“… 70 percent of Asian parents provide financial assistance for higher education, with a quarter paying for half or all of college…”
“… compared with about 50 percent of parents of other races”
The NYT article references this page: https://lendedu.com/news/race-gender-paying-for-college/ , based on a poll of 1,400 four year college graduates paying off student loan debt.
That Lend EDU page notes that female graduates were less likely to have gotten parental assistance paying for college.
However, the graduates’ student loan debt levels shown there were higher for male than female graduates (except for black graduates), and similar for Asian graduates as for non-Asian graduates. But female graduates were more likely to say that student loan debt levels were a financial hindrance.
Well, yes, because women make less than men.
I just have to say…so what?
I find the LendEDU info about how much parents paid for college really confusing.
Parents paid the % of the total tuition/R&B? What was owed after financial aid? What?
I don’t really get this article. There is so much more at play involved in “how much a family sacrifices” for education than ethnicity. I do think it’s sad that the writer seems so guilt-ridden about the effects in her own family.
Good for Asian-American parents. Better to spend money paying tuition than spend the money like the defendants in the college admission scandal. As long as they spent their money legally, I could care less how much money they spend. Good for them.
“Better to spend money paying tuition than spend the money like the defendants in the college admission scandal. As long as they spent their money legally, I could care less how much money they spend. Good for them”
This is true for parents of all ethnicities.
It is the OP’s own personal anecdote with a reference to a poll of 1,400 recent four year college graduates paying off student loan debt. Of course, one may question the poll methodology, in terms of whether that sample of recent college graduates is representative.
So take it for what you think it may or may not be worth.
I think what annoys me is the use of the term “sacrifice” in the article. For example, “…for families like mine, where parents sacrifice so much for their children’s opportunities.” Does a low income black single mom working 2 jobs and never buying much for herself to feed her kids and buy them books or other educational aids , and whose kids then manage to get a full ride scholarship, not “sacrifice” anything just because she is not saddled with a pile of student debt?
I hate the use of the word “sacrifice” in this context. The term implies that the parent gets nothing back. Parents who pays lot’s of money because they want their kid to get into an Ivy are not performing a sacrifice, they are investing in their kid’s future. Whatever time, effort, and money I used in raising my kid is well worth it, because their success is mine as well.
Talk about sacrifice always seems to me a strategy for emotional manipulation - a way to maintain control over the kid through continuous guilt trips “look how much I suffered because of you”. I don’t want them to listen to me because they feel guilty at the thought of all my “sacrifices”, I want them to listen to me because they figure out that I know what I’m talking about and because they love me. Moreover, I do not need to control my grown children, and there are better ways to get them to do what they should other than guilt trips, and getting them to do what they should do should be the goal, not getting them to do what I want.
The most telling fact with the use of the term “sacrifice”, in regards to raising children, is that I have yet to hear somebody talk about “sacrifice” when they have a pet. You spend a lot of time and money of raising a pet, yet people don’t talk about spending a morning at the vet as a “sacrifice”. That’s because you cannot give a pet a guilt trip, and guilt does not help you control your pet.
Well, I agree that if you die to save your kid’s life, that can be called a sacrifice. Everything else is an investment.
Maybe I feel this way because I’ve seen just how toxic the use of guilt to control kids can be, and how it destroys real affection and respect, and this has colored my perception.
“Talk about sacrifice always seems to me a strategy for emotional manipulation - a way to maintain control over the kid through continuous guilt trips ”
Seems that’s “worked” in the case of the article’s author. Sad.
Caring parents do things because they love their kids and want to protect them from every hardship. No matter it’s giving up sleep for middle of the night milk feedings for infants or working/saving to pay tuition for young adults, parenting is driven by love and devotion and by nature requires sacrifices.
It shouldn’t make kids feel guilty, it should make them feel proud, loved and grateful. Some parents may be manipulative or controlling and try to use money to control but that kind would do it even if they didn’t make any sacrifices. You see parents who make poor choices, doesn’t do right by their children and still manage to manipulate and guilt them. It has nothing to do with making sacrifices. It’s about human flaws.
Unless parents are exceptionally wealthy, it’s a huge thing to pay for colleges. An average parent would rather use it for their own needs, wants and future and most does. It is borderline stupidity for middle class parents to do this but it’s mostly done out of love.
“want to protect them from every hardship”
I don’t believe in this philosophy anyway. Maybe because I have boys.
I want challenges for them when they can handle them. And good influences and a stable environment. But I don’t hope to outlive them, so they will have to learn to handle hardships in their life (actually, often times, just look at things from a different point of view). A hardship to one is a challenge to another.
The Asian family in the article basically chose to invest in real estate. Others invest their education funds in the stock market. Any middle class parent of any ethnic group attempting to build an education fund is making choice to give up something, whether it is vacations, expensive dinners out, or new cars every five years, or even an investment property. Call it what you will: a gift, a sacrifice, and investment.
Bingo.
@SJ2727 Empathetic and grateful kids feel gratitude even if parents doesn’t want them to feel indebted. They observe their parents go above and beyond the call of duty and feel for them. If they get a chance, they try to act with similar devotion while some kids take it for granted. Different types of parents and different types of kids, humans will be humans.
“Empathetic and grateful kids feel gratitude even if parents doesn’t want them to feel indebted.”
Absolutely. But I sure hope my DD isn’t (as the author catastrophizes) “driven to work by the knowledge that… if I failed to earn scholarships it would be the financial equivalent of burning down my parents’ home”.
DD wants to show me gratitude? I’d tell her to pay it forward… do what she can to pay for her child/ren’s education like my parents paid for mine, and I am now paying for hers. However, if she fails to earn scholarships, I will in no way consider it to be the financial equivalent of her burning the Berkshire Hathaway B-share certificates (that DH & I also worked 10+ years to accrue and plan to sell to pay for her education). JMHO.
I was responding to the comments by the author of the article, such as " they have replaced the stress of paying off debt with another sort of pressure. Debt feels different when I owe my parents instead of some faceless corporation. I notice how their hair has grayed, and they have grown old in the process of supporting me. “, " I am consumed by guilt”, " I am driven to work by the knowledge … that if I failed to earn scholarships it would be the financial equivalent of burning down my parents’ home."
I would never, ever, ever want my children to feel anything like that. Ever. That is not “gratitude”. That is just guilt and pressure. And look at that in context of the comments the author also makes about depression and suicide among her peers. I agree with post 10 by mwolf. Maybe the difference is that this child seems to know exactly what her parents “sacrificed” for her. My children do not know the detail of what we have foregone (willingly, so I do not label it a ‘sacrifice’) to ensure that their 529s are full, and they don’t need to. D19 sees her friends struggling with their college choices constrained by finances; she knows she is fortunate, she’s grateful for it, and that’s good enough for me. She will, I hope, never write an article anywhere about the guilt she feels for what her parents did for her.
The author of the article needs to be understood within the cultural backdrop that’s a part of his identity. For centuries China and other Asian countries have abided by a deeply-rooted “social contract” between parents and children where parents take care of their young until socially and economically established and they in turn take care of their parents as they become feeble and dependent. The author’s description of his parents’ behavior and attitude toward educational investment and the ensuing experience of guilt by the author due to his sense of filial piety are highly consistent within the cultural context. Here’s an interesting article that sheds more insights on this topic, if anyone’s interested:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-15-fg-piety15-story.html