Rostam and Sohrab, Lam-ang, and the Filipino Tragedy of the Lost Father
By Karl M. Garcia
Few stories are more devastating than the tale of Rostam and Sohrab, the father and son who meet not in a loving reunion but on opposite sides of a battlefield. Found in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, their story has endured for centuries because its tragedy is painfully simple: the son is searching for his father while unknowingly fighting him, and the father encounters his own son without knowing who he is.
Recognition comes only after the fatal blow.
The story belongs to a universal literary tradition in which children search for absent parents, inherit identities they do not fully understand, and attempt to recover something that was lost before they were old enough to understand its importance. Yet the Rostam–Sohrab tragedy becomes particularly revealing when viewed alongside Philippine literature and mythology.
The Philippines does not possess an exact equivalent of Rostam and Sohrab. But it has stories that explore remarkably similar questions about absent fathers, inherited identity, death, memory, and the unfinished burdens passed from one generation to another.
The closest traditional parallel is found in the Ilocano epic Biag ni Lam-ang.
Lam-ang, like Sohrab, grows up without truly knowing his father. His father, Don Juan, leaves to fight the Igorots and does not return. Lam-ang therefore inherits a father he knows primarily through absence and memory. When he grows old enough to act, he searches for him.
This immediately establishes a powerful parallel with Sohrab.
Both sons are separated from their fathers.
Both inherit heroic qualities.
Both seek answers about their origins.
Both discover that the father they have been searching for is connected to violence and death.
But their stories ultimately diverge.
Sohrab finds his father alive—but does not recognize him.
Lam-ang finds that his father is already dead.
Sohrab’s tragedy is therefore one of misrecognition.
Lam-ang’s is one of irreversible absence.
In one story, father and son stand face-to-face but do not know one another. In the other, the son reaches the place where his father should be only to discover that there can be no reunion.
Both stories ask the same painful question:
What happens when a child searches for the person who represents his origins, only to discover that the past cannot be recovered?
Lam-ang’s response is characteristically heroic. He does not simply mourn Don Juan. He avenges him. The father’s unfinished story becomes part of the son’s identity.
This is an important distinction from Sohrab.
Sohrab never receives the opportunity to inherit his father’s story consciously. He dies before learning that the warrior opposing him is the very man he has been seeking.
Lam-ang, by contrast, learns what happened to his father and acts upon that knowledge.
The tragedy is still present, but the son survives long enough to transform it into action.
This makes Biag ni Lam-ang an especially useful Philippine parallel to the Shahnameh. Both epics recognize that children inherit more than blood. They inherit names, reputations, obligations, conflicts, memories, and unfinished business.
A father can therefore remain present even when he is physically absent.
Sometimes he survives through his name.
Sometimes through his reputation.
Sometimes through his enemies.
Sometimes through the expectations placed upon his children.
And sometimes through the wounds he leaves behind.
This theme becomes even more powerful in the work of José Rizal.
Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is not literally a father-and-son tragedy like Rostam and Sohrab. Crisostomo Ibarra does not unknowingly fight Don Rafael on a battlefield. Yet Don Rafael’s absence shapes the entire meaning of Ibarra’s return to the Philippines.
Ibarra returns expecting to continue his life and contribute to his community. Instead, he discovers that his father’s memory has been damaged by the colonial system. Don Rafael, who had once possessed social standing, has been transformed in the eyes of the authorities into a condemned and disgraced figure.
The son therefore inherits not simply his father’s name but his father’s unresolved history.
Ibarra’s search becomes larger than a son’s attempt to understand his parent.
It becomes a search for the truth about the society that produced his father’s suffering.
Here Rizal transforms the ancient lost-father motif into a colonial critique.
The father becomes more than an individual.
He can represent a previous generation.
The son can represent a succeeding generation attempting to understand what happened before it was born.
The family becomes a metaphor for the nation.
This is where the comparison with Rostam and Sohrab becomes particularly illuminating.
In the Shahnameh, political circumstances, secrecy, deception, and war separate a father and son who should belong together.
In Rizal’s Philippines, colonial institutions can similarly distort relationships and identities. Individuals are judged not simply according to who they are but according to the identities imposed upon them by those with power.
A respected Filipino can be portrayed as a criminal.
A reformer can become a suspected enemy.
A father’s suffering can become his son’s inheritance.
The battlefield of Rostam and Sohrab therefore has a Philippine counterpart—not necessarily in another literal battlefield, but in the social and political battlefield depicted by Rizal.
The weapons are different.
They may be accusations, institutions, prejudice, imprisonment, misinformation, and unequal power rather than swords and spears.
But the consequence can be similar: people become enemies before they understand one another.
That is one of the deepest lessons of the Rostam–Sohrab story.
Human beings can stand physically close to one another while remaining separated by ignorance.
The tragedy is not simply that father and son are enemies.
It is that they could have been something else.
They could have been family.
They could have known one another.
They could have shared memories.
They could have protected each other.
The possibility existed—but knowledge arrived too late.
This is also what makes the comparison with Star Wars so instructive.
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader initially confront one another as enemies while Luke does not fully understand the identity of the man opposing him. Like Sohrab, Luke is searching for an understanding of his origins. Like Rostam and Sohrab, father and son are placed on opposite sides of a larger conflict.
But Star Wars reverses the tragedy.
Recognition comes early enough to make a difference.
Luke learns that Vader is his father while there is still time for a choice. Instead of accepting that his father is irredeemable, Luke refuses to abandon him. Vader ultimately turns against the Emperor and saves his son.
Recognition becomes the beginning of reconciliation.
The Shahnameh gives us the opposite.
Recognition comes after reconciliation is impossible.
The difference is profound.
Star Wars asks:
Can a father and son still find one another after years of separation?
Rostam and Sohrab asks the darker question:
What happens when they find one another only after it is too late?
The Philippine parallels add another dimension.
Biag ni Lam-ang asks what a son does when the father he seeks is already dead.
Noli Me Tangere asks what a son does when he discovers that his father’s suffering is connected to the structure of the society he has inherited.
These are different stories, but they revolve around a common human problem: the inheritance of the past.
Every generation receives a world it did not create.
It inherits the victories and failures of its parents.
It inherits institutions it did not design.
It inherits prejudices it did not invent.
It inherits conflicts that began before it was born.
And sometimes it inherits wounds whose origins it does not immediately understand.
This is why the lost father is such a powerful literary symbol.
The father can represent ancestry, history, authority, memory, or the previous generation itself.
The son’s search for the father can therefore become a search for identity.
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
What happened before I arrived?
What am I expected to inherit?
And perhaps most importantly:
What should I preserve, and what should I change?
Sohrab finds his answer only in death.
Lam-ang finds his father’s absence and turns it into heroic action.
Ibarra discovers that understanding his father’s fate requires confronting the society that condemned him.
These different endings reveal different possibilities for the next generation.
One is destroyed by the past.
One continues the past.
One attempts to reform the world inherited from the past.
This is where the Filipino reading becomes especially important.
The Philippines has repeatedly experienced generational transitions in which the children inherit problems created long before they were born. Colonialism, war, dictatorship, political violence, poverty, inequality, migration, and institutional weakness have all left historical legacies that subsequent generations must confront.
The challenge is not simply remembering history.
It is recognizing its consequences while there is still time to act.
That is the central warning contained in Rostam and Sohrab.
Truth has a time.
Recognition has a time.
Reconciliation has a time.
Justice has a time.
There is a moment when discovering the truth can change the future.
There is also a moment when truth can do nothing except explain the past.
Rostam learns that Sohrab was his son, but the knowledge cannot bring him back.
The tragedy is therefore not merely that Rostam killed Sohrab.
It is that he discovered the meaning of their relationship only after the relationship itself had been destroyed.
That is why the story remains relevant far beyond ancient Persia.
It speaks to families separated by migration, war, poverty, estrangement, secrecy, and pride.
It speaks to generations that grow up without knowing the stories of those who came before them.
It speaks to societies that discover historical truths only after enormous damage has already been done.
And it speaks to nations struggling to understand their own inheritance.
The Philippines’ own literature reminds us that the lost father does not always have to be a literal father.
He can be an ancestor.
A generation.
A forgotten history.
A damaged institution.
A lost opportunity.
A country that might have become something different.
In Biag ni Lam-ang, the son finds a dead father and carries his story forward.
In Rizal, the son discovers that his father’s fate cannot be separated from the fate of the society around him.
In Rostam and Sohrab, father and son find each other only to destroy the possibility of knowing one another.
Together, these stories offer a profound lesson about inheritance.
We do not choose the past we inherit.
But we choose whether we will understand it.
And understanding must come before the fatal moment.
Before the sword is drawn.
Before the accusation is accepted.
Before the relationship is destroyed.
Before history repeats itself.
The deepest tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab is therefore not simply that a father killed his son.
It is that the truth arrived when truth could no longer save anyone.
That is why the story continues to speak across cultures—from ancient Persia to the Philippine epic tradition and Rizal’s colonial Philippines.
Different peoples tell different stories about fathers and sons.
But beneath them lies the same human longing:
to know where we came from,
to understand those who came before us,
and, if possible, to recognize one another before it is too late.
Because there are truths that can heal a family.
There are truths that can heal a nation.
But there are also truths that become tragic precisely because they were discovered too late.
The son may search for the father.
The father may search for the son.
A nation may search for its history.
The question is whether recognition comes in time.
If it does, the past can become reconciliation.
If it does not, the past becomes tragedy.
Don Juan was the father of Lam-Ang? So was Lam-Ang the son of a haciendero just like the late Juanito Furagganan / Juan Ponce Enrile?
Interesting how old stories mix with new over time, well they always do. Nobody hopefully believes the Jesus was the thin European they show in churches or the California hippie they show in Jesus Christ Superstar.
BTW the Luke Skywalker / Darth Vader storyline of Star Wars is allegedly based on Schiller’s Don Carlos. Rizal as a known fan of Schiller (translating his Wilhelm Tell into Tagalog) would have recognized the story.
Don Carlos was the son of Philipp II who led a rebellion against his father.
An even more interesting aspect of Ibarra’s ancestry was that of his ancestor Don Pedro Eibarramendia having destroyed Elias’ great-grandfather who was a wealthy Manila merchant by false accusations..
Irineo, didnt the kaiser of germany once imprisoned his mother, the daughter of queen victoria, for treason. apparently the kaiser was jealous that his mother paid more attention to the son of emperor franz frederick and empress elizabeth of austria, and severely punished his mother when he ascended the throne and become the kaiser.
queen elizabeth the 1st of england also signed the death warrant of her cousin, mary queen of scots.
families can be so tricky.
he did not imprison her, but he did have her palace searched just after his father died, and allegedly had her mail monitored.. and before she died it seems she had her nephew the future King of England make sure he took her letters with him.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was pretty crazy, some say part of the reason for WW1 was envy at his cousin having the more powerful and respected (British) Empire, all that.
yeah some european royalties are just wacko, emperor frans jozeph of austria apparently bullied his only son and heir, crown prince rodulf that rodulf commited suicide, empress sisi could do not much to protect her son, herself ended up being murdered by a crazed assassin. when sisi was buried her tombstone said she was empress of austria, but the hungarians overruled emperor franz joseph and sisi rightfully got her full title and buried as not only empress of austria but of hungary as well. she was well liked both in austria and hungary and played very important rule in keeping peace in both countries.
WOW, Thanks for this!
Perhaps the topic of strains on Filipino family cohesion should not be viewed primarily from the later Westernized surface layers, but with more focus on the underlying cultural operating system.
What I mean is in in pre-European contact Austronesian society (extending to Polynesia) outside of the elite who practiced polygamy (and sometimes polyandry), commoners usually maintain monogamous relationships after premarital sexual freedom which was tolerated and accepted. While monogamy was practiced after the premarital sexual freedom of the youth, separations (what we would call “divorce”) was the social right of both men and women, and there was flexibility for entering into subsequent relationships — something along the lines that can be described as “serial monogamy.” The people in what is now the Philippines were no different from the rest of Austronesia in these baseline practices.
So what really happened in the pre-Spanish days to children born “out of wedlock?” The children were usually absorbed into either the paternal or maternal extended family, whichever carried the higher social standing (interestingly children were usually absorbed into the maternal family). We can see echoes of that today, where everyone (titas, titos, lolas, lolos) pitches in to care for out-of-wedlock children. There was no social stigma as there was no concept of an “illegitimate” child. Every child was biyaya blessing). By absorbing out-of-wedlock children into the extended family network (kamag-anak), a child maintains connection to both communal and ancestral (spiritual) resources. Basically everything operated on relational networks and the flow or balance of standing stemming from such networks.
The Iberian layer imposed by the Spanish that created marital inflexibility was partly the reaction of Spanish shock (e.g. in the chronicles of Fr. Pedro Chirino and the soldier Miguel de Loarca) to how easily Philippine natives moved in and out of relationships, which the Spanish viewed as immoral. The Código Civil (Civil Code) outlawed marital fluidity and introduced the concept of legitimate vs illegitimate (hijos bastardos) children, as well as the European nuclear family unit. Also introduced were Iberian machismo layered on top of native understandings of elite/chiefly behavior and marianismo (the valorization of feminine purity and motherhood, made famous by Rizal’s Maria Clara) — clearly, two seemingly contradictory layered concepts on top of native interpretation.
By the time of the American colonial administration, it was noted by the Americans that there was an extensive querida (kabit, i.e. mistress) system in Manila among the principales of elite men who maintained secondary and tertiary households of working-class women (cigarreras, lavanderas, etc.) as noted by Dr. Maria Camagay’s research into Spanish colonial court records in Working Women of Manila (1995). Eventually starting in the Commonwealth to Third Republic eras these elite habits trickled down to middle-class men, especially those who worked far from home where Filipino men formed temporary, serial partnerships with lower-class women, the resulting children who were absorbed into the maternal family network for survival, just as the cultural operating system dictates.
When the behavior trickled down to the lower classes, the contradictory standard followed, where female chastity and marital fidelity are strictly enforced socially, while (young) men who sexually exploit women and sire children outside of relationships are excused as courtships that didn’t work out or “boys being boys” (lalaki kasi). If the woman’s side has a problem with it, usually the woman’s family needs to take it upon themselves to enforce affronts to their “honor” (i.e. social standing) by confronting the man’s family. Sometimes the confrontation is successful, resulting in shotgun weddings, but more often than not I have also observed that mothers and lolas of chicksboys will often protect their sons and grandsons by sending them off to another barangay or province to live with a relative or work far away in order to escape accountability. We may also see this protective behavior by the womanizer’s family as placing family/clan relational standing above “social rules” (kamag-anak), since the social rules are just another layer which has flexible interpretation. The same kin-protectiveness that absorbs out-of-wedlock children into the (maternal) extended family also protects their sons’ sexual conquests, which is why it is possible to have a family who asserts strong rights for their daughter’s children towards her ex-partner’s family while at the same time helping the daughter’s brother escape accountability towards the children he sired when he wants to end the relationship.
Going back to the cultural operating system, we can view the external layers (Indian, Arabic, Javanese, Spanish, American, etc.) combined with the baseline cultural behavior as a sort of hybrid or fusion. But in all cases the Philippine indigenous cultural operating system’s in-group kin loyalty (kamag-anak) holds subconscious primacy — in-group and family protection supersedes any abstract rules or laws.
In my observations, having seen firsthand the recent transformation of social dynamics in the Philippines from the late 1990s until present, the problem is not really that men will sire children out of wedlock then “bail out” or that women are left to raise children “alone,” but that the extended family network has experienced fragmentation and breakdown. That extended family network which provides a social safety net and maintains one’s standing with in-group supportive structure is the basic unit of Austronesian (and thus Philippine) society for those outside of the Westernized elite whose basic family unit is the nuclear family. With families experiencing members who need to move to Metro Manila or abroad (OFW) for work, it is increasingly hard for the remaining extended family network which is left behind to maintain cohesion that provides a fallback safety net in case “things don’t work out” in relationships, children, or work. Even in families which are still physically “intact,” living together as an extended family unit, it is not uncommon to see the lola looking downcast at the dinner table while the children and grandchildren eat silently staring at the tiny glowing screens in their hands. So it is a larger problem than seen at the surface.
I think it is important to honor and respect the baseline culture if the nation wants to start solving contemporary problems and move forward, and find a way to make the cultural operating system work by updating, not discarding it.
I am in my lunch break now, but this is highly interesting so I shall still comment even if somewhat unstructured as I have a meeting coming up soon:
One of my father’s cousins from Albay was very close to him and we (our more nuclear family meaning my parents, my siblings and myself) were closest to HIS direct family..
..the story my mother told me is that he was the son of my grandfather’s sister by a Kastila (or mestizo, don’t exactly recall) and my grandfather took him into his household.
though he (a very tall quiet man) was one of the first to move to Manila (his eldest son was born in 1955) and he married an Ilokana there.
Seems he was a corporate lawyer or something, his place had a lot of law books, though my best recall as a kid was the leche flan and lumpia we got to eat there at parties.
..they also took great care of us when my father was detained in Marcos Sr. times, there are old album photos of my brother and me visiting Manila zoo with them.
(my brother regularly contacts my cousins when he goes to Manila, so that is about the closest we have to extended kin, NOT most of my father’s real siblings and their kids)
There is also the story I heard that my father has a brother in Cebu from the time my grandfather was assigned there during his last job after being a judge, which was at the BIR..
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https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/229627/kanto-boy-duterte-is-so-de-buena-familia-sa-totoo-lang/ this just just one of many cases of how the Maria Clara ideal was NOT fully lived by even in the allegedly more strict Spanish era:
..and Osmena was Ilocano BTW, so the stuff my (Cagayan Ilokana) yaya always told me about Visayans being loose was just one of the usual prejudices
———
re mistresses, there was a cultural guide to the Philippines from the 1980s (I think it was titled Culture Shock) that described having a mistress as something that added to the prestige of a Filipino (obviously that guide was about the upper classes) but that one should never mention knowing about the mistress to the face of a Filipino
obviously a conflict between two layers of the Filipino elite psyche: Spanish machismo vs. American “decency” at least in the prim and proper sense of the word haha..
As for the desolate state of the Philippines today, Andrew Lim IIRC once profiled a few DDS real-life trolls on Facebook and discovered that many were with parents working abroad raised just by their lolas.. there is definitely a certain disturbed and disoriented aspect to these usually young men.. I recall a convo on FB with one I talked with in detail about dilawan and Mar Roxas in 2016, and he was one who asked me to summarize Joeam postings for him as he had only FB free data and no real internet, felt more like a lost kid than a real danger to me.
I wrote something regarding this topic in my comments on the mental health article. The way I understand it is that the Spanish introduced the idea that one could be “loose” in sexual relationships. The native Austronesian culture was far more flexible as relationships were seen through a relational lens with regard to social harmony (which was the essentially the same as spiritual harmony). Bearing the children of a more powerful person (local elite, foreign “datu,” etc.) could raise one’s standing since relational dynamics were basically the balance of standing in the first place. How often nowadays do poorer Filipinas view having a “white” baby as a means to upgrading social standing for both herself, her child, but more importantly her family. The same goes, I presume, for the increasing number of poor women who pair up with men from “rich” East Asian countries.
When I was younger I courted a Kapampangan girl who was of both the Villanueva and Gomez families of Tarlac. She is a Villanueva-Gomez. Their home is one of the bahay na bato associated with the Gomez clan, which started under the Spanish times as a principalía family. Interestingly, her paternal side are the Villanuevas, so seeing how the compound surname was switched around can hint at how much more prestige the Gomez name had over the Villanueva name. The Villanuevas are a “nouveau riche” clan that rose politically in the 2000s. So when she was born in the early 1990s the Villanuevas were basically still middling but locally “known” landowners who had “no name” as compared to the Gomezes. Her father, a Villanueva scion who tried his hand in politics but much preferred womanizing instead, maintained I guess 4 or 5 “households.” Her Gomez mother was the the primary wife. There was a big scandal that time in Concepcion, Tarlac, not because her Villanueva father had a bunch of kabit, but because he had neglected his primary household during the course of his womanizing. I recall that bahay na bato was quite badly maintained. The father later died (to a heart attack from an excessive lifestyle), sending the family into destitution since the father spent all his money on womanizing, so the maternal Gomez clan had to come in to rescue her family. Concepcion, Tarlac was the former seat of the Aquinos (interesting I had also dated an Aquino in America whose family is from Concepcion, Tarlac, though I think she only shared a surname with the Aquino political dynasty or is a very distant relative).
It’s a shared human experience to need to feel a sense of purpose in life. It probably has something due to how humans developed much earlier than current ethno-cultural divisions. Without guidance, young men’s recklessness which could be a source of great achievement can also become a tool of nihilistic destruction when turned into resentment.
Personally I am in favor of honoring the essential elements of one’s culture even as culture must evolve to survive. But there can also be an argument that completely new cultures can be forged (e.g. Singapore). I guess my main criticism of Philippine elites is they neither respect the internal culture of the Philippine nor are particularly enthusiastic about the consistent application needed make an external culture stick. Everything ends up being layered on top of the previous layer, with very little blending. For that matter, I’m very interested in the syncretic peasant/masa movements such as the various waves of Millenarianism as though those may have been misguided, they still point to the “inner mind” of how the culture processes external ideas.
ahem, you asked what happened to children born out of wedlock, having filipino mothers and spanish fathers? in visayas, there is story going round that filipino mothers ay nagpasimilya to improve their stock and have children that are mestizo’s mestiza. much prized those half breeds are because of their looks apparently. rarely did filipino fathers played cockold
porbida! word press has done it again and cut me off in mid comment! here’s the rest of the above comment:
. . . rarely did filipino fathers played the wronged husband, they were into it as well and encouraged their wives. many thought it a blessing to have such good looking mix among their brood, and many did say that way back along the line, they have someone in the family that were of spanish blood, and that the blood manifested recently along the line. much like twins manifesting somewhere in the line.
I have encountered many such cases, and yes it was primarily practiced by rural Visayans usually Cebuano but I have also seen such practice with Waray and Ilonggo. Presumably smaller Visayan ethnic groups have some form of the practice as well. In such cases I saw, I was shocked at first (one can imagine how the Spanish reacted to the same) by how casually the male partner treated his female partner’s pursuit of “richer” men, whether they be Filipino, Chinoy, or some type of foreigner that has higher social value. The only time the male partner had an issue was when the female partner did not bring back value into the primary relationship, which in modern times is usually money or things which raise status. A lot of this is covered up by elite “sensibilities” and erased from the fabric of Philippine culture.
Another expression of this is: On more than one occasion when visiting smaller Visayan ethnic communities (e.g. Butuanon, Romblomanon) I was basically mobbed not only by young women but by the elder women of the community who insisted on calling me “son-in-law” while the fathers looked on approvingly.
I think the best way one can put the former and the latter behaviors is that both is a cultural expression of gaining more social standing by coupling with a person who is perceived to have greater amounts of that standing. Ultimately it may go back to the native Austronesian belief in everything having spiritual qualities attributed to it, including persons. “Ally” with a person with more spiritual standing, therefore also gaining relational social standing within the community.
A more generalized version of this behavior is the common belief in the Philippines that most Filipinos have partial Spanish blood and are thus mestizo. Outside of certain families like the Ayalas of the past, in actuality only about 1-2% of Filipinos according to modern PNAS studies have any type of European blood, usually Chavacano families whose origins were from communities around Spanish military forts (fuerza) such as Zamboanga.
ahem, isnt our gian carlo a chavacano! speaks a number of languages too.
this initially wierded me out
yeah, much like king charles III and prince harry, they are estranged. in our country, it is known that filial piety can be dicey. sara g our pop princess once had a breakdown at an concert overseas, was 30 yrs old when she left home to marry the love of her wife. her mother did not talk to her, losing a breadwinner is not easy, though they are apparently okay now.
as well actress kim chiu is taking her sister lakam to court, apparently lakam stole 30millions from kim, and now kim is also in danger of losing her home due to lakam’s manipulation yata. megastar sharon cuneta and daughter kc conception were once estranged and were not on speaking terms.
I think, what takes the cake is actor philip salvador, the biological father of kris aquino’s autistic son, kuya josh.
just recently, kuya josh was mock by podcasters machong chismisan and was called walang kwenta! while people come to defend poor josh, his father philip salvador is silent. kris aquino did not go into war of words with said podcasters but tell how kuya josh has been vital to her recovery and that josh has been sharing with bimby in looking after her. and that josh is loved by those who know him.
That was senseless insensitivity!
Families in the Philippines are bound by laws and strict religious dictates that make real, long-lasting monogamous marriages hard to do. Poor people simply don’t marry, as it is costly and troublesome. Some mothers bear children from different fathers, or fathers sire a child and take off. The family bond is built on obedience and work, not nurturing. Love? Not in the classic sense of respect, cherishing, and giving, in a lot of families. Yet the bonding through hardship is there, or OFWs wouldn’t, send so much money home. Obedience or generosity? Maybe a bit of both. Not for me to say.
Let’s define what family OUGHT TO BE, then assess what it actually is, in the Philippines.
All true.
a while back, a policewoman and her 8yrs old son were killed by her husband also a policeman, both estranged. the woman had wanted to sell her white suv for 400K and agreed to meet the buyer in a remote place (red flag!). the woman was ambushed on the way, the buyer turned out to be an agent of her husband, the body of her son (their son) was found roughly a week later, dead as well.
in our country, love can go so badly wrong and marriage is no guarantee of happiness ever after. though many tried hard to keep their marriage going, honoring their promise of till death do us part. sadly, we have cases of patricide, cases of diminished responsivity that end up in murder. it is tragic that life can be so much stranger than fiction.
not just the poor people, the rich are also capable of murder, killing their spouses and offspring as well.