Cultural Considerations and price that comes with academic success.
      In my therapy practice I have worked with numerous adult clients from Indian and Chinese backgrounds, who either came to the United States from another culture as children or were born here. Growing up surrounded by peers who look and speak differently, they often have the added burden of parents relying on them to help navigate in a new country.
     Eager to “fit in” they become hyper-focused on conforming and achieving, feeling tremendous pressure to go above and beyond what is expected. The very qualities that contribute to their success also perpetuates anxiety and stress.  While excelling in school leads to acceptance, and helps ward off feelings of inadequacy, the pressure to be exceptional often becomes the hallmark of self-worth and identity. When I ask them to tell me what they believe made them a worthwhile human being, but to omit anything that had to do with achievement, or the good he does for others, they are usually unable to come up with anything.
     There has been much written about how certain cultures put a lot of pressure on children to succeed which contributes to high rates of academic success. Asian children who grew up with Tiger-mom’s do well in school, but suffer from shame and feeling like they are never enough. 
     Research published by the American Psychological Association found that excessive parental expectations increase perfectionism in students and can be as damaging as parental criticism. Studies done on Asian American children points out that despite their academic success, these children had lower levels of socio-emotional health. Thus, it is crucial to be clear about what we mean when we talk about “successful outcomes”.
      For the purpose of this article, I will not be engaging in this debate, but instead highlighting how parenting styles and culture impact mental health. In her book, Tiger Babies Strike Back, Kim Wong kilter gives a first-person account of the emotional backlash associated with Tiger Parenting. She describes how growing up with intense shaming and highly-critical parents led to generations of kids who feel inferior, isolated, suffocated, and humiliated in dogged pursuit of one goal: making their elders look good.  The Tiger Mom form of parenting believes that parents should be a drill sergeant in order to ensure that their kid becomes a success, and set enormously high and unreasonable expectations.
  According to Qing Zhou, at the UC Berkeley campus’s Culture and Family Laboratory, “Chinese parents have a habit of focusing on the negative, because it is their way of ‘pushing’ children to work harder.  Also, in his research, children raised by authoritarian parents are showing depression, anxiety and poor social skills. While China by no means holds a monopoly on authoritarian parenting, the country proudly claims a centuries-long tradition of academic rigor.
 


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