MAP x A Tiger Cub, Part II - The Invisible Labor of Cultural Parenting By Eric Chang

When I was a kid, I thought I was the one doing all the work.

School. Sports. Piano. Homework. More homework. It felt like I was constantly carrying this weight of expectation—and in many ways, I was. But now, older and finally seeing things with clearer eyes, I realize there was another kind of weight in the room. One I never noticed. One my parents carried every single day without asking for credit.

Invisible labor.

No one told me that's what it was called, but I see it now in every quiet choice they made that shaped who I became.

My mom had just started to find traction in her career when I was born. She had dreams, momentum, colleagues who finally respected her. And then she gave it all up—to raise me. I never asked her to, but she did it anyway. I remember her being there every day after school, making meals, checking in on my studies, driving me from one activity to the next like it was her full-time job—because it was. She made it look so seamless that I mistook it for "just being a mom."

My dad picked up the slack. Two jobs. Long hours. Quiet exhaustion behind every smile at dinner. He never talked about being tired, just asked how school was, told me stories about Chinese generals, Buddhist monks, and mischievous immortals from Journey to the West. His brain is a library. He could have been a professor, a historian, maybe even a novelist. But instead, he became my storyteller. My quiet anchor.

They both tried so hard to give me the best of both worlds. Enrolled me in Chinese school on weekends so I wouldn’t forget where I came from. Taught me chengyu—four-word Chinese idioms packed with meaning. "塞翁失马" (sài wēng shī mǎ)—"The old man lost his horse." A lesson in how blessings and misfortunes are never what they seem.

They made me play piano, even though I hated it. “It’s good discipline,” they said. They weren’t wrong. But they also signed me up for baseball, basketball, and football because they knew I needed to feel like I belonged in America. And somehow, I did. I fell in love with sports, with the sound of cleats on concrete, the way the basketball sounded going through the hoop. That was their gift, too. Quietly, invisibly, they gave me access to both identities—hoping I’d find my way.

They worked hard on their English so they could understand my teachers, my friends, even me. And yet, they never stopped teaching me Chinese. My mom would correct my tones mid-sentence while stirring a wok full of vegetables. My dad would switch to Mandarin mid-walk, telling me, “Language is memory. It’s how you remember who you are.”

And still, I complained. I wanted burgers instead of steamed fish. Wings over dumplings. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just be like other American families—why everything had to be so Chinese. I rolled my eyes when they compared me to my cousins—those golden, straight-A, science-fair-winning, perfect Asian kids. And when I pushed back, I didn’t just resist them. I resisted everything they stood for: their pride, their history, their sacrifices.

It felt like they were always trying to mold me into someone I wasn’t.

But now I see—I wasn’t just resisting them. I was resisting the version of myself they had sacrificed everything for.

That’s the hard thing about invisible labor. It’s invisible until it isn’t.

I used to think the pressure to succeed came from nowhere, but it came from their hope. Hope that if I made it, the pain of immigration would somehow make sense. That I wouldn’t have to carry the same struggles. That their sacrifices wouldn’t be in vain. I didn’t know how heavy that hope was. I just knew I wanted to breathe.

If I could go back, I wouldn’t ask them to change much. I’d just ask them to express their pride a little differently. Less in comparisons, more in invitation. Let me discover why our food is beautiful instead of telling me it's better. Let me feel what it means to be Chinese, not just be told we’re “built” a certain way.

I wish we had compared less. I wish I had pushed less. I wish we had just… sat with the in-between more.

But here’s the truth: even in the moments I pushed them away, they never stopped pulling me forward. Driving me. Feeding me. Loving me in the only way they knew how—quietly, invisibly, completely.

And now? I see them.

I see the invisible labor not just as sacrifice, but as love. A love so deep, it didn’t need recognition to keep going.

If you’re a parent reading this, especially an immigrant parent—please know: even if we don’t always say it, we see you eventually. And if you're a kid like I was, caught between cultures, expectations, and your own identity—look around. What feels ordinary might actually be extraordinary.

It just takes time to see the labor that love leaves behind.