(And no, it’s not all small stuff – but there’s more small stuff than the amount of complaining would suggest.)

I was inspired to write this rant piece after reading a blog post over at Diary of a White Indian Housewife called Indian Men Being Hand Fed By Mummy, that, well, surprised me with the attitude of cultural bias or ethnocentrism it seemed to be expressing:

I’m fully aware that Indian mothers often hand feed their sons until they are quite old. However, I was shocked (and even a little appalled) that an adult man could still be getting hand fed by his mother!
…
Now, I’m wondering what is normal in India in relation to this kind of behaviour. What will happen when the 30 year old Peter Pan man, who’s still being hand fed, gets married. Will his wife be expected to take over feeding duties? Or will his mother keep doing it? Or, will he finally become a grown up and start feeding himself?

I generally love Sharell’s posts, which is why I was so surprised at the overtones of ethnocentrism in the words above (do be sure to over to her site to read the full post in context – and note that the post is tagged “culture shock”). Ethnocentrism, by the way, can most simply be seen as an attitude that judges other cultures relative to your own. And while it can be very difficult to shake these sort of prejudices and generalizations – as I’ve blogged about before – I do think it’s important to constantly evaluate our thoughts on other cultures to see if we’re letting our natural ethnocentrism run a bit too wild.

In this case, before you go all, “Dude, who does that?” on me about the hand feeding thing, take a deep breath, and run through the three point checklist of the official Intercultural Quirks Harm Test:

1. Does the behavior itself hurt anyone?
2. If you didn’t know the behavior was occurring, would it affect you in any way?
3. Is the behavior a significant disruption in your relationship?

This checklist works pretty well in helping me, at least, figure out when I’m being a bit too judgmental about a cultural behavior that really isn’t worth being bugged about.  (Of course, there are bigger, more problematic intercultural differences that you do need to address to keep your relationship running smoothly, but that’s not the topic of discussion today.)

So, being hand-fed by your mom after puberty. That’s the topic of discussion, especially since when I asked Aditya whether he still got this treatment, he got a goofy little happy grin on his face, and said “sometimes.” And, to just keep things fair and balanced, I’ll admit to behavior that shocked Aditya when I first told him: I only talked to my parents on the phone once during the nine months I lived and worked in Germany. And that once was on my 18th birthday. Yeah, my family kinda takes the whole American “adult child is independent from parents” thing to a bit of an extreme.

Is anyone being harmed by the action?

This is the key question you should ask yourself first – and no coping out by complaining about the psychic pain you feel when you see your spouse being hand-fed by his mother. Is anyone getting really hurt – either physically or emotionally? Remember to step outside of yourself and your cultural framework and look to see if there’s actual harm occurring or just your own assumptions about what is and isn’t harmful.

Americans might look at an adult being hand-fed, and think that he’s emotionally stunted and immature – while I’m pretty certain that Aditya and his mother just see it as way to be close and show love and affection. On the other hand, I’m pretty certain my parents thought they were showing their love by letting me stand on my own two feet while I lived in Germany, without them breathing down my neck with phone calls all the time. The lack of phone calls suited me just fine – but Aditya was horrified when he found out how little we spoke to one another. His family would be extremely hurt if he called them so rarely.

If you didn’t know it was happening, would the ripple effects still bug you?

Obviously, if you’re in a position to get your knickers in a knot about an intercultural quirk, you know about the behavior. But let’s go hypothetical for a moment, and imagine you didn’t know. Would the behavior still matter? Clearly, there are cases where it would – Aditya could expect me to feed him like his mother does, which would affect our relationship (negatively) even if I never knew his mother still hand feeds him. Or I could upset his family by talking with them on the phone as little as I do with my own parents.

However, if this odd cultural behavior of your significant other doesn’t clearly affect your life – if you wouldn’t know about it if you hadn’t seen or heard about it yourself – then it’s a bit silly to let your ethnocentric perception of the behavior to rule over your relationship.  In other words, I shouldn’t think Aditya is childish or immature just because his mother still feeds him – unless his actions in our relationship give me reason to think otherwise. Likewise, Aditya would be wrong to judge me as unloving or uncaring about family members just because I don’t speak to my family that often on the phone – it’s just that we don’t feel the need to talk much on the phone.

Is it something that irritates you, regardless?

Okay – so the behavior isn’t damaging or hurting anyone, and the behavior alone doesn’t affect your relationship – so how could it still be causing a significant disruption in your relationship? Well… people are funny creatures. Sometimes certain things just bug us, even if there’s no actual harm that they cause.

This isn’t a cultural quirk – just a personal one – but, for example, Aditya has a remarkable ability to hide his socks around the house in the process of taking them off at the end of a long day. I don’t know how he manages to end up with them wedged between the two bookcases, or bunched in the technology odds & ends basket, or in a feat of what must be magic, hidden beneath the 50-pound bag of dog food in the closet, but, somehow, he does it every night after coming home from work. It drives me spare! It’s not like it harms anything, since, really, what’s one more misplaced item in the mess of dog toys and papers strewn across our chaotic household? It’s completely irrational for me to be bugged about it, especially since he’s quick to pick it up when I point out a misplaced sock to him. But, nonetheless, it’s one of his most irritating habits to me – and so it’s one he’s working on changing, simply because I’ve let him know how much it happens to bug me.

So, far be it for me to say that you should never get your knickers in a twist over something irrational. But don’t let yourself pretend that a dislike of a particular difference – cultural or not – is based on something rational when it’s not. You might really dislike seeing your spouse hand-fed by his mother; maybe it just weirds you the heck out. That’s fine – I’m not going to judge you on that. But just because something weirds you out doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. And so, if you can, just ignore those little things that irritate or worry you. (Obviously I can’t with The Misplaced Socks. Proof #3152 that I am still not a demigoddess. But we should all keep trying.) If there’s no harm – either to the people doing it or to your relationship through the ripple effect – then just take a deep breath (spend it ranting for a few minutes in the forums, then take another deep breath), straighten out those underoos, and live and let live.