The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure

chapter one

GLORIA AND LIZ

Parental Pressure from Two Perspectives

REGARDLESS OF THEIR AGE, ALL CHILDREN NEED AT LEAST ONE WARM, reliable adult to believe in them and provide comfort, especially in times of distress. Most parents remember a time when their child came to them upset. A classic example might be the complaint, “I hate school and I have so much homework that I’ll never get to do anything fun this weekend.” Most parents also remember a time when they responded to their child’s distress with sage advice, such as, “Yeah, well, school is important, so let’s take a look at your assignments and see what you should work on first.” And finally, most parents remember a time when their child threw that supportive bid back in their face with some version of “Don’t tell me what to do!” or “Stop lecturing me!” or “You just don’t understand!” What is going on? Parents are trying to help, but kids are rejecting the offers. We think, What do you mean I don’t understand? I understand quite a bit, which is why I’m giving you great suggestions!

What explains this frustrating disconnect? Perspective. Parents and children often see the same problem quite differently. In this example, the child—be they in second grade or sophomore year—wants empathy. They want the parent to feel their pain, to acknowledge their dismay. By contrast, the parent—who has seen this all before—wants the child to solve the problem quickly, before things get worse. However, putting problem-solving before empathy is a recipe for conflict, as we will discuss in Chapter 10. For now, just appreciate how different a parent’s perspective can be from the child’s, as well as how unexpected the impact can be, regardless of the parent’s intentions. Pressure is more complicated than a heavy night of homework, but it is also experienced differently by parents and children. Consider the case example of Gloria and Liz, a mother-daughter pair whose relationship and personal well-being have been ravaged by unhealthy pressure.

GLORIA—MOTHER, AGE FORTY-FOUR

Gloria is married, but tonight she feels like a single mom. Her husband, Abel, is away again on business, hard at work in a different time zone. Their daughter, Liz, is also far from home and hard at work. She is studying and running track at an independent school, somewhere in a third time zone, and feeling tremendous parental pressure. Hang on. With the family so dispersed, how could parental pressure be an issue?

Looking at the time on her phone, Gloria realizes that she needs to work efficiently because Liz is probably already awake. Gloria wants Liz to have a fantastic day, so she feels compelled to complete one more task this evening before going to bed. The lights are off in the kitchen, but the city glow through the kitchen window is enough for her to see the table and chairs. She sits down and taps the space bar on her laptop, kindling a second source of glowing light.

Using Liz’s username and password, Gloria logs in to the student portal of the school’s website. The virtual private network (VPN) she pays for allows reliable access to foreign websites. This premium VPN also anonymizes Gloria’s computer IP address and encrypts her keystrokes, routing her access through a server on a distant continent. Unbeknownst to Gloria, Liz is walking to an appointment on that same distant continent with vague thoughts of suicide slowing her pace.

On the laptop screen, a tiny animated graphic chases its own tail to indicate that the website browser is waiting for a response. Gloria removes her glasses to rub her eyes. We’ve been preparing Liz for almost seventeen years to get where we are now, she thinks. I guess I can wait thirty seconds for the student portal to load. She misses Liz, as loving parents do when their children are away from home. She reminisces about the Saturday afternoon she told her husband that she was pregnant. This child is our life now, she had said to Abel. We’ll both have to work even harder. Since that day, they have devoted the bulk of their time, salaries, and Saturdays to Liz’s education, with a singular goal for her: to succeed. They believe that if Liz can outshine her high school classmates in one or more ways, her chances of collegiate success—and ultimately professional and financial success—will improve dramatically.

When Liz was in elementary school, Gloria would leave work to pick her up after school and drive her to a private math and English tutoring center staffed by the local university. After tutoring, Liz and her best friend would walk the two blocks to their figure skating lesson, after which one of Liz’s parents would pick her up on their way home from work. When he was not on a business trip, Abel would help Liz with her homework while Gloria prepared a homemade lunch for their daughter to carry to school the next day. On most days, with Abel away, Gloria was both tutor and cook.

The laptop beeps, and Gloria’s attention snaps back to her research. She repositions her glasses as the familiar landing page resolves. Even before the global spread of deadly viruses that necessitated online learning, most schools had purchased learning management systems (LMSs)—software that made it simple for teachers to upload digital course content, take attendance, and post grades. Gloria knows from experience where to find the My Courses section of this LMS. She inhales, blows a quick sigh of anticipation, and clicks Biology 410. The next page lists assignments and test grades for the course over which Liz has poured the most sweat and shed the most tears. Her current grade is a B+. Any score over 94 on yesterday’s exam would boost her to an A–. Gloria finds the number in the column labeled Exam Three: 91.

Gloria studies the number, knowing that it will not raise Liz’s course grade into the A range. However, the online syllabus lists three more graded assignments. There is reason to hope. And to strategize. By most standards, 91 out of 100 is an outstanding grade. Unless, of course, most of Liz’s classmates scored in the high 90s. In that case, 91 is relatively low. Too low, in all probability, to make Liz’s final grade stand out. Unless…

Gloria touches an app on her phone that opens a list of individual and group contacts. She finds what she’s looking for near the top of the screen. This group chat, comprised of parents whose kids attend the same school and are poised to graduate in the same year, is also a silent measurement tool, a kind of rough probability calculator. She posts this message to the group:

Bio 410 still a grind for Liz. So much memorization! Yesterday’s test = 91.

The absence of an adjective to describe Liz’s numerical grade is a subtle way to tempt other parents—mostly moms—to share their child’s grades on the third exam; one way to learn how Liz’s academic achievement stacks up against that of her classmates; one way to decide whether some of the family’s disposable income should be spent on a biology tutor; and one way to refine Gloria and Abel’s calculation of their child’s chances of being admitted to a top university next year. One thirteen-word post in one group chat could harvest responses that will influence Gloria’s emotions, the parents’ investments, the family’s social status, and the direction of Liz’s education.

EXTREME OR EXTREMELY RATIONAL?

You may think that Gloria’s motives and methods are extreme. Yet when it comes to our children, we all want the best, and we are willing to make sacrifices to provide what is best. Perhaps Gloria’s behavior is rational, but the circumstances are extreme. Of course, rational is not always right. In 2019, the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues exposed thirty-three parents who had paid more than $25 million between 2011 and 2018 to William Rick Singer, head of the Edge College & Career Network. Singer had used some of the millions to falsely inflate students’ standardized test scores, fabricate some of their achievements, and bribe college coaches and officials to arrange to have the children of the thirty-three coconspirators admitted to top colleges and universities in the United States.¹ Few parents have the wealth to write checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even fewer would leverage their privilege to bribe a school to admit their child. Yet the fact that some did attests to the pressure that many parents, in many parts of the world, feel today. This pressure—to give one’s child an advantage in an increasingly competitive and populated world, to acquire bragging rights about the prestige and selectivity of certain schools—has become the social-emotional pandemic of our time.

The American Psychological Association’s news magazine, the Monitor, recently featured an article on the increased student self-referrals to college and university health centers for anxiety and depression. The story summarized research that validated what clinicians in secondary and postsecondary schools have been saying for decades: Student mental health is getting worse at alarming rates.² The clinicians in counseling and psychological services at high schools and universities across the country get more referrals than they can easily handle.

In an earlier press release, the APA summarized findings from a Harris Poll survey of 1,018 adolescents and 1,950 adults in the US. The two groups were roughly equivalent in what they perceived to be a healthy level of stress: 3.9 out of 10 for teens and 3.6 out of 10 for adults. However, the teens’ self-reported stress levels during the school year—5.8 out of 10—far exceeded what they perceived to be healthy levels. During the summer, levels were lower—4.6 out of 10—but still unhealthy. According to the study, “Many teens also report feeling overwhelmed (31 percent) and depressed or sad (30 percent) as a result of stress. More than one-third of teens report fatigue or feeling tired (36 percent) and nearly one-quarter of teens (23 percent) report skipping a meal due to stress.”³ Follow-up studies in the APA’s Stress in America series have found that political discord, racial injustice, and the COVID-19 pandemic have all increased self-reported levels of stress.

To expand on the definition of stress we provided in the authors’ notes at the start of this book, let us consider the origins of stress. The source of stress can sometimes be extrinsic (coming from outside the person, such as from a parent or an upcoming exam) and can sometimes be intrinsic (coming from within the person, such as from ruminating about the worst thing that could happen). Just as stress can be a force exerted on objects (like a load of heavy, wet snow bending a tree branch), stress can also be a force exerted on people (like a load of difficult courses straining a student’s ability to keep up).

OK, but why is stress increasing among young people? If human stress is a state of physical, mental, and/or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or highly demanding circumstances, then we have to ask: Are we giving kids more difficult tasks than before? Or is task difficulty unchanged and kids’ coping abilities have taken a nosedive? Is it possible that tasks and abilities are both unchanged, but kids are misperceiving how hard life is and/or how well they can cope? All three of these factors have probably contributed a bit to the increased stress levels that young people report, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.⁴ We are here to report on a fourth factor: parents. Loving, well-intentioned parents.

PARENTS AS SOURCES

Stress has many sources and can take many forms, but the evidence suggests that none matches the emotional intensity of parental pressure. A recent study from Penn State University showed that out of 421 students (227 females and 194 males), 19.4 percent had contemplated suicide because of the enormous pressure from their parents to produce exceptional grades.⁵ Ironically, research conducted by the Pew Research Center suggested that the majority of American adults (56 percent) felt that parents put too little pressure on students.⁶ Just 15 percent felt that parents put too much pressure on students. However, adults in China, India, and Japan reported the inverse perceptions: 63 percent, 61 percent, and 59 percent of adults surveyed in those countries, respectively, felt that parents put too much pressure on students.

Whatever cultural differences exist in the perception and application of parental pressure, the actual harm to young people across the globe is undeniable. In response to heightened awareness of the intense pressure young people report, creative journalists and licensed mental health professionals have shared wholesome ways of coping with academic, athletic, artistic, and social stress—both online and in print. However, none has offered suggestions for preventing parental pressure in the first place. We believe that is because it cannot be prevented. We also believe that the problem will worsen until parents understand why parental pressure is inevitable and commit to transforming harmful pressure into healthy pressure.

Parents apply pressure because they care. No blog post, focus group, or scientific survey will ever change that. Moreover, parents themselves are under a great deal of pressure, both personally and professionally. Most of us also judge ourselves—and feel judged by others—according to how well our children are doing. For their part, mental health providers and professional educators continue to debate what constitutes the “right amount” of pressure. Nothing has changed all that. Until now.

The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure is a clarion call to stop blaming parents for doing what comes naturally and to stop asking the wrong question. Forget “How much parental pressure is too much?” We owe it to our children and ourselves to start asking, “What kind of parental pressure is healthy?” and the related question: “How can parents transform harmful pressure into healthy pressure?” The answers are fascinating, hopeful, and practical. If you are motivated to change, even a little bit, then this book is for you.

Gloria’s story offers a glimpse of a parent under pressure. She has devoted herself to her daughter and immersed herself in Liz’s academic life. Her commitment may be excessive, but, so far, it is hard to see how Gloria’s behavior has made Liz suicidal. To understand the harm, we need to see things from the child’s perspective. We need to know what the pressure put on Liz by her parents feels like.

LIZ—STUDENT, AGE SIXTEEN

After months of coping on her own, Liz self-referred to Counseling & Psychological Services for what she describes to me as the “double whammy” she faces: “I’m freaking out trying to pull As in all my classes, but if my parents knew that I was seeing a psychologist, they would freak out. Right now, I could be using this free period to study bio or practice Tchaikovsky. Plus, you know that mental health problems—any problems, really—are juicy gossip for the other moms.” Liz pauses. “I guess that turns out to be a triple whammy, not a double. Now you know why I think about dying, Dr. Thurber.”

When I ask how it is possible for other students’ parents to know that she is seeing a therapist, Liz looks at me quizzically. “Through apps, Dr. Thurber. Apps.”

For years, I have known that the moment children enroll—from preschool to prep school to university—parents flock to smartphone messenger apps to start comparing notes on their children’s experiences. In Asia, Africa, and South America, most parents are on WhatsApp. In China, Korea, and Japan, the dominant apps are WeChat, Kakao Talk, and Line, respectively. Parents in North America, Australia, and Europe are split between Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, with English-speaking parents taking to Facebook pages and Instagram (owned by Facebook), often to brag about their progeny but in a less organized way than on any of the dedicated messenger apps. All of this happens quickly. For example, on December 13, 2018, Harvard University notified the 935 early-action applicants to whom it had offered admission from a pool of 6,958. By the next day, the private Facebook group Parents of the Harvard Class of 2023 was live and quickly grew to 490 members.

Parents’ preferred platforms vary, but the apparent purposes of these online communities has remained constant: lighthearted social support and the casual sharing of school information. The reality is that when Liz confides in her mom that she received a 98 on a calculus test, her mom shares her grade with the other parents in the group chat within seconds. Low scores, of course, are typically not shared—a practice that aligns perfectly with the worldwide custom of curating our virtual lives in a way that amplifies accomplishments.

The real peril results from Liz’s mother having the password to her account on the school’s student portal and/or its LMS. For most students, it feels only mildly controlling to have their parents know what the homework is and when it is due. Grades are different, at least at this age. Consciously or unconsciously, many parents feel that grades reflect performance and performance reflects talent. Talent can get you into a top-tier school, and top-tier schools are international symbols of prestige, both at the secondary and postsecondary level. Of course, prestige carries weight in some circles, but it never carries the day. How did pride in our kids become more about which school’s name is on the diploma than which student’s name is on the diploma?

In the remainder of our session, I assess Liz’s mood. The chronic stress and unhealthy pressure she has been feeling has created some classic symptoms of depression: sadness, loss of interest and pleasure in activities that used to bring joy, low energy, low intrinsic motivation, difficulty concentrating, appetite changes, and insomnia. She looks exhausted, but she never sleeps through classes. In fact, her attendance and academic performance have been excellent, which explains why her adviser and teachers have not suspected she was seriously depressed. Even her three close friends—two in the boardinghouse and one at the school newspaper offices—are unaware, or at least have not expressed concern. And although Liz shares with me that she sometimes thinks life is not worth living, she has no intention of hurting or killing herself. Nevertheless, I double-check that she understands how to contact the counselor on call, suggest some healthy ways of coping, and am pleased that she agrees to another meeting.

⁶

chapter two

A LOT IN LIFE

Two Parenting Paradoxes

BEFORE DAWN, JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE YOU PICKED UP THIS BOOK, four smartphone alarms jolted four parents awake.

In Los Angeles, California, thirteen-year-old Jacob’s father woke him up to shower and eat half a protein bar before playing through the first movement of Brahms’s second piano concerto and uploading the recording to his teacher in Stockholm, Sweden.

In the suburbs of Berlin, Germany, eleven-year-old Bruno’s father woke him up and stuffed two bagged meals into his rucksack before Bruno caught the bus to the third round of the Junior Olympics diving team tryouts.

In downtown Shenzhen, China, eight-year-old Jinsu’s mother woke her up to study English flash cards before eating a breakfast of zhou (rice porridge) and walking to school with her grandmother.

And in Delhi, India, sixteen-year-old Poonam had already been awake for twenty-five minutes when her mother knocked and opened the door to the bedroom she shared with her sister. The glow from Poonam’s laptop gave her face a ghostly hue and exaggerated the bags under her eyes when she glanced up. Her mother smiled as Poonam’s gaze returned to the screen and the videoconference with her American college admissions consultant.

Every morning, parents all over the world wake up and get their kids going. Many of those children and teenagers have the luxury of going to school. Others, less fortunate, go to work to help their families. The least privileged go out looking for food, some without the benefit of parents or surrogate caregivers to help launch the day. A few young people go searching for the next adult who might toss a coin in their cup or pay them to perform a service, no matter how degrading or dangerous.

As with their homes, cultures, and caregivers, the pressure that kids feel varies enormously. The pressure to fill the void in one’s stomach and the pressure to fill the void in one’s résumé are worlds apart. Yet common to all youth is their need to feel loved. Indeed, kids will do almost anything to appear competent, to seem worthy of attention and affection, especially in the eyes of parents. For this reason, parental pressure is uniquely potent.

Young people’s instinctive craving and striving for parental love is rivaled only by parents’ drive to protect their young. Together, these forces forge intergenerational bonds that are essential to the survival of the species. Millennia ago, children who lacked value in their parents’ eyes were abandoned and often perished. Even today, in some subcultures, children who lack worth to parents are suffering physical abuse, sexual abuse, and even murder.¹ Compared to prostitution, honor-based violence, and mob executions, unhealthy parental pressure seems paltry but can also be lethal. Around the globe, children who lack worth to parents—or who feel that way—are succumbing emotionally. Their instinctive craving and striving for parental approval makes those young people especially vulnerable to parental pressure.