Inside the Asian Pressure Cooker

Asian immigrants' drive for material success and shame-based culture may be causing many to place impossibly strict expectations on their children.  Health and social workers say rates of depression are disproportionately high among Asian youths, and in some cases this results in suicide.

By Pueng Vongs, Pacific News Service

SAN FRANCISCO - Aug. 23, 2005 - It's become cliché: Asian parents browbeat their kids into pursuing prestigious professions in technology, medicine or law, and their children suffer the resulting stress and depression. But speaking with other Asian professionals at a recent social gathering, I found we all agreed that we shared the same affliction.

Jane Wong, 40, from Hong Kong just quit her lucrative software job because the 60-80 hour workweek reminded her of constantly struggling to anticipate the needs of her demanding Chinese parents. Wong says she pursued only the most visible projects, craving recognition, but still felt dissatisfied. Rebecca Wee, 40, from Malaysia also walked off her job as a high tech manager to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. But after decades of being told by her parents that only the most well-paid and stable career goals were worth pursuing, she spends many days paralyzed, undermining her decision and herself.

As for me, after 15-hour days working as a hotel manager my Thai immigrant father still had enough energy at night to scrutinize my schoolwork -- and let me hear it if he was not satisfied. He made it clear that his love was dependent on me making perfect marks. The message that it is not who you are but how well you do still consumes me.

Experts are beginning to take greater notice of the impact of intense academic pressure and strict parenting on Asian youths, and they say these factors contribute to high rates of depression among young Asians. Chinese, Filipino and other Pacific Islander youths topped the charts of groups reporting symptoms of depression in a survey of middle school kids taken by the San Francisco Unified School District in 2001, in numbers disproportionate to their population.

In the worse cases, Asian youths see no way out. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 24, but second among young Asian and Pacific Islanders (unintentional injuries rank first), according to the Centers for Disease Control in 2000. Asian American girls have the highest rates of depressive symptoms of all racial groups and the highest rate of suicide among all women age 15 to 24, according to an American Psychological Association study in 2003.

Coleman Wong says pressures facing Asian kids have changed little in the 30 years he has counseled students in San Francisco schools. "For the bulk of Asian parents it is all about succeeding, and there is no middle ground."

Wong mentions two recent suicide attempts, one successful, by Chinese students in San Francisco as examples of how the enormous pressure to succeed may contribute to suicide. An American-born Chinese captain of Lowell High School's football team, who maintained a high GPA in the district's most competitive high school, killed himself in 2002. "A bad grade on a test or a fight with a girlfriend or boyfriend can be devastating to a kid if they don't know how to reach out," Wong says. In 2004, a student was from Balboa High who ranked high in student government survived a suicide attempt.

Wong says oftentimes Asian immigrant parents don't know how to give positive reinforcement or show their kids that it is OK to make mistakes. "In Chinese there is a word for making a mistake, 'chuo,' and a word for being bad, 'huai.' Parents confuse them both. It is a shame-based society. You do well for your family's sake, not your own."

Asian girls are especially at risk. When he walks into a classroom and asks how many students are depressed and how many have thought about suicide, Wong says it is consistently Asian girls, often the oldest in their families, who raise their hands. "They often have the most pressure because they also have to look after the other kids." He thinks more bilingual counselors are needed to communicate with parents.

But some parents, like those of Kao Saephanh, 19, may be hard to reach. Saephanh's Mien parents grew up on a small village on a mountainside in Laos trying to protect their culture from modern influences. Saephanh says they are traditional, "archaic" refugees who count on their oldest male child to help provide them with greater economic security.

Sandy Dang, who runs Asian American Leadership Empowerment and Development for Youth and Families in Washington, D.C., says it's important to acknowledge the challenging backgrounds of many parents from the Vietnamese and Hmong communities her group serves.

"Many are refugees. Others were brought up with corporal punishment, and that's what they know. Others are orphans of war. How do you teach someone who has not been parented to parent?" she asks.

Dang also points to many parents' difficulties communicating with schools. Their children become mediators between home and school. Dang's group helps open lines of communication between parents and teachers.

Cheo Saetern, 17, says the group Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership (AYPAL) helped her face her parents' put-downs when her grades were not up to par. "They used to constantly compare me to other kids and my cousins and say that I am not good enough," Saetern says. AYPAL, she says, helped her develop a voice, so that "whenever they yelled at me I could explain to them what was going on. I could tell them why I was out late and that I've done my homework."

Saetern says the program has helped her think positively about herself and develop a better relationship with her parents. Now, she says, she has grounded visions of becoming a social worker or studying immigration law.

She shows a confidence I wish I had when I was her age, and still struggle to grasp as an adult.

Other Readings of Interest

• Hiding the Pain: Suicides High Among Asian Immigrant Women
  By Pueng Vongs, Pacific News Service
  Chinese American women have the highest suicide rates of all racial and ethnic groups nationwide. Public health professionals think they know why.
• The Silent APA Killer
  By Lynda Lin, Assistant Editor, Pacific Citizen
  Mental illness continues to be shrouded in secrecy and shame, but as suicide rates increase, so too does the silence.
• 'Be a Doctor': Learning to Say No to My Immigrant Parents
  By Ophelia Young, Pacific News Service
  For a young Burmese American, intense pressure from her immigrant parents to go into medicine led first to cheating, and later to independence and the discovery of her own goals.

PNS contributor Pueng Vongs is a journalism fellow in Child and Family Policy, a program of the University of Maryland and the Foundation for Child Development.