<p>There is nothing wrong with expecting your children to try their hardest and desire success, but some Asian parents take it a little * too * far. For example my mom expects me to major in something very career-oriented--she has this erroneous belief that the majors I'm interested in like Anthropology, art history, comparative literature, etc. won't "bring food on the table". Aren't you supposed to major in something you like and where your strengths lie? I mean, the required courses for med school like physics and calculus would completely DESTROY my GPA. Although I'm a bit annoyed by her (since med schools and law schools actually PREFER majors other than pre-med and pre-law) I understand where she is coming from. She grew up in a culture in which you were expected to excel and have a stable futuure. It seems like my mom (and many individuals of her generation) prize predicatability over originality! In fact, my mom at first did not want to go into medicine ,since she was not too strong in math, but her mother and father prodded her to take that path because it was "lucrative" and would "bring pride to the family". Her sisters are all doctors. My dad also had to decide at a pretty early age (8th grade) of what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, academics are still extremely "pressure-cooker" and ubercompetetive in India (esp. in medicine and engineering)--I read a statistic that around 4,000 students a year commit suicide in India from all this.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of ,but certainly not ALL , Asian parents expect their kids to be absolutely PERFECT and have stellar stats. They often mention a successful, bright, and motivated relative that you should be like. One of my friends, who is Asian, said that her mom would be "disappointed" if she scores under a 1550 on m + v on the SAT I. Another mom of one of my brother's Asian friends forced her daughter to be in the science fair every year and didn't allow her to go anywhere two weeks before midterms/finals (SERIOUSLY...they're high school tests--you can cram the night before and still get an A even in honors/AP classes). And guess what happened to her? She began drinking because of all the stress her parents put on her.</p>
<p>When are these people going to realize that their precious Mei Lin or Rajesh is NOT always going to be perfect, and will fail at one point? And that failure is a normal part of life, and that you can grow and mature from your mistakes? And that you can be close to perfect, but you never really can BE perfect?</p>
<p>Dude, I totally understand. I'm asian and THANK GOD my parents are really liberal and believe I should do whatever I want to do in life. </p>
<p>BUt, I've got some Asian friends who have it bad. Don't wrry, I'm sure ur parents will understand. And don't you think this only applies to Asians. Suprisingly, I've actually seen it worse in white families in my suburban town! O_O</p>
<p>There is no evidence that I can see that you would in any way be handicapped by first doing a first class liberal arts degree and keeping your options open to do a Ph. D or a professional degree in Law, Medicine or Engineering after that. I know any number of professionals in law, medicine and engineering who did an initial degree in history, comparative literature etc etc. You are only seventeen, you need to do what you have heart for; that is to say, educate yourself. If this approach is good enough for Harvard, it is probably good enough for your mother. Have faith.</p>
<p>Don't think that these expectations are limited to Asian parents... my parents are more or less white(although technically native american by blood) and they have amazingly high standards. I can totally relate...</p>
<p>I agree with anovice. I know many of my friends of all races with parents that are unbelievable. As in, A+ is "satisfactory" unbelievable. </p>
<p>I know where you're coming from though. It's probably because our (yes, I am Asian) parents had to go to school in their home country, where if you don't do homework, you're physically punished, starting as early as 1st grade. </p>
<p>Ah, the typical Asian parents. They never seem to get over the fact that times have changed.</p>
<p>I completely disagree man with the azn mom statement. I am a korean and my mom and dad do not care about my grades and all they care about is the conduct grades. Like, whenever i get straight A's they seem to care about my conduct much much more than the grades.My dad doesnt even care about school and my mom is only concerned that i attend school and dont get into fights.</p>
<p>Meh, the same pressure's put on a lot of kids in my area (VERY predominantly white [and Jewish]; I'd say pretty confidently there are no more than 50 non-white kids in the entire school [of about 2,000]). Thankfully my parents are opposed to all that high-pressure nonsense and it's never really been an issue for me. </p>
<p>The less mechanical fields may be riskier to go into, but they can yield just as much success.</p>
<p>well back to what i said, I am self-motivated..i tihnk dat sum azn parents, if they know that thier child is self-motivated, dont really care about academics because they know their child can do it.</p>
<p>^ Sorry! I didn't intend to perpetuate any stereotypes (that's why I said * some * Asian parents). My mom is really uptight and single-minded about my career goals, but my dad simply motivates me to do my best also. He wants me to pursue whatever major I want in college and is very open to new ideas and options about my future.</p>
<p>around here (asianland) you can find an abundance of the classic asian parent stereotype along with all the liberal asian parents. Most parents seem alright, but there's some who i think, take it way too far. They try to regulate what friends their kids have, and actually make suggestions, like "oh, your friends right now don't mean anything. they're useless and don't care about you. you should always make friends with people who have better grades than you, because their a good influence." in addition to this flawed logic, they also regale their kids of anecdotes from china/korea/japan/etc where the most popular kid in school was the one with the highest grades and how this must apply to america too. </p>
<p>i even heard that when someone tried committing suicide, when their counselor suggested that the person see a psychiatrist, the first thing the parents asked was whether it'd show up on thier child's transcript. i really hope that isn't true.</p>
<p>my parents were once advocates of the pediatrician/lawyer/pharmacist path, but i've worked very hard to degrade their expectations over time. :D in all seriousness though, somewhere along the way my parents had some sort of paradigm shift and now seemed resigned to the fact that i'll never favor math/science over art/history/lit and have seemingly banished the two hour lectures on my future. now that i've proven in time that i'm utterly incapable of getting an A in math in consecutive semesters, it's always "do your best." The funny thing is though they never say "well done" or "good job," but more "keep it up." I suppose that's trivial though. </p>
<p>whoo that was a long post. did anyone bother reading it? lol</p>
<p>My parents somewhat kinda like that. I must pick between law, business, engineering, medical as a career.
But otherwise Im free to do whatever I want as long as I keep up good grades and do a little SAT/ACT prep everyday.
They have no idea what my classes in school are about or what we do everyday. If I just keep bringing those A's, theyll keep out of my school and social life.
However there are a lot of asian parents like the ones described above.</p>
<p>at least mine are like that. but they are disgustingly insane about my grades, even compared to other asian parents. As long as keep the A+s rolling in though, they dont care about what kind of friends i make or what i do with my time.</p>
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They try to regulate what friends their kids have, and actually make suggestions, like "oh, your friends right now don't mean anything. they're useless and don't care about you. you should always make friends with people who have better grades than you, because their a good influence."
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<p>Wow. You just defined my parents right there. My folks both held a pretty cynical view of friends. They believed that friends might laugh and joke around and say sweet things to your face to please you, but in the long run high school friends won't give two $hits about what happens to you in the future. They said to me "only a handful of people in the world truly care about you". (it's probably true though, lol )</p>
<p>** deus.ex.machina **... For most of 9th, 10th, and 11th, I had very few friends in school, and those I associated with were NOT the brightest stars in the sky as academics goes. Sometimes I didn't even like those people (they were VERY shallow and gossipy and made fun of me and my Harvard-bound brother!! :( ) but I sat next to them at the lunch table just so I'd be spared of the humiliation of sitting alone. This year, however, I've begun to rub shoulders and make TRUE friendships with bright, talented, but down-to-earth people who share my interests. I even had my first b-day party in like five years. Looking back, I can scarcely believe how pathetic I was. My GPA last year was a 2.83 W, this year, it's shot up to a 4.4 W. Your "typical Asian parents" are certainly right when they say you should make friends with smart people! </p>
<p>Also, it goes to show that their is a correlation between academic acheivement and social well-being. This has been a awesome senior year...:)</p>
<p>haha, congrats on your social and academic blossoming! thank god my parents don't actually prod me to befriend future mensa members. all they really do is occassionally ask in bafflement, "don't you ever talk about academics with your friends?" i wasn't really speaking about them in that instance, just the mindset that seems more prevalent than it should be where i live.</p>
<p>About the Asian stereotype: Lol you know how many Asians there are in the world? Like 1.3 billion in China, about a billion in India (by the way, racially speaking they are not oriental Asians, but anyway), and a bunch of others... about 2/3 of them CAN'T READ! I bet they do not get mad if their kid scores 1550 on SAT's. You sound ridiculous, Elbereth. A vast majority of Asians worry about having enough rice on the table and you should know it. Now about the Asian Americans: where does this stereotype come from? California? I live in Massachusetts, first in Worcester, then in Boston, and the majority of Asians are no smarter than Hispanics. Of course i have encountered very intelligent Asians, but to make sweeping generalizations like that is inadequate.</p>
<p>vladimir2004...You misconstrued what I said. The title of my OP was * "Some* Asian Parents". I definetely did not mean to say that ALL Asian parents raise their children in that of environment. And I never meant to make any sweeping generalizations or stereotypes, I just cited * several * examples from personal experience. And yes, I know that around 2/3 of Asians in Asia are illiterate--I've been to India several times and have seen first hand how grave the problem is. That is the reason why many Asian immigrants in the US want their children to have a bright and stable future--because they saw the ort of life uneducated people in their homelands led. Most of the Asians, INCLUDING Indians, in my high school * tend * to do very well academically, and their parents encourage/prod them to continue that in college.</p>
<p>You know what sucks even more? When you push yourself! Seriously, my parents are ok with grades. They are like, one or 2 b's everynow and then is ok, and try hard. My parent's are more like, have good connections with older people, who can show you what is coming, since they didn't grow up here.(my parents). They are really cool. I know this one asian guy, who goes to my school, and comes to these forums. I got a ride home with his mom, and she kept talking about how smart this white kid at school, not gonna give names, is so smart. Sure, he creams us because he is a natural genius, and aces PSAT, SAT, etc, but I would consider him one of the dumbest kids i know: He drinks, smokes pot, and has sex quite often. He is also extremely lazy.</p>