The relationship between my wife and her mother has always intrigued me. Both are strong women with strong bonds of both love and tension. After observing these two Korean women interact over the last 25 years, I have developed my own theory of their relationship. I call it the "Asian Mother/Daughter Paradox". If I had the energy, I would write an entire book about it, but this article will have to suffice. This paradox does not apply to all Asian women, but only to those who were driven to success by their mothers. (You know who you are.) My wife is a successful university professor. I have no doubt that the driving force behind her years of effort to achieve this goal was a desire to please her mother.

 The Asian Mother Paradox is this "Your mother will sacrifice everything for your success, and yet your mother will never admit that you are fully successful". In other words, no amount of your success will fully satisfy her. I think that the mother's subconscious motive may be this: "if I hold back my full approval, then maybe my daughter will try even harder". The counterpoint of this relationship is the Asian Daughter Paradox which states: "You will sacrifice everything to win the approval of your mother, and yet you recognize that no matter how successful you become, you will never win her full approval." I have witnessed his dynamic between my wife and her mother. I also heard a fine example recently. Amy Tam was being interviewed on the radio. She was asked, "what made you happiest about the success of your first book?" She quickly replied, "that my mother was pleased with me". Then she added with a sigh, "but my mother urged me to get started on my next book." This perfectly illustrates the Asian Mother/Daughter Paradox: a fully successful author still strives to win the full approval of her mother. I don't want to say that this dynamic is all bad. Many successful Asian women have found success out of a desire to please their mothers. However, the tension that this paradox produces often leads to anger, miscommunication, and avoidance. I am writing these words to raise this mother/daughter tension to consciousness in order that it can be dealt with openly.

These are ten rules that I outlined for my wife to better relate with her mother.

Rule 1: Accept the Asian Mother Paradox. You are not going to change her.
Rule 2: Accept the Asian Daughter Paradox. Your psychological desire to please your mother is too deep rooted to be plucked out entirely. You must change it around the margins.
Rule 3: Your mother has been the one who defines your success. Begin to define success in your own terms.
Rule 4: Forget Western psychological junk. You and your mother will always be trapped in a Parent/Child relationship.
Rule 5: Hold your mother's image and her sacrifice in the highest esteem, but live your own life. Not measuring up to your mother's impossible expectations may have served a purpose early in life, but now it is a burden.
Rule 6: Love your mother at a distance. Keep visits and phone calls short. The joy and love exhibited upon first meeting is quickly replaced by mother's controlling behavior.
Rule 7: Recognize the thin line between love and hate. Both are extreme emotions, but then you have an extreme relationship with your mom.
Rule 8: Form is more important that substance. The trophies of success may be more important to her than to you.
Rule 9: Say "yes, yes" to your mother, but do what is best in the context of your own life. You live with consequences. She doesn't.
Rule 10: Break the mold with your own daughter or son. Adult children are their own persons. I can say with experience that having an adult-to-adult relationship with my own sons is much more satisfying than being trapped for life as controlling parent of a rebelling child.

And good luck to all you daughters of Korean mothers!