Kevan Harris, the Iranian-American sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He added that the less studied area is the reverse, with parents of immigrants supporting their children into adulthood.

My mother, an anesthesiologist, earned $250,000 annually at the height of her career and likely spent more on my education than any other expense aside from our house. She financed private schools and my master’s and bachelor’s degrees. She also subsidized my tiny teaching stipend as I completed a doctoral degree.

She attributes her need to support me to our shared family history and Iranian culture. “This is my child,” she stated. “I am a wealthy person. Then, as the time I live I am responsible.”

The only support I received was from my American mother and father, who made far less than a clerk in the county. He encouraged me to enter the workforce sooner and consider a more lucrative education.

At age 34, I earned my degree, but I didn’t have any job on the academic market or a plan B. I had met my mother’s dream of obtaining an advanced degree, a scholarly pursuit I genuinely enjoyed. However, it didn’t provide the financial security I thought I required to be a productive citizen of the world.

It was something I never longed for, as I was a slave to my mother’s financial resources. The only time I compared myself to the American concept of adulthood, which is successful with a good-paying job, I began to feel like a settler.

It’s not that I’m not interested in making money. However, the financial support of my mother has enabled me to re-invent myself as a freelance writer and not worry about how to make enough money to live on. I am a single parent by choice; I’ve lived with my mother and stepfather since receiving my doctorate.

Adults residing with parents from America typically see it as temporary; however, multigenerational families are commonplace in many immigrant communities. The author, Mr. Rezaian, who lived intermittently with his parents throughout his adulthood, stated that it was typical for Iranian American families “to see somebody who’s, you know, a fully formed, fully capable, employed adult living with their folks.”

Cultural Over Financial Capital

The survey by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, a non-profit research organization, indicates that 86% of Iranian Americans hold at least one college degree, and one in five Iranian American households has an annual income greater than $100,000. However, many Iranian Americans work to support themselves as they grow older or opt against pursuing a college degree.

A lot of Iranians move to America. Many Iranians come to the United States to pursue higher education, a trend first noticed during the 50s in the 1950s when the the Iranian government encouraged studying abroad to help Iranians utilize their expertise in an ever-changing nation. Mr. Rezaian’s dad earned an M.B.A. from Golden Gate University in San Francisco in the 1960s.

Mr. Harris’s father was introduced to his American mother while studying microbiology in the United States during the 1970s when a new wave of student immigrants came into the country following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and, later, the war between Iraq and Iran. Mrs. Torabi’s father was also in the country in the same period to receive his doctorate in Physics.

When Ms. Harris, Ms. Torabi, and I followed the path of our parents and graduated with master’s degrees, Mr. Rezaian and his brother, an I.T. businessman, quit school after they graduated with bachelor’s degrees.

“If either one of us had adhered to this notion that we had to keep going to school, I don’t think we would have gotten as far as we have in our lives,” Mr. Rezaian told me.

But he believes his father, who has passed away, was always disappointed that neither brother had an advanced degree. “It’s just an indication that someone is cultured, someone is worldly,” Mr. Rezaian said. “And that still matters to Iranians.”