Quote:
Originally Posted by abaya
Cyn, thanks for the links--still pretty damn unbelievable.
I grew up with a VERY overprotective parent. I'm not surprised that they exist. However, in my experience, it was always the immigrant parents (especially my Asian friends' parents) who wanted to shelter their children the most.
I never saw the born-and-bred American parents freaking out about their kids the way these parents seem to be doing--they were all about independence, which influenced me quite a bit to rebel against my mom and do my own thing throughout my life (to her frustration!). The parents of my 2nd-gen friends were always fretting about the underparenting done by their American counterparts--maybe it was just the area in which I grew up (no one was rich enough to afford being a helicopter parent), but I still see it as a surprising phenomenon, I guess.
Maybe this economic downturn will give those soccer moms something else to do with their time, hmm...
-----Added 27/7/2008 at 07 : 43 : 31-----
Well, first of all, I don't see it as negative  ... just annoying, as a kid who wanted to be away from it. And yes, now I am starting to see that ALL kinds of mothers are overprotective, lol... hence my surprise at this article (Jewish and WASPs and anyone else who sends their kids to these types of camps).
But truly, when I was growing up, every single one of my Asian friends had notoriously overprotective parents. We were all jealous of our "American" friends' parents, because they didn't seem to care what their kids were doing, while we couldn't even sneak out of the house without fear of getting a wooden spoon on our asses. Yes, it was a small sample size based on snowball methods, but I didn't know any exceptions to it. (I should have made it clear that I was speaking anecdotally.) |
There's another perspective too to think about. How you view things now versus how you view them back then. As a child who wants freedom, of course you're gonna think you have it worse off. But from a grown up perspective, things probably look different. I think you will find parents, regardless of culture, will react naturally and biologically with regards to their children. I have odd hours so I frequently am out and about when the housewives are out the most. Their kid disappears for two seconds in the cereal aisle and all hell breaks loose. Women especially are prone to hysterics which makes sense. Protective hen and all that. I would NEVER try to come between a mother and her child (if I want to live that is
). "American born and bred" parents freak out all the time. Just visit a mall, school, anywhere really and you will see this on a constant basis.
It also depends on what type of Asian demographic because Asians are very diverse and heterogeneous. Since a large number of my Asian friends lived alone (we called them parachute kids, or gen 1.5 ) there was pretty much no parenting. Their parents worked back in Asia, and sent money to the US or Canada for the kids while they went to high school. Talk about freedom. I actually had a friend whose father put down one extra zero in the monthly check by accident so he bought a Porsche. But this is more of an LA, SF, NYC, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver thing so maybe you never experienced it. There was a lot of partying and wild times I will tell you that. It's a fascinating look.