Family Conflict in a Collectivist Culture

Usually the leader is the leader because they have a lot of wisdom or life experience. The biggest difference I perceive between American (where I am right now) and Asian culture is that in many parts of Asia, the elderly are highly revered and respected, so when you say leader, I am imagining an elder family patriarch/matriarch kind of deal. The leader's greatest responsibility as the family patriarch is to take care of the family (which includes finances, managing the family business if there is one, funeral arrangements, etc), so the rest of the family trusts the leader a great deal. I'm not sure how one individual would feel if s/he disagreed with the family leader but usually they would be viewed as being foolish by the rest of the family. For example, my family has had a lot of conflicts regarding marriage. My university-grad cousin was dating a working-class guy, and the family patriarch wouldn't accept him because he wasn't good enough for the family, essentially, so the entire family subsequently disapproved as well. I can't really speak on her behalf, but I'd imagine that she felt conflicted between pleasing her family and doing what she wanted with her life. They ended up not staying together, which illustrates how important family is in a collectivist culture. This has happened with several women in my family.

Whenever I speak to my relatives or anyone from my culture regarding matters like this, the general attitude is that the parents (or leader) are always right. I'll reiterate that I don't know what it would be like to be in disagreement with the whole family because I grew up American, but from what I've seen the individual who is in disagreement eventually agrees with the leader anyway.

Hope I helped! I'm not exactly an expert but I do have family members in a collectivist culture.

Happy to help!

This question is a bit harder to answer because nothing like that has happened in my family. But going along with your example, if things were bad financially, I think the family would first blame circumstances before blaming the patriarch. I can't ever imagine a patriarch of a family in a collectivist society mismanaging finances 1) on purpose because the family is one unit and hurting the family would hurt the patriarch and 2) on accident resulting from the patriarch's incompetence, because an incompetent patriarch is almost an oxymoron. In my family's case, the patriarch is generally the eldest male in the eldest, "non-retirement-home" generation, because this person is usually the most competent at being a family patriarch. The oldest male child in each family has different responsibilities and expectations than his siblings so he tends to mature differently, and that's why he is usually the most competent to be a patriarch when he grows up.

Okay, so to answer your question, if a patriarch couldn't manage money due to incompetence, I would assume the next most competent person (in finances), regardless of gender or age, would step up to handle the family's finances (only). I'm sure the former patriarch wouldn't feel emasculated in any way because the patriarch's responsibility and chief interest is to help the family. Also, because a family will work together anyway to solve a problem, I don't think that this hypothetical situation would result in a family replacing their patriarch in any way.

If the patriarch was intentionally mismanaging money, not letting anyone else come forward to help the family, or doing anything else that is somewhat selfish, I think would result in some drama. In my own family, there is an additional step above the patriarch as far as authority goes, which would be the mother or the mother-in-law, so I would imagine the family would turn to her if a patriarch was discovered to have perverted his position. Old people are supposed to "rest" from living such long and hard lives, so that's why they retire from leading the family, but they are still revered as sources of wisdom.

Thinking about this reminds me a lot of "Can You Hear My Heart" which is a Korean drama that played a lot at my house. Not sure if you exactly have time to watch (it's like a gillion episodes long) but I'm sure you could find episode synopses online. There is a little bit of a family scandal involving patriarchal misconduct along with some other sub-plots that could demonstrate family dynamics for you quite well.

I'll also stress that there is no typical family. How a family reacts can also be affected by where they live, whether the parents were divorced, whether the mother works or stays at home, education, social class, religion, and a host of other variables. The only things that are universal among all families, in my opinion, is respecting the elders and the importance of putting the family first.