Tearing Down the White Picket Fence
January 31, 2024
Writer: Anushi Varma
Editor: Chloe Cardello
Bright pink marker in one hand, I carefully wrote in the neatest handwriting I could muster: “Anushi’s 7th Birthday Wishlist”. For months I had already known what the first item was going to be, so I wrote . . .
A dog
Ever since I was seven years old, the first thing on my birthday wishlist had always been a dog. I recall fondly watching an impressionable number of family-friendly TV shows and movies featuring families and their perfect dog named something timeworn like Lucky. Yet, more than the dogs on the screen, I loved the happy, carefree, cohesive families. I admired (and was a little envious) of their magic and chemistry. I knew then that I wanted to mold my family into a picture-perfect, good old-fashioned, normal American family.
I was raised by South Asian immigrant parents, and so my childhood inherently looked different from that displayed in popular media. We didn’t chit-chat with our neighbors at community barbeques. We didn’t build a treehouse in the backyard for my brother and I to play in. We didn’t go on casual road trips and set up picnics where we joked and laughed and sang as if life couldn’t get any jollier than it seemed.
When I look back on my youth, at times I feel remorse when I think about the things I never experienced but always wanted: a “white picket fence” family. The traditional American household with a fun dad who wore cheesy Hawaiian beach shirts, a mom I could share my crushes and school drama with, family road trips to Disney World, and of course, our precious family dog.
A lot of these expectations were significantly influenced by the TV shows I grew up watching, fooling me into believing that the Disney Channel, “Good Luck Charlie” family was the standard to be reached. I was fooled, and maybe still fooled to this day, by the posed, well put-together videos and pictures of seemingly perfect families on television and around me.
I compared my family to those of my friends. Even within my South Asian community, I felt isolated and frustrated as I grew older and saw them breaking out of their stereotypical strict South Asian household while I was still stuck in mine. They were developing closer relationships with their parents and experiencing personal freedom with the encouragement of their family. In no time these external influences compounded into an agonizing feeling of longing for that which I felt I didn’t have and would never experience.
When I moved into college, I found a special, non-judgemental community within my new friends. We told each other about our families, finding comfort in our similarities and learning from our differences. I stayed with my college friends over school breaks and experienced a different family lifestyle each time. From there, I developed a fuller picture of my upbringing. Yes, there were some things my family didn’t do, but there were things that we did. We went on family vacations. We watched movies together on Saturday nights. We spent time with our family-friends at holiday dinner parties. At the end of the day, I really hadn’t missed out on anything because every family simply had different experiences. Finally, I felt like I could let my shoulders relax.
On TV, I admired how easily a dog brought a family together, but real families are so much more complicated. Each family is built differently, operates differently, and acts differently. Behind the scenes, families can be dysfunctional, chaotic, stressful, but also have moments of harmony, clarity, and calm. Most important of all, it’s a waste of time to justify one’s family against or, conversely, assimilate one’s family into superficial societal expectations. There is no “white picket fence” family–just the scrapbook of a house we build with the pieces we have.
