Lessons in embracing collectivism 
A reflection on the destructive role of individualism in mother-child relationships.

Growing up with disparate cultures became the gravity that pulled on my identity and destabilized my role as a daughter. On one side, the vines of my Yemeni heritage grew with the ripened grapes of my traditions and customs. On the other side, I found the Western air that dehydrated those grapes to form dark raisins. The presence of individualism as a leading value in Western society hovered over my head, whereas my values of collectivism and community that I inherited from my ancestors were dormant due to the internal battle for a dominant place in my identity. 

Individualism and collectivism 

Individualism is, broadly speaking, an orientation towards life, or rather, oneself. Individualists, or individualist cultures, emphasize self-sufficiency, pursuing one’s goals, independence, and uniqueness as important values that shape how society and cultural institutions are organized. In cultural studies, individualism is often juxtaposed by its ideological opposite: collectivism. As the name suggests, collectivism emphasizes community bonding and cooperation and sees the individual as inherently enmeshed with a group identity. 

First introduced by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede, cultural descriptors like individualism-collectivism, among five others, became what is now known as “Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions.” The machinery of the human brain is pinned down by certain biological certainties encoded in our genes, but unlike other organs in our body, our brains are astonishingly malleable, ready to literally reshape its biological framework to accommodate our rich cultural and environmental milieu. 

In a sense, our minds are cultural inventions, fluent in whatever “cultural language” — a set of unspoken and spoken values, motivations, and social rules — we grow up with. For many of us, the “languages” our minds have adapted to do not always reflect our ancestral cultures. We must strike a balancing act.

The impact of cultural mindsets on perception 

Several studies in cultural psychology have found marked differences in individuals’ thinking and perception styles molded by either individualist or collectivist conditioning. For example, I stumbled upon the work of social psychologist Richard Nisbett, who wrote the book The Geography of Thought, and his studies on how individualist-driven versus collectivist-driven thinking shapes our perception. 

According to one of Nisbett’s eye-tracking studies, both Chinese (driven by collectivist values) and American (driven by individualist values) were presented with an image that had a main object interacting with other components in the background. Studies like this and others in the field of psychology assume that perception is tied to attention: the more our eye rests on something, the more we are assumed to be paying attention to it. 

After measuring eye movements, Nisbett and the other researchers concluded that Americans focused more on the focal point of the image, while the Chinese focused on “contextual information,” or how different components of the image interacted with each other. The study reflects the impactful effect of culture and environment on an individual’s perception and approach to life. 

Individually, I’ve found on a day-to-day basis when interacting with other cultures that non-collectivist persons have a hard time authentically expressing themselves, collaborating with others, maintaining healthy relationships with themselves and their counterparts, reciprocating or showing love, and ultimately functioning in society in a manner that is harmonious and unifying.

Westerners often shift towards a mindset that is fixed in its perspective on social elements of community and society, and this fundamentally weaves into the foundation of kinship as these spaces are often where ideologies such as individualism manifest. However, East Asians convey a sense of communal self that is shared and developed together as a community. One’s magnitude lies in the parts that forge them, just as the Japanese artistic style of kintsugi embraces beauty in the fallibility of life. 

To be a loving daughter: setting realistic standards for my mother 

In my earlier teenage years, I came to the unsettling realization that I had set up an unattainable criterion for my mother that listed unrelenting and impossible standards. The realization stemmed from the belief that individualism had hurt and limited my self-expression and authenticity. I had believed, and still believe, the brand of self-care and mental health that promoted cutting off anyone who hurt me to preserve peace of mind. I followed these individualist perspectives with conviction until I started to become hostile, apathetic, and unforgiving. Even to my own mother. 

I truly think it was the traditions of the collectivist Yemeni culture, interconnected with the teachings of Islam that emphasize mercy, compassion, and prioritizing one’s mother, that made me realize how significantly my hostility and apathy were corrupting my relationships. I saw my mother for who she is: a woman, and before that, a human. Humans are inherently fallible. So, I began to focus on what not all humans do, which was to dedicate their mind, body and soul to nurturing another person, and persevering through that. 

I started to find that any lack of perfection was not the source of any error, but it’s the expectation for perfection, especially within a mother-daughter relationship, that left a seemingly irreconcilable distance between us two women: an unavoidable gap in front of my mother’s two feet. Islam and many Arabs describe heaven as under a mother’s feet: she’s symbolic of a key that grants you access to an everlasting happiness.

As a young girl, and even now as a woman, the emphasis on individualism in my personal and public life hurt me even more because love is one of my core values. I feel so much power in love, and so my desire for my relationship with my mother to be flawless heightened. However, when I let that desire go, I was able to admire the folds in the creases of her eyes as she would joyfully laugh at her own jokes. I remember thinking that there is so much power and beauty to be found in the cracks of any relationship.

I didn’t even have to meet her halfway; she always met me where I was with so much grace. That’s why I adopted the belief that no one is more gracious than a mother. No one deserves more grace than her. Unintentionally, individualism promotes a ruthless duty to oneself; our own progress and peace of mind at the expense of the community, whether that be our relationships, or cultural communities. I believe there is no power in the self solely. We are mosaics of the people, relationships, and heritages that have made us. Believing otherwise is not only naïve, but emotionally reckless and fractures the things that truly matter.

Bridging the gap 

For a prolonged period, before becoming a form of life from the state of an embryo to a fetus, we are dependent on our mothers. The fetus is attached to the mother through an umbilical cord which sustains the fetus through three blood vessels, two arteries, and a vein. These have the very important job of carrying resources for the purpose of sustaining the placenta and fetus. 

The absolute scientific truth is that before we are one, we are two. Your development is rooted in the dependence upon another person physically and even psychologically.  Before you are independent, you are dependent on every fiber in your mother’s being. It is exactly the reason why practices of collectivism need to be welcomed back into our homes, and also why our society’s hyper-individualism cannot go unchecked. 

You cannot begin to experience the fruitfulness of love in a state of mental and emotional isolation, which I believe is a sour outcome of extreme individualism. In pursuit of self-actualization rather than communal actualization, you become the loser.  When I began to question my thinking, I was able to see my mother with more clarity and compassion. I was able to embrace her in all her flawed grace and in doing so, I was able to embrace myself authentically. I was able to awaken from my state of comatose and value my ancestral customs, implementing the wisdom of its lessons into how I practiced intimacy and connection. 

My experiences with my mother have led me to consciously bridge the gap between the acceptance of imperfection and love to foster a healthy relationship with the people that matter most to us. The shortcomings of someone as meaningful and valuable as a mother shouldn’t provoke indignation and bitterness; there should always be space for forgiveness, compassion and empathy no matter how complicated the journey is.