Both Vivian and Dante experience the struggles of pressurizing familial relationships, revealing the impact such relationships can have on an individual. Dante’s family problems are often less immediate than Vivian’s, as his parents are rarely around, his grandfather is recently deceased, and he is the de facto head of the family. Nonetheless, Dante’s relationships with his family members are strained, and he still experiences pressures lingering from his grandfather’s high expectations. His relationship with his parents strikes Vivian as a sad one, since they abandoned Dante and Luca as children, leaving them to be raised by their grandfather and his staff.

As Vivian discovers while talking to Janis Russo, Dante’s parents are fully self-aware; they knew that their decision to leave would hurt their sons, but they also believed that they were making the right choice for all involved. Janis tells Vivian, “Truth be told, I’m not a great mother, and Gianni is not a great father […]. There have been many times when I wished I was the kind of mother they needed, but I’m not. Pretending otherwise would’ve hurt the boys more than it helped’” (160-1). The novel does not cast significant moral judgment on this. Huang therefore suggests that familial pressures affect every generation of the family and that it is not only children who feel pressure from their parents.