Asian Parents Frenzy

cobrat
Thu, 23 Mar 2017 03:20:02 +0000

The reality is her style is on the extreme end for here in the USA. But it’s perfectly normal in places like Taiwan etc.

Depends on the generation concerned, individual families, and the educational environments the kids happen to be in.

For instance, one aunt in Taiwan was very neo-hippieish in her manner and didn’t push her kids academically or otherwise. It’s one reason why she enrolled her kids in private international schools rather than the regular Taiwan public K-12 system.

The latter is much more competitive and sink-or-swim in ways similar to my public magnet HS experience vs. the respectable/elite private day/boarding school experiences of my undergrad classmates and a few cousins.

Also, while my parents were more strict, they were nowhere near as helicopterish as Chua was in dictating which ECs/social activities or dictating how I was to study…they expected me to figure that out for myself* as that was considered my domain of responsibility.

I was also given a greater degree of independence compared with many American kids my age in HS or sometimes even college…such as having no mandatory curfew after I turned 11.

Part of this was due to the fact my father had been on his own since the age of 12 due to losing both parents by 10 and fleeing the Maoist takeover of China by himself.

Despite never finishing middle school or attending high school due to the chaos of the Chinese Civil War and being a refugee without parents, he managed to work to support himself and study in night preparatory schools well enough to gain admission with a complete full ride(including books and room& board) to the #2 university in the ROC in the early '50s at 16 and graduate with high honors at 20.