Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Today's "Jewish Mother" is Korean

Your old time pre-JAP Jewish mother was known as a hyper-focused anything for the kids--especially the sons--emasculating, "don't end up like your father" pushy gal. Today, except for some Russian immigrant grandmothers, holding down the fort while their children work hard to make money and they raise the grandchildren, it's more legend and sitcom exaggerations.

It seems like that old stereotype, hyper-ambitious mother speaks Korean. Thousands of upscale Korean families have sent the wives and kids to English speaking countries to guarantee a higher level of English for their kids than available in even the best of Korean schools.

Reading through the entire article brought up two disturbing facts or trends. One is that Korean men, even when the families are living together, aren't really involved with their children. And two, by stressing the importance of learning English and not having similarly high level Korean studies, those kids will ironically end up failing to achieve academic superiority when they return home to Korea.

I just can't imagine that sort of life, pushing to learn and get perfect grades.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

its called being ambitious and goal oriented.

Batya said...

Yes, and the idea that sometimes a parent has to make sacrifices for their kids.
The "me" generation has problems with that.