Once I was invited to celebrate the happy event of my friend's first baby. This was a beautiful little girl, who was brought into world just a month ago. This creature began her life as many other children since they are always seen as treasured gifts from God. She looked so fragile in the adult's world with an angel's face, pure black eyes, tiny nose rosy lips, diminutive limbs and very small toes and fingers. Her appearance made me think of a pretty little doll. At that moment in time, she was so feeble, so dependent on her mother for her care and her upraising. But I knew, that like many other Vietnamese girls, she would be much different in a few years, once she had started to assimilate her culture through passive learning. After the birth of her siblings and through her mother's childrearing practices, she would grow up to be a responsible and social person as her mother was. In that way, she would start her life as she was expected to be in the future. Her gradual involvement in the Vietnamese culture would not be different from a little girl I am going to present in this essay, who was my young friend for almost six years.
             Hoa was a daughter of my landlord when I was studying at university; she was a four-year-old girl when her mother had given birth to the second child. The very first day the baby was brought home from the hospital, Hoa's mother told to her that their family now had a new member and that he was the person who needed the most care. "Do you know how much we need your help, especially your baby brother" said her mother while she looked at her petite girl. By saying so, the mother had prepared her little girl to be responsible as a mother in the future by starting to transmit what she had learnt from her mother to her own daughter. As a little child, Hoa did not seem to understand what her mother was saying, but she did not bother her mother anymore when she was busy with ...