Better than Before or Better than You
For the parents of the Bay Area, the American Dream seems to be just within reach for the next generation. All that stands between their children and a white picket fence is a college education from an elite university. And for these students, the four years of high school are wholeheartedly dedicated to getting those tippy top test scores, outstanding extracurriculars, and a shiny resume — all to prove that you are worthy, you are good enough, you are the perfect fit for the big leagues.
However, the big leagues are steadily becoming smaller. Harvard University accepted less than 5% of applicants into the class of 2024. Stanford University accepted a little over 5% of their applicants in 2020 — a one percent increase from the year before.
The harsh reality in college admissions is that while you are worthy, good enough, and the perfect fit, others might be more worthy, better, and already fitting in. The extreme prestige associated with highly ranked universities and their increasing selectiveness have created an extreme pressure on high school students to become part of the “lucky few.” The competitiveness of college admissions is especially heightened by the close proximity students are in. When your fiercest competition is doing English homework next to you, there is no escape from the inevitable comparison of college applications. And when your parents are asking why your SAT scores don’t measure up to your friend’s, or why your volunteering isn’t as flashy as Jackie’s cancer research, it seems that everyone is making more progress than you. Extreme parental expectations and subsequent environmental pressure culminate in a stressful, grueling environment for young adults to grow and mature in. In a life centered around college admissions and elitism, mental health has declined for students in the Bay Area.
There are billions of high schoolers in the world and almost 50 million in the United States alone, each struggling with the problems in math class, letters of recommendation, and college applications. All parents want their children to succeed; parental expectations are a universal part of growing up. So why has familiar pressure in college admissions become so prominent in the coastal area of Northern California?
Our answer lies in the Bay Area’s large Asian immigrant population — specifically, the attitude Asian immigrants have towards the American Dream and education. Commonly known as the “Bay Area,” San Francisco and its surrounding counties are home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the United States. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, “Foreign-born residents represented at least one-third of the population in five California counties: Santa Clara (39%), San Mateo (35%), Los Angeles (34%), San Francisco (34%), and Alameda (33%) … Among [CA] immigrants who arrived between 2010 and 2019, more than half (53%) were born in Asia.” All five California counties are located in the Bay Area. Now that we have established the majority position of Asian immigrants in California, we can break down the extraordinary emphasis Asian parents put on education into two parts: their general immigrant status and their historical interactions with education as Asians.
The United States is hailed as a country of immigrants, the promised land where dreams really do come true. Chris Anarde captures this promise perfectly: “The American Dream is best captured in how people talk about the future, especially for their kids. While most working-class Americans see their children’s future as dimmer than their own, working class immigrants see it as brighter.” Immigrants come to America in search of their white picket fence and most importantly, financial stability and social mobility for their children. These glorious visions of the future are built on the promise that hard work will yield success. While the stability and feasibility of the American Dream has undergone debate, the world (and America) will always believe in it. We want it to be true. We want to believe that anything is possible in America. We want to believe our children can go to Harvard and become homeowners. And seeing is believing. Immigrant success stories can be traced back to the Gold Rush, where foreign miners struck gold and settled down with their families. And in 2018, “Forty-three of the richest Americans immigrated to the U.S. from all across the globe, from locales as far away as China to as close as Canada. They hail from 20 different countries on six continents; their fortunes add up to a $289 billion — about 10% of the total wealth of The Forbes 400.” As a result of these successes, immigrants are able to envision themselves and their children as future stories, making them more inclined to value individual effort. In other words, immigrants have more faith in the American Dream, believing they will see the fruits of their labor.
Beyond their belief in hard work, Asian immigrants’ extraordinary emphasis on excellence in education can also be attributed to the immigration policies that shaped their entry and populations in the United States. Asian parental pressure goes beyond strict parenting or culture. In “It Takes More than Grit: Reframing Asian American Achievement,” Jennifer Lee counters that “Rather, the cultural manifestations of Asian American achievement have legal and structural roots — namely the change in US immigration law in 1965 that altered the socioeconomic profiles of Asian immigrants. Privileging those with high levels of education and skills, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 ushered in a stream of highly educated, highly skilled immigrants from Asia.” Put simply, only the best of the best were given the opportunity to come to the United States. The American job opportunities and visas were only available to those from top universities. The historical hyper-selectivity in immigration policies targeting Asians explain the high education levels of Asian immigrants today. For example, 51% of Chinese immigrants in the US are college educated compared to the 36% of the general American population. In a modern context, the educational criteria used to limit Asian immigration contribute to their current perception of education. Because many of them were able to build a life in the United States because of their educational backgrounds, it should be no surprise that Asian immigrant parents in the Bay place an extreme value on their children’s education. Drawing from positive personal experiences with elite institutions, these parents perceive a highly ranked college education as the ticket for their children’s American Dream. The subsequent high value Bay Area parents place on education manifests itself in high levels of familial pressure. It is important to remember that I am not saying only Bay Area students face intense academic pressure from their families. Rather, I am arguing that parental expectations are heightened overall in Asian immigrant families to their relationship with the American Dream and immigration policies.
The Bay Area-specific environmental pressures only add fuel to the flame. Catering to eager parents are the college schools, college counselors, and cram schools — each costing upwards of thousands of dollars — that guarantee to “increase your score by 100 points!” and had “15 Harvard students last year!” A notable example is the Elite Education Institute, a famous Bay Area prep school that has “been helping students gain admission to the colleges of their dreams by offering exceptional teaching, regular counseling, and proven curriculum [since 1987].” The prep school — literally named “Elite” — indulges specifically in the parental need for highly ranked universities. The advertisement’s language (exceptional, dreams, and proven) elevates its services, firmly establishing itself both as an upper-level institution and a pathway to one. Elite Prep is just one of the hundreds of Bay Area academic achievement schools. Every program is designed for excellence. (In fact, one of Elite Prep’s competitors is named Excel.) In the Bay Area, every child seems to have a private counselor or undergone test prep. The abundance of these programs, as well as the large portion of students frequenting them, continues and strengthens Bay Area parents’ elitist mindset and the pressure they impose on their children.
The argument surrounding parental pressure is not a new one — and not an entirely bad one either. After analyzing the results of multiple studies, the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth concluded that “In contrast to popular belief, most parents of academically talented students do not seem to play a detrimental role in their children’s achievement by pressuring them to achieve. These parents, in general, do not focus exclusively on high academic performance such as grades and test scores. Even when they do, almost one-half of these parents also focus on understanding of material and personal improvement in performance. Such a balance, especially when accompanied with support and guidance, is unlikely to foster feelings of pressure.” Put simply, pressure is only positive when it is rooted in parental concern for achievement beyond the academic. In arguing that extreme family expectations are the driving force behind declining mental health, I am not saying little to no pressure should be applied to children. Rather, I am advocating for a less elitist centered approach to raising children.
All parents want the best for the children — and a college education is no exception. The immigrant status of Bay Area parents, hyper selectivity in Asian immigration, and the parental instinct to want the best for one’s children intensifies their desire for the best. However, parents have come to define the “best” in numerical terms: class rankings, the yearly US News university rankings, and the miniscule acceptance rates. When parents adopt an elitist mindset and shaping their children in the “lucky few,” their children grow up under with the same perceptions of achievement. When parents look down on lower ranked schools or scores, their children are encouraged to look down on themselves.
Conversely, it is no surprise that that high-achieving high school students have been named an “at-risk” group by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The high pressure and competitive environment of the Bay Area push many children to their breaking point, making it easy to fall prey to distraction and loss of control. It is important to remember that high school is not just a pivotal time for academics, but also one for mental and physical development. High schoolers are children. They are still learning about the world and themselves. They are still making important mistakes and deciding what kind of person they want to become after those mistakes. It takes a village to raise a child. And the Bay Area has become a domineering, hostile one for its children. The parent narrative of hard work overlooks the problems extreme pressure creates for their children. It forgets their children aren’t blank slates getting readied for a shiny diploma. In other words, parents’ preoccupation with a successful future distracts the pressing problem of mental health and psychological impact of the present. Suniya Luthar, an ASU psychology professor, found that “found that adolescents in high-achieving schools can suffer significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and delinquent behaviors, at least two to three times the national average… When a child’s sense of self-worth is dependent on what they achieve, it can lead to anxiety and depression. Anxiety can come from worrying about keeping up with or outshining peers, while depression can be caused by a failure to achieve.” In other words, when you measure yourself in units of test scores, extracurriculars, and rankings, mental health declines. And our first teachers — our parents — are the inventors of this measurement system. As a result, academic expectations not only serve as external pressure on children, but also lead to internal pressure and self-judgement by children themselves.
So, is there any solution to this seemingly never-ending cycle of parent and kid? Of course! According to Dr. Victor Schwartz, an expert on teenage mental health, “how parents act can be as important, if not more important. ‘Having reasonable goals, expectations and modeling the acceptance of the fact that we all fail sometimes, make mistakes and missteps and showing how to constructively respond to them are important,” says Schwartz. ‘We also can help by modeling values and ideals that we believe are important and valuable.’” Schwartz’s in-depth solution to the mental health decline in high school students addresses the deep-seated issues that create extreme pressure. Only when parents teach themselves acceptance and sensible goals can they begin to teach their children to accept themselves. While I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Shwartz’s shift in parent perspectives, the extreme pressure in the Bay Area calls for a more well-rounded approach that specifically addresses the immigrant parent angle. I propose the creation of education programs targeting parents.
Some may say that mental health in students is primarily a student concern. It is time to face the truth: external solutions to extreme pressure fail to effect long-term change. For example, following the suicide of a Bay Area high schoolers in 2013, her Bay Area high school was allocated five additional counselors (eight total at the school) to address the psychological concerns of teachers and students. In other high schools, suicides were combatted with similar personnel changes. In college application season, high schools employ several therapy dogs for their students. These “doggy wellness days” are meant to serve as respite from the looming deadlines and pressure at home. Some Bay Area high schools took a more restricting academic route by limiting the number of APS students are allowed to take in a year. Such measures were eventually overturned after parents petitioned the schools about “missed opportunities” and “just adding more counselors” for their children. The institutional attempts at easing pressure on high schoolers miss the mark on a problem that continues to grow in immigrant communities. Rather than the repeated funding of personnel changes and syllabus changes, I argue that we should focus on the internal, parental cause of mental health struggles.
The extreme pressures Bay Area immigrant parents impose on their children are products of national ethos and past legal infrastructure. To truly address the deep-set issues that create the need to constantly compare with others, parents must acknowledge the history that shaped how they raise their children. Elitist parent mindsets are the root cause for Bay Area students’ mental health decline and should be front and center in the campaign for student mental wellness. As I make the case for a reform of familial expectations, I realize that some may wrongly think I mean no pressure and low goals are the way to go for healthy, happy children. Rather, I am advocating for the positive pressure the JH Center for Talented Youth described: expectations built on realistic growth and personal meaning. Put simply, we should be teaching children to compare themselves to who they were yesterday, not to those around them.
Sources
https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/
https://americancompass.org/the-commons/immigrants-and-the-american-dream/
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/pressure-of-college-admission-takes-toll-on-students/
