[quote=AK]And I’d love to see what happens when those precious overachieving children hit majority. I predict Supermom will find fault with their every accomplishment … with their majors, class schedules, fashion choices, hairstyles, retirement account asset allocations (gotta start when you’re young), MCAT/LSAT/GMAT scores … then moving on to career path, choice of peer-reviewed journals, sons-in-law (including excruciating details of family background), grandchildren, grandchildren’s prenatal enrichment, school district, choice of hard-surface flooring, body mass index … “I can’t believe you got a fixed-rate mortgage. Greenspan said ARMs are better! Idiot! Do you want to be a landless peasant?”
Her kids will be faced with an unenviable dilemma: endure her in shared misery, or let her suffer and die alone. (That is, if Supermom doesn’t cut off contact on her own initiative.) Sadly I know dutiful Asian children who’ve made the second choice.
I can hear you saying: “Big deal, that sounds like plenty of overbearing, controlling moms of any ethnicity.” Bingo. There are plenty of exemplars of Asian motherhood, from Guanyin to Empress Dowager Cixi. This is just one particularly dysfunctional example.[/quote]
Actually, most of them will turn out fine, and when they turn into mom’s, they will probably do the same thing…Funny, my sis was the rebel in the family. And now she’s older. She’s exactly like how my mom was.
Look, as much as we like to think some way other person’s way of “life” (I wouldn’t consider it that way) might not jive with what you might choose for oneself, doesn’t mean that it’s not going to turn out ok anyway…
In Carmel Valley, I can see plenty of non-asian parents that do exactly the same thing. (Yes, I’ll use the term caucasian..They send their kids to every single enrichment program, etc)…I think one perhaps different is that stuff you see probably at a economic level in some families here, I think among asians probably happen at a lower economic levels, since I can say asians parents do tend to make sacrifices more readily for their kids. Michelle Kwan is such an example. Here parents basically mortgaged their house and sold their business so they could pay for her career…This might seem very odd if your not asian, but that’s just how it is.
