So, once again it’s Monday. I am taking a couple days off before I start my new job. Today my article about was an editor’s pick on I’m very honored that David picked my article. Another editor’s pick is Grad Money Matter’s . I read this article before it was featured in the carnival and wrote a pretty long comment on it because I have had some personal experience with that. Grad Money’s article is what is prompting me to write this article about how Asian parents influence their children’s success in life.

Anyway, when I was in college one of my friends was talking about Asian parents and we came to the following conclusion. Basically the following are the only acceptable careers to our parents: doctor, lawyer, engineer, and financial professional/investment banker. Then my friend mimicked his mom’s accent and said that these were the only acceptable colleges, “STANFURD, HAHVARD, YALE, and MIT”. The whole room busted out laughing and then one guy said, “Well, I guess we’re all failures since we’re at Berkeley”. We may have hyper-stereotyped our parents, but it’s funny because most of what we concluded is true.

Pretty much all of the Asian kids with first generation Asian parents I have met have felt pressure from their parents in choosing a college major that may lead to a high paying career. I think this family enforced career selection may be one of the many reasons why Asian households have the . I think it makes sense that parents want their children to be successful, but a lot of Asian parents’ perception of success is very narrow and consists of a high GPA and then a high paying job. So many children are pushed to be doctors and engineers whether or not they like it. I have known several girls who were pushed into engineering and medicine only to despise their majors and found their coursework to be too difficult. Not everyone is meant to be an engineer or doctor, and some Asian parents do not seem understand that. I have also seen Asian parents that pushed their kids to succeed to the point of hurting them. For example, a girl I knew in high school was scolded by her parents on her graduation day for not being the Valedictorian. That is just very unnecessary and cruel.

Cultural clashes occur between first generation Asian parents and American educated children because in America you are encouraged to think outside of the box, create, and be yourself, but in most of Asia you are expected to memorize, repeat, and obey. When Asian children step outside of the box of what their parents consider to be successful, conflicts arise and for the most part I think the parents are just worrying too much. For example, my second cousin was groomed by his dad to be a doctor and he went to an ivy, but he chose to major in photography instead. It didn’t please his dad at first, but now he is successful as a technical game artist. Generally people perform better in what they love to do, and people find success in all kinds of random things in America. I think it is much better to do what you’re passionate about than to go to a job you hate everyday. In fact, some of the pushy Asian parents really stunted their children’s success because when their children end up in a despised career they are usually lugubrious and do not care to excel in any manner. I have seen many examples of these engineers who absolutely hate what they do and want to get out everyday.

Despite all the slightly negative stereotypes about first generation Asian parents in this article I do believe that like all parents they want the best for their children. The parents are right in wishing a good career on their children, but ultimately for their children to achieve success they need to learn to make decisions for themselves. It’s problematic that a lot of these parents do not take the time to understand their children’s strengths and preferences and just try to push their children into a mold of what is considered successful in the Asian community. It’s true that when we are young we are not absolutely sure what we want, and parental advice is always helpful but I think it is unnecessary for Asian parents to throw a ballistic fit when their children consider a career in fine arts. There are many ways to succeed, and parents are human beings who can make mistakes too.

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I am so pissed off right now because my mother harassed me for 12 hours straight about my last post even after I took it off last night. Her harassment consisted of spamming this blog with comments and calling both my husband’s and my phones from 11pm to 7am. After my dad and husband both tried to convince her that I already took down the post she continued to harass me and I had to block her IP. Then my dad found out that she didn’t even read that I took down the post and just continued to harass me anyway. Because of this the both of us didn’t get a good night sleep. All I wrote about was that my parents bought two homes and lost money on the second home because it was bought at the peak of the housing bubble. This is probably a situation faced by many couples all across the world. I posted no names, no addresses, and no extremely private information. Past and present housing prices are all public information anyway so I don’t see what the big deal is on posting that without pinpointing the actual addresses.

Her argument was that I gave too much information about their personal finances without permission, but what I don’t understand is that they talk about their personal finances in detail all the time to everyone they know. They brag about the stocks they own, the houses they own, and their jobs constantly so I always had an impression that they are pretty open about this topic. They also tell their friends and friends of friends about my personal finance without my permission. This incident actually brought back the memory of when they bought the second home. When I went to see the place my mother flat out told the loan agent how much money I made at my job without prompting. Then the loan agent said to me, “you should buy a house.” This was when I was making $60,000 a year by myself, and THAT really pissed me off too. I felt like they were just mocking me for no reason and looking back it is like they are throwing me to the wolves of the real estate industry.

Dear readers, isn’t what they do to me much worse than anonymously telling random people about a nameless couple? The difference between what I wrote and what they do all the time is that what I wrote is anonymous and what they do actually affects me in real life because all those Chinese parents that they talk to know who I am and they tell their kids to look up to me because of how much money I make. I’ve actually been introduced by a Chinese dad to his daughter by my networth and that was rather disturbing. I really don’t want to be defined by my salary and networth and yet they continue to do exactly that without my permission. This is really a flaw of the Asian culture because so much of who you are is based on money, but I could really write an entire series of rants about Asians and money. It’s really bizarre and annoying to have such hypocritical parents, and on top of that for my mother to act like such a vainglorious and spoiled brat really amazed me.

Today I was reading an article about and once again it made me think about starting my own business.

When I think about it, I already have a lot of things that could help me in a business venture. Here’s a list:

• I am young and I could afford to take a bit of risk.
• I have quite a bit of experience working at startups.
• I have a degree in engineering and I am fairly capable with web technologies.
• I am fluent in Chinese and English and could possibly source products and services from China.
• My parents are financial professionals and could help me with the accounting
• I have a good network of contacts in the Silicon Valley through jobs and school.
• I have a hubby that is usually pretty supportive

Then there are the hurdles I need to overcome to actually go ahead and start something:

• I need an idea for a business that could be profitable
• I need to get over the fact that I would probably not make money right away.
• Eventually I need to give up my job and work on my business full time.
• I need to get over my fear of failure since most small businesses fail and I absolutely abhor losing or failing at anything .
• I need to get off my butt and execute my idea once I have one.

I think the biggest hurdles for me are that I may fail and I may lose a stable income while I focus my energy on my own business. Coming up with a business idea isn’t very hard because I firmly understand that I just have to sell a product or service that people want and it really doesn’t have to be a complex “web 2.0″ idea. The business could be as simple as buying useless cheap crap from China and selling it to people here at a markup. In fact, a lot of people and companies make billions of dollars doing this. My business doesn’t have to be huge and glamorous so coming up with an idea is easy. I have dabbled in quite a few “businesses” where I sold very mundane things and I did make small buckets of money. However, I always quit because they became too time consuming and my full time job paid much better. Running a business takes a lot of work and most of the time it is easier just collecting a stable salary. I think my mom also said that she always wants her own business, but after calculating everything she found that collecting a salary is just less of a hassle.

It is hard to convert from a wage-slave to a capitalist, and I think for me that is the hardest part about starting a business. If I did get really serious about having my own business I think I could do very well. The problem is that I may never get started.

So I have been writing this blog for three months and I am surprised that I haven’t written about being an only child. I am an only child because I was born in China and my entire generation was subject to the . In China my entire class consisted of only children and the closest thing I had to a brother was my first cousin, who happens to be only 3 days older than me. Last year I read quite a few articles published by the official news agency of China about my generation of “little emperors” and “little princesses” and I found them quite interesting. Here is a short summary of the central government’s findings on this enormous social experiment.

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1. A lot of only children are quite independent and very productive.
2. Urban females are more educated than past generations since parents could only give attention and care to their only child. In past generations the boys usually received preferential treatment. The only-child policy actually did create more gender equality in urban areas.
3. The only-child generation did not show distinct personality defects as feared by sociologists when the policy went into place. In fact, they are generally healthier than previous generation.
4. Only children are more sociable than children with siblings because they have to get friends outside of their family.

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1. The only-child generation tends to have less responsibility growing up and end up being lazier.
2. Divorce seems to be rampant in this generation because of overprotective parents and unyielding egos.
3. Only children have no idea how to take care of their own kid.
4. As their parents and grandparents age these peers of mine will have to potentially take care of six people.

When I was a child I really thought that being an only child is the right and normal thing because it was the law and I was born into a world of only children. I remember that it took me a while to adjust to the fact that only children are fairly rare in America and most people has at least one sibling. Since in China the kids with brothers and sisters were from the countryside I thought that maybe most Americans are farmers. I had a few classmates that also came from China, but their parents chose to have more children in America. Most of these American siblings were ten or more years younger than my classmates. In fact, one of my friend’s mom produced his last little brother when he was a senior in high school. This is because in the Chinese culture children are considered blessings. In America the one child policy has many critics, and I agree that it does impede on the basic reproductive rights of human beings and millions of babies have died because of this law. However, population control is probably needed in the world and it’s a tough issue to resolve when most humans are biologically driven to have more children.

For the most part I did benefit from the law because I had the full attention of my parents and they provided me with all that I needed. Even though I live in America now I think I am not so different from my Chinese counterparts. However, my dad wrote in his blog (in Chinese) that I am much because I grew up in America. Looking back, I probably wouldn’t want a sibling to play and fight with and I quite enjoyed being an only child. There are definitely moments of loneliness, but I just filled my time by reading a lot of books and spending time with my parents. To this day I am still more comfortable talking with older people because I am used to having my parents as my friends. Maybe that’s why I identify with an old baglady and I am so keen on retirement planning. Now that I am married I am trying to adjust to not being an only child, but a wife. It is kind of hard since my hubby takes care of so many things around the house. He is the older brother in his family and he is definitely taking care of me in a lot of ways. I definitely need to take care of him more so that I maintain my marriage and not end up a divorce statistic.

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This is something that has puzzled me for years. Why do Americans allow babies to poop and pee so freely and spend a fortune on diapers? It’s understandable when babies can’t move around and go to the toilet, but when babies start to walk around they can be trained to go to potty by themselves. Normal toilets are way too big for babies but when I was young I had a tiny potty that fit me perfectly. My mom said that soon after I started walking I was able to do my business in my personal porcelain throne and I only got excrement on myself when I was sick and couldn’t control myself. Of course, my parents had to empty the potty out and clean it daily, but it’s not really much worse than cleaning up after a puppy or cleaning a regular toilet that is heavily soiled. A baby potty isn’t very expensive, but I’m not sure if they’re widely used here in America.

This weekend I spent some time with my friend’s baby. He’s exactly 17 months today and he is walking around quite capably. He is still wearing a diaper and is quite used to pooping standing up. His dad told us a funny story of where he was playing ball with the baby. Suddenly the baby needed to poop and concentrated on pooping while he stood there. Instead of catching the ball he let it hit himself in the face. It is pretty comical to me because the boy is quite smart and is learning words by the mouthful. He can certainly learn to poop in a potty and his parents can probably save hundreds of dollars on diapers.

Today I discussed this issue with my coworkers during lunch and one of them is an immigrant from Vietnam. He recounted that he had a baby potty, too. His parents set the potty outside of the house and let him do his business there. He also doesn’t understand why toddlers here routinely soil themselves. It also amazes me that there are products like Pull-ups that probably prolong the potty training process. It is almost like a diaper industry conspiracy to take your money and keep your child ignorant. I don’t have a kid yet but I think I can probably save a lot of diaper money just by training my child to use the potty as soon as possible. Babies are really smarter than people expect them to be.