The Asian Parent - Making parents proud is part of filial piety

I have read quite a number of books regarding the parent-child relationship, all written by Western authors. While I don't disagree with their views, I feel that they are not entirely relevant in the context of Asian families. Unfortunately, there are very few books written by Asian writes exploring the dynamics between parents and their adult kids.

Coming from an Asian family with Asian parents and their strict adherence to the hierarchical order, I have always felt the pressure to follow my parents' wishes. It has never occurred to me to go against their wishes, or to stand up for myself. Doing so would be considered unfilial and there are few sins worse than being labelled an unfilial kid. And to me, as a kid, filial piety just meant making my parents happy, that was my simple understanding then. And one of the things I knew that would make my parents happy was to excel in school. Hence, I studied hard, usually coming out top in class, or in the entire cohort. Whenever they attended my school's prize giving ceremony, my mom would take special effort to dress up and when I saw the look of pride on my mom's face as I walked on stage to receive my prize, I thought all the effort was worth it. However, because that was the only way I knew to make my parents happy, I put immense pressure on myself to always deliver excellent results. I couldn't bear the look of disappointment on my mom's face when I told her I wasn't the top student in any year. Of course, it was all very unhealthy, now that I look back on it. There was the implicit understanding that my parents' love was conditional, that as long as I did well in school and made them proud, I was worthy of their love. That came to define how I saw myself and measure my worth. Perhaps my parents didn't mean it that way, they genuinely thought that pushing me to always be the best was for my own good. However, I was walking on eggshells everyday, worried about the day when I am no longer the best, then does that make me a worthless person.

My mom has a serious inferiority complex, having come from a complicated family with an unhappy childhood. She married my father not long after leaving school, so she has literally been a housewife her entire life. As a result, she has few friends and very little contact with the outside world. Her entire life revolved around the family. I suppose like many women of her generation, her life satisfaction is entirely derived from her kids. Their success equals her success, and likewise, their failure is also seen as her own failure. I was the only one, out of my siblings, who excelled in school, so in a way, I provided the validation that she needed, that she has successfully produced an outstanding kid. I was her source of pride at family gatherings, where relatives loved comparing how their kids were doing in school. I was the reason she could hold her head up high when she happened to bump into neighbours and she could "silent brag" about me. Knowing these brought me a lot of stress as I cannot fail her under any circumstances. I had to keep pushing myself to deliver results.

That was the main theme underlying my student years. I have never questioned if I was happy, in fact it wasn't important, or even necessary that I was happy. It was more important that I was an outstanding student. However, that had a lot of implications after I left school and entered the corporate world. The unhealthy mentality that I developed and carried into my adult years brought me many problems, of which I had to spend years adjusting and rectifying.

It is fortunate that parents now have access to many useful parenting books, and they are able to realise how some of their seemingly innocuous actions could have detrimental effects on their kids. My parents' generation largely went by gut feel, lots of trial and error and mimicking parents around them. I always think parents did the best they could, given the limited resources and knowledge they had then. However, as adults, it is also important to identify how some of the embedded mindsets are linked to your upbringing and to rectify them if they are no longer serving you.