Pressure

I am generally horrible at being supportive when people tell me what is on their mind; I feel as if I have a tendency to talk about myself as a method of relating that really comes off as being self-centered. I am working on this tendency. I think in the heat of the moment, people tend to appreciate "I understand" more than receiving your whole life story. I worry that just saying "I understand" may seem hollow. Many of my friends are under an extreme amount of academic pressure. This pressure can originate internally for many of these people (myself included) but families also pressure their children more than they realize. West Indian parents have a particular kind of pressure that I previously believed was unique to my family, but now I understand is far more common than I expected, especially through meeting people at Middlebury and interacting with other West Indian students studying in the United States and England.



Once a child is viewed as "high-achieving", pressure to succeed doesn't decrease, but increases over time. Older children in families seem more susceptible to this pressure than younger children. I am making these observations based on what I have seen regarding the psychological impact parental pressure has on children's performance, and I'm growing to believe that this external pressure from parents can be increasingly harmful over time.

When you are younger, and school is simpler, like it was for me before I moved to the United States, parental pressure worked to my advantage. When you are pressured to be the top of your class, and then you actually achieve your parents' wishes, you are rewarded. Receiving rewards as a child is nice. Toys, more television time and more time to play outside is a wonderful incentive to perform well if you are already naturally intelligent. I performed well with ease as a child and parental pressure had no real negative effect on me early on. I knew what I had to do to succeed; I understood that my academic value was tied to something that I could easily accomplish.

My parents' (specifically my mother's) treatment of my academic success led to a burst of self-esteem regarding my intellect. I am intelligent. I am successul. Academics are associated with positive emotions as long as you continue to succeed. Parental love and approval seem to be achieved easily and you feel like you can have the freedom to enjoy your personal life, have whatever friends you like and engage in whatever distractions you see fit due to your success. Enjoying yourself is permissible once you perform well and bring home good grades. Parental pressure seems supportive when you are successful and young. "You will go to Harvard!" "You will become an important doctor!" all appear to be statements of support early in your academic life, even if later they cause unnecessary additional stress.


There is always an undertone of negativity in this parental pressure. Parents treat their children like future avenues out of poverty and this makes an impression on them early in life. Like I mentioned earlier, older children are more susceptible to this treatment. For example, I have always been encouraged to pursue a career where I would be financially successful whereas my sister has always been encouraged to pursue writing, despite the fact that it is rarely lucrative. Luckily, my wishes to become a doctor aligned with my parents'. I wonder what my emotional state would be like if I were not so lucky. Many West Indian children, especially those sent abroad to the United States to study, are pressured into careers like Law or Medicine. Business is not as encouraged as it is not seen as being quite so prestigious, but it is the third most acceptable avenue.

At an affirmative action panel held at my school a few weeks ago, an elderly white professor made the claim that "[College] is a time for leisure." This may be the case for the scores of middle to upper-middle class white men and women who attend this school. Have a West Indian boy or girl make this suggestion to their parents and see how far that gets them. (Answer: They will be on the next flight home.) White students here have the luxury to pursue "social entrepreneurship" and other lifestyles that will probably satisfy their desires for self-righteous morality, but leave them with a small income. West Indian students don't possess this luxury. We care too much about our families and the pressure they place on us has become so internalized that we cannot imagine doing anything else. I would be interested in doing statistical analysis of the West Indian students studying at prestigious universities, and analyzing what sort of graduate studies they pursue. I would be willing to bet that even the ones that claim to want to do something different end up in law, medicine or business. Having an ambiguous career is frowned upon.

Sophomore year is a turning point at most colleges and universities. We decide our majors. We consider minors and it is the last time to try something new. This is where we choose to continue the pursuit of our dreams (or our parents) or we decide to do something totally different. I personally have already dabbled with the idea of quitting my premedical pursuits but every time I think of a future without medical school, I feel totally lost. What would I do with myself that would make my parents proud? Why does it matter what they think? The second question is a very American question. Well bred West Indian children would never consider asking this. We are raised understanding the sacrifices our parents have made to send us to colleges like Middlebury, and in many cases, high schools like Groton or day schools of the same caliber. Due to the idea that we owe our parents for supporting us, and setting us up to be more successful than our peers, we tend not to defy them. Their wishes are ours, our academic success is theirs.

A part of this can be dehumanizing sometimes, not as dramatically as something like slavery can be dehumanizing, but often times, West Indian children can feel like we are only our accomplishments. We may feel like we become trophies to our parents rather than actual living, breathing people with the capacity for love and making mistakes. We become the sum of our accomplishments: she is premed and she takes Arabic and graduated from high school with honors. 

I have come to the point in my life where I no longer share my GPA with my parents, and I have tried to detach them from academic decision making processes (like dropping Arabic). A part of my ability to do this comes from having a white, American parent to balance the pressure of my West Indian mother. One of the times I felt like my value lay solely with my academics was on the day of my graduation from high school. I had scraped into graduating cum laude rather than magna cum laude or summa cum laude. Instead of congratulating me on an accomplishment I was ecstatic about, my mother said, "Don't worry, maybe in college you will graduate summa cum laude." I had not been worried previously.

West Indian children tend to be grilled when calling home about whether they are eating right, sleeping right, or healthy enough so that they have "time to study". My parents have cut back on this since I have been away for so long and I tend to be sarcastic when I am annoyed by their questions, but even last year, I remember a lot of emphasis being placed on whether I had time for academics rather than whether my social life was successful or fulfilling (it wasn't.) If my parents knew my GPA now, I cannot imagine what their reaction would have been when I told them I was dating someone. Personal relationships, that may actually make children (young adults?) happier are devalued because they are viewed as being at the expense of academic success. Not only are we made to feel like machines and trophies, but we are often times denied emotions in the world view perpetrated by our parents. (Note: It would be interesting to explore how colonial legacy plays into this.)

The pressure that West Indian children feel is unrecognized largely by society. Stereotypes about parental pressure tend to be about Asian parents (although the term "Asian" is so broad and the stereotype so racist). Yet, the West Indian children scattered around the United States feel the effects of our parents on our psyche every day. We think about it with every bad grade we have to bring home, or with every job or internship rejection we receive. We think about our futures and our families constantly and receive little recognition for our resilience. So, to those of us out there, struggling to get by and struggling to make our parents proud of us, remember that we are not alone. There may not be many of us, but there are plenty of us who understand and can relate to what we feel. Sometimes, just realizing you are not alone may be enough to keep you going.