According to Hijioka and Wong of the American Psychological Association, suicide remains a leading cause of death in the Asian-American community. The highest suicide rate is among those Asian-Americans between the ages of 20 and 24. For college students, Asian-American students are also more likely than their White American students to have experienced suicidal ideation. A combination of reasons play a role in influencing someone to commit suicide; social, psychological, and biological factors all influence a person in some way. But these risk factors differ for different culture and ethnic groups, as well as cultural views on the topic of suicide and prevention. In Asian culture, the pressure of living up to family expectations and the stress …show more content…
Asian-American students are especially familiar with this feeling; the feeling of fear, anxiety, and stress when they come home from school and are asked about their grades. Growing up in a Vietnamese household, I have learned that anything less than a B is considered failure; an A grade is always the goal, and B is just average. However, striving to meet such goal can come at a cost for many students, who in addition to balancing schoolwork, are also in the process of discovering their identity and place in the world. Kevin Lam brought up the cases of three Asian American colleges students who committed suicide at three elite universities where one of the students left a note to explain her action. The note simply expressed that the student felt she did not live up to expectations. The …show more content…
The struggle with acculturation can be a source of family discords, which can isolate children from their parents, and leading young adults to feel depressed. Hylton said, “The risk of suicide among Asian Americans with family problems was triple the risk of other Asian Americans, even factoring for depression.” As Asian-American youths learned to acculturate to Western culture, they may no longer share the same Asian values as their parents. At the same time, parents are afraid to let their children adopt too much of the American culture because they fear their children may lose Asian roots. In one of their examples, Kramer et al. said, “…parents may encourage their children to learn English in order to succeed in American society but may refuse to allow them to speak English at home. Such confusing messages to the child lead to transgenerational conflict”. I have also experienced something similar when my family and I was adjusting to the new American culture. At school, I saw that individualism was favored by other students and slowly stopped practicing some of the collectivist values that my parents shared. At home, I started to question the Asian’s value of family obligation over individual pursuits, which caused conflict in the family because that was not typical of a dutiful
Chua believes that Chinese parents force their children to be academically successful in order to reach “higher” goals in life. She emphasizes this when she states “…Chinese parents have … higher dreams for their children…” (Chua 8). Although Amy set higher s...
One type of effect the Chinese mothers’ expectations has in their relationship with their “Americanized” daughter is negative since the mothers are unable to achieve anything. An-Mei Hsu expects her daughter to listen and obey as the young ones do in Chinese culture, but instead receives a rebellious and stubborn daughter, “‘You only have to listen to me.’ And I cried, ‘But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too.’ More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen’” (186-187). Instead of the circumstances improving, the mother is never able to achieve anything; her forcing and pushing her daughter to the Chinese culture goes to a waste. They are both similar in this sense because both are stubborn; the daughter learns to be stubborn through American culture and wants to keep herself the way she is, whereas the mother wants to remove this teaching from American culture and does not give u...
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
There have been many instances of suicide that have occurred in the past years at universities across the country, and since it is such a sensitive subject, there have not been nearly enough coverage as this topic deserves, considering this issue does not seem to be going away. When collecting data about suicide statistics, the age range is broken down as people ages 15-24, which spans most developmental years. Within this bracket are college-age students and this age-group has by far the most troubling statistics around it.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The author, Amy Chua, portrays her opinionated argument that Chinese children are more Why Chinese Mothers are Superior Why Chinese Mothers are Superior successful because of the way they are brought up in her article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior (2011)”. This theme is important because it compares and contrasts the tactics of Chinese mothers to Western mothers to strive for their children to be successful. This paper describes the three key arguments Chau (2011) ties into Ed124 and why Chinese parents act the way they do towards their children.
The main coping mechanism, then, became suppressing of the memories and emotions attached to the traumas of the Vietnam Wars. Their home served as the host of these demons, but the demons impacted parenting styles. Thi acknowledges that her parents taught her and her siblings many lessons, some intentional but others, quite the contrary. It was the “unintentional ones [that] came from their unexorcised demons and from the habits they formed over so many years of trying to survive;”(“The Best We Could Do,” 295) these lessons were indeed unintentional because just like the suppressed communication, they derived weak communication between the parents and the children. In Min Zhou’s article “Are Asians Becoming ‘White’?” she concludes by including a picture of a Vietnamese family celebrating the 1998 Lunar Year, looking happy. This happy family in the article is much like the Bui family because on the outside, they appeared happy, but inside their home and their hearts, a darkness
Most Asian parents always want the best for their children whether it’s in school or at work. Often, Asian parents will not praise their children out of fear that they will become spoiled. Instead, they are more likely to criticize and shame their children
To keep nothing back, Asian parents’ academic expectations of their children is boundless. Asian kids are not born with the excellent grades, but they are taught to prioritize those grades. Parents want their kids to get nothing lower than a B. When they complain about how their fingers are falling off and their pen is running out of ink, they will either get slapped down or given money for another pen. They are fed well, but they do not rest well. The elders believe that an A+ is the passport out of poverty and is the only thing that ensures a bright future for the little ones.
Introduction Suicide has become a major epidemic in the United States. According to a national study in 2013, every 1 in 25 teens have attempted suicide (Pittman, 2013). Suicide affects all youth, but some groups are at higher risk than others. For example, males are more likely to commit suicide than Females. While it is a problem among all adolescents, sexual minority youth are at a special risk.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year olds, and the sixth leading cause for 5 to 14 year olds. Suicide accounts for twelve percent of the mortality in the adolescent and young adult group. Young males are more common than young woman suicides. These are only children who followed through with the suicide. For every successful suicide there are fifty to one hundred adolescent suicide attempts. In other words, more than five percent of all teenagers tried to commit suicide, and the number is still rising. It is scary to think that four percent of high school students have made a suicide attempt within the previous twelve months. In a small safe town like Avon, in the Avon High School where you and I practically live, you can see the faces of 22 students that have tried to commit suicide. That is enough to fill a classroom.
Word for word, the ethnicity of Asian is not just about chopsticks and rice. No matter in which part of the earth you live, being born as an Asian means setting your foot into the Confucian Value System. Each Asian individual’s way of living is determined and judged by this code of conduct. While the rest of the world is living in the age of technology, they still hover in the ‘Butterflies Lovers’ era. Their prescribed traditional family roles are defined by hierarchy, obligation, and duty.
As a result of parental pressure, many Chinese American students feel alienated from their parents. Parents and students, both of them have their own different