Age: 20s Location: Chicago, IL, Background: Nigerian-American

Context: Participants (initals DA) is from a Nigerian-American household. She grew up in Dubai and now lives in a Chicago suburb. She has many siblings and is very close to her family.

Text: DA states that in Nigerian culture, the first paycheck a teen/young adult makes must go back to their parents or an adult figure. She says it’s a way of “showing appreciation and gratitude to those who raised you”. Participant mentions that everyone in her family does this. However, for her personal first paycheck she went and spent it at McDonald’s. DA says that her mother especially was not happy about it.

Analysis:

Here, a teens first paycheck serves as an offering, marking perhaps a transition from the adolescence to adulthood. A first paycheck is a time where one steps into the world of independence and financial freedom from their parents. By surrendering this first check, it’s a symbolic gesture of gratitude and the sacrifices that the family has made to get the individual to this point in their life. When the participant breaks this tradition, she, without realizing the depth of meaning behind this gesture, breaks a social contract. This moment can be a “paying back” of the life-debt to the parents so that the child can begin their own life with a clean start. This is obvious in the participant’s mothers angry reaction, which likely wasn’t over the loss of a couple dollars, but of, in her eyes, her child’s failure to acknowledge the transition point.