There are many ways people express love. Some say it through words, some show it through actions, support, or small everyday gestures. Yet, among many Asian families, there is a common understanding that parents rarely say the words ‘I love you’ to their children.
I also used to think this stereotype was true. Admittedly, my own parents rarely say these words. When I mentioned this to some of my friends they immediately felt bad for me. But I never felt that way at all. I didn’t understand why they were pitying me when I had never questioned whether they loved me. Whether they said those three words or not I already knew. That commiserative reaction was what made me think about this stereotype more deeply. Did some people associate the absence of those three words with the absence of love itself?
This line of questioning plagued my mind for countless days. On the internet, many people have shared similar experiences, saying that their Asian parents rarely say “I love you” out loud. It has become such a common experience that it is joked about it online. But why is that?
Well some parents may not feel the need to say it because to them, their love for their family is already obvious. Instead, they express it in different ways, especially through their actions. It might be asking if you’ve eaten yet, checking in on your day, buying gifts, or anything. While these gestures may not be as direct as saying ‘I love you’, they can still communicate the same message. It could be a generational pattern, where their own parents also rarely said it to them and they carried on that custom. Some parents may have grown up in environments where openly talking about their feelings and emotions was uncommon. As a result, saying it could feel dramatic and awkward, not because they love their families any less, but because they were never taught to express it that way. For some, those words may only be reserved for special occasions because they’re profound and meaningful.
To explore this stereotype further and see whether it reflected people’s experiences, I asked some Asian students three simple questions:
Do your parents verbally say “I love you” to you?
Do you think saying “I love you” is important?
Do you think the way your parents express love affects how you express love to others?
In these conversations, I expected the first question to confirm the stereotype. Surprisingly, a lot of the students answered that their parents do verbally say “I love you” to them. This caught me off guard because I had assumed their experiences would be similar to mine. Some students did share that their parents rarely said it in person and some mentioned that they expressed it through text messages and letters instead. Most students also agreed that the way they show love to others is greatly related to how their parents express their affection. This suggests that the way we express love is often learned from the people around us. If a parent rarely says those words, a child may naturally become less likely to say it themselves simply because it was never part of their routine.
While my short conversations do not represent every Asian family, they did challenge my initial assumptions. There is no single “Asian parent’’ experience when it comes to expressing love. That made me realize that the questions itself may be too simple. Love is hard to measure and it can’t be reduced to a question or a single phrase repeated often enough.
