Price of Success as the Wooden Ship

Price of Success

As the wooden ship glides slowly into the New York harbor, a sea of hopeful faces looks up from the deck to behold the lady of their dreams. Before them is a statuesque symbol welcoming them to a land where all dreams can be realized. Here, in the land of equality and opportunity, lives a promise that great rewards can be achieved though hard work and perseverance. Among all those coming to this country from distant shores and of all the next generations born here, there is one group of young people that will embrace the concept of hard work, perseverance and self-sacrifice more notably than any other group. Among all who seek the American Dream, it will be the Asian-American children who will achieve that goal with a disproportionately high rate of success. This success does not come without a price. It will come at the cost of personal dreams that will be set aside and ignored. For Asian-American children, the dreams they will strive to fulfill will be the dreams of their parents.

Asian parents are traditionally very involved in the lives of their children, beginning with infancy and then even going beyond the perceived age of adulthood by western standards. This involvement is particularly evident in first generation immigrant parents, who previously lived in a country where the promise of a better life was reserved only for a select few. As Fox Butterfield stated in his essay Why They Excel, the achievements of Asian-American children are both remarkable and apparent at an early stage. "The differences in performance are showing up in kindergarten, it suggests something is happening in the family, even before the children get to school" (260). As the parents throughout the child's years of development reinforce the goals and obligations, the performance levels that were once remarkable then become extraordinary. "Although Asian-Americans make up only 2.4% of the nation's population," Butterfield states, "by 1990 they had come to constitute 17.1% of the undergraduates at Harvard, 18% at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 27.3% of the University of California at Berkeley" (258).

According to the individuals interviewed by Butterfield, a consensus indicates that at least a portion of the motivational force behind this extraordinary drive to achieve stems from a strong sense of indebtedness the children feel toward their parents, as well as an equally strong sense of guilt. "It is a strong force, like the Protestant ethic in the West" (260). Adding to the obsession with achieving perfection is the ancient heritage of Confucianism, which encourages self-sacrifice for the honor and betterment of the family.

Through personal experience, I had an opportunity while living with a Chinese family to observe the manner in which goals were not only selected but also then ingrained into two young boys. The boys were being driven to become doctors by their parents. In using tools to create guilt as well as obligation, the father repeatedly reminded the boys of how he escaped from China in order to provide them with an opportunity that he never had. Having established guilt and obligation, he then provided his demands that they work harder for better grades. I was surprised to discover that the children possessed artistic talents that were not being acknowledged or cultivated. The eldest was an excellent storywriter, and the youngest had skills as an artist. When I encouraged the boys to practice these skills that they clearly enjoyed, they simply shrugged and said their parents would be displeased. Upon asking the parents why becoming a doctor was so important, the only answer offered was that this achievement would be one of prestige, and it would bring honor to the family name. When I suggested that perhaps worthier grounds for honor might come from the fact that doctors save lives, their response was curt, and my suggestions were summarily dismissed with a wave of the hand.

For young Asian-Americans, the effect of obsessive studying and hard work often results in a feeling of isolation from the rest of the American society. While the road to success is a long and hard one, it is further frustrating to realize that the goals one is striving to achieve are the goals of someone else. Many Asian youths feel trapped with family obligation and some have the desire to be accepted for who they are. Nguyen Louie said in A Daughter's Story, "There were cliques that required being popular and looking cute, and I wanted to be myself. I didn't want to change myself to fit into any clique. I was often lonely and miserable." The feeling of isolation can grow until it affects the individual's mental health, leading to self-destructive actions. Some students have committed suicide because they could not meet their parents' expectations. Others have done the same when the pressure to excel in school became too much to bear.