Utang na Loob: The Filipino Debt of Gratitude That Confuses Every Foreigner

What it means

Utang na loob. Pronounced "oo-tang na lo-ob" not "loob" like "loo." Or, commonly, just "utang." The translation is close to "debt of gratitude." In Aussie English it's "I owe you one, mate." In Filipino English, or Taglish, it's "I have utang."

It's a big part of Filipino culture, where it's considered a sacred duty to repay all acts of kindness. The larger the act, the more is expected to be repaid. And much like in Australia, anyone who forgets an act of kindness becomes a social outcast. A common source of Filipino gossip is some child who has forgotten their utang.

Australians get this, particularly older Australians. We know it's expected that we remember and repay those who've been kind to us. Why are we helping our neighbour lay a concrete slab for his new shed? Because he helped us when the tree fell on our roof. Or he loaned us his lawnmower. Or his wife regularly picked up our kids from school when she picked up her own. We owe them, and we'd feel like a bludger if we forgot. We also think hard before we accept favours from others, because there are people who take this to the extreme: let them do a small thing for you, and they expect more than their fair share in return.

So the concept itself isn't foreign to an Australian. What's different is the scale and depth.

Where it comes from

In Filipino society, utang is prevalent and basically cannot be avoided. Australian society was established by tough, independent pioneering types: bearded, rustic men who headed off into the bush with horses and bullock drays, a wife, a shovel and a crowbar. They beat the bush and the harsh climate into submission by the strength of their backs and sheer stubbornness, and they did it proudly by themselves.

Aussies have traditionally valued their independence, and older Australians especially have an aversion to accepting charity. They don't like it because they don't want to be indebted to someone. They like standing equally with all those around them, so no one can patronise them.

Filipino society is very different. It knows little of independence, and is based on interdependence. It runs on cooperation, on an understanding that it's normal to help each other and in turn to depend on each other for most things. Filipino society was founded on this.

I'm no historian or archaeologist, so forgive the simplicity of this explanation. Filipinos came from Malaya in ancient times on boats known as Balangay. Balangay boats still exist. The travellers formed communities much like small suburbs known as Barangay. Each Barangay is led by a local elected dignitary known as a Barangay Captain. Yes, seriously. People take their practical, legal, and even family issues to the Barangay Captain to be sorted out. You have a dispute with your neighbour over property boundaries. Your neighbour punched your husband. Your husband cheated on you with another woman in the Barangay. You don't have rice. You see the Barangay Captain, and he makes a ruling.

Your kababayan from your Barangay are your extended family, and your business is everyone else's business. The concept of "mind your own business" that you find in Australia doesn't really exist in the Philippines. By independent Aussie standards this can seem oppressive and intrusive, but it's also caring. People in the Barangay take care of each other. They watch over each other's children. They help in need. They consult Barangay elders when they have a problem. Everyone is a kuya, an ate, a tito, a tita, a lolo, or a lola to each other. The poorer the Filipino community, the more they need each other to get through life. This is why there's a surprising lack of stress in the Barangays. Why worry when you know that someone will always help you out of a jam? Contrast that to modern Australian suburbia, where we rarely even know our neighbours, let alone help each other.

Utang in everyday Filipino life

No Filipino goes through life without utang. It sits at the core of most interpersonal relationships and transactions. Life is too complicated in the Philippines to believe you can get by without help and cooperation from others, and utang comes into play in minor and major ways. A small utang is when your neighbour loans you a cup of sugar. A large utang is when you put your neighbour's child through high school because they can't afford the fees.

The bigger the favour, the bigger the utang. Through life, every Filipino will be both owed and owe utang to many different people. The biggest utang is always owed to parents who raised them and supported them from birth to adulthood. Second and third, often to grandparents, aunties, or siblings who took on responsibilities along the way in early life.

Those who forget their utang? In Filipino society, these are the lowest of the low. They're seen as shameless: walang hiya, literally "no shame." Losing shame is social death, and the cultural reach of that goes a long way past anything we'd recognise as comparable in Australia. It's worth reading my piece on saving face alongside this one, because the two concepts are closely related: utang creates the obligation, and the threat of walang hiya enforces it.

Australians do understand the basic principle. It's just an education to learn the full extent of the utang web in Filipino society.

Probably the hardest part to understand is the debt of gratitude owed to parents. Australians see having children as our decision to bring them into the world. Our children didn't ask to be born. If they're particularly obnoxious and spoiled, we sometimes think, "It's a good thing you didn't ask me, I would have said no." In the Philippines, the sense of utang to parents is both sacred and lifelong. The neighbour with the sugar has that utang extinguished by returning a favour of similar value. Supporting your kids through school? That takes years to extinguish, if at all.

You can in fact use utang to your own advantage, if I can explain this without sounding cynical or manipulative. It can be a great help in future if, say, you do a large favour for the local police chief. If you have a future legal problem, he'll feel that utang obligation to helping you out, provided your kindness to him was sufficient. Help out the local rich man, and you know where you can go if you're short of money. On a simpler level, drop off some extra party food or an extra bunch of bananas from your tree to the guards in your estate. They'll never forget it, and they'll bend over backwards to help you. Small favours are often appreciated in a large way.

Jeff's experiences with utang na loob

I try to be kind anyway. I became a kinder person through osmosis when I married my wife, in my view the kindest and most self-sacrificial person on the planet. I don't subscribe to the rich-man, poor-man thinking that exists in the Philippines. Australians are egalitarian by nature. The boss is not "Sir." The boss is "Steve." So I don't look down on ordinary folk here, and small kindnesses like the extra bananas, or giving the garbage collectors water or soft drinks on a hot day, are highly appreciated. More so because they're not expected. You can do a small thing for the most average, ordinary Filipino, and you'll make a friend for life. It's all about utang. Filipinos don't forget what's done for them, and they'll be anxious, and also delighted, to return that kindness again and again.

I loaned P10,000 to my brother-in-law more than 20 years ago. That was about AUD$300 at the time. The money was to help him with paperwork when he went to Spain for work. It took him months to get his first salary, and he was very embarrassed that he was unable to return it. I forgave the debt and said, "Call it a gift."

That was appreciated far beyond its monetary value. I didn't know him or his wife very well beforehand. From that point on, they treated me not as "the foreigner" but as a brother. They would shop for clothes for me in Spain (I'm a bit more buxom than the average Filipino) and the value of clothes they've bought me over the years far outweighs what I spent on that initial P10,000. My brother-in-law introduced me to his friends at a funeral a few years ago as "my big brother." My sister-in-law visited us last year. She spent 99% of her time with me, her big brother.

For my wife, her utang arrangements are far more extensive and complex than mine. She'll buy a gift for an uncle because, when she was in college many decades ago, he bought her some shoes she couldn't afford. She attended the funeral of her school friend's mother recently because of some kindness when she was a child. She was helped financially when she was pregnant by one of her sisters, so when we moved to the Philippines a number of years ago, we took in one of her daughters and raised her as our own.

Understanding utang with your Filipino wife

As the spouse of a Filipina, you need to accept and understand these things. If you have difficulty, try to relate it to your own experiences with that mate you'd always bend over backwards for because of what they've done for you over the years. We call it mateship. They call it utang. The same instinct sits underneath both, and once you see that, the whole framework stops feeling foreign. That same harmony-preserving instinct also produces tampo, the Filipino silent treatment, which every Australian husband learns to navigate eventually.

My own family don't push the boundaries, but there are certainly those who do. There are those who'll bully a young lady, especially when she moves to Australia and becomes "rich." Manipulative and opportunistic people exist in Filipino society no less than they exist in all societies. The difference is the shame-factor that gets manipulated to extract far more than is actually owed.

The controlling family members who orchestrate this use guilt and accusations of "forgetting her parents," forgetting the utang she owes to those who brought her up and helped her when she was young and vulnerable. Sometimes this goes on for many years. There are stories of families who've lived almost on the breadline for decades because they've been pressured to give up everything for those who keep reminding them of their utang. There are stories of those who visit the Philippines and find their relatives better-dressed than they are.

It's reasonable to hope your wife will be kind to her family. But remember that much of this utang was apparently accumulated when she was a child. Think about that. When you fed your children and wiped their bottoms, were you mentally adding up what they'd owe you in return? I suspect not.

I have a niece who was told at the age of 13 that she would study nursing so her role would be to take care of her parents in their old age. They actually told her that her purpose in life was to live for them. If that isn't utang taken to the extreme, I don't know what is.

Utang can be a very positive thing. It's part of the well-known kindness of Filipino people and families, and it's surprisingly consistent with the mateship aspects of Australian society when you really think about it. It's unfortunate when some people use it as a manipulative tool, but it happens, and I'd rather my readers were aware of this so they can deal with it as they see fit.

Hopefully you'll be gifted with a reasonable set of Filipino in-laws and other relatives, and utang will be the word that describes your wife's caring nature and her sense of responsibility to those who've long been good to her. That's the version of it most Filipino families live, and it's part of what makes meeting her family for the first time (when it goes well) one of the warmer experiences a foreigner can have.