Week 2: Clarice Wong

Clarice Wong
Section A02 
In the “Literature Review” section, Poon and Byrd note that Asian American emphasis on college is due to the fact that Asian Americans uniquely see higher education as a means to mobility as newcomers to this country. This is interesting to me, as in my experience I have seen that many East Asian immigrants of the baby boomer generation have started from scratch (as my father puts it, “I came to this country with 20 dollars in my pocket”) and worked menial jobs while saving an extreme amount of income for their children, and pushing higher education onto the millennial generation. Hence, it is not difficult to believe that the mindfulness and hard work that characterized the viewpoint of their generation has been instilled into ours, just with a different goal in mind- higher education. I also find it interesting that Chinese Americans and Korean Americans found a good deal of support from their religious communities because I had not realized the significance of religious communities within these circles. Additionally, I was shocked to learn that a college’s academic reputation was significantly more important for women than men. Finally, the example of Kerry that Poon and Byrd cite for women being more likely to name individuals other than themselves as the drive for their college choice highly resonated with me. Kerry’s father played the most important role in her college process, as did mine. However my situation was a little less free since he was the one who chose which colleges I could apply to because he was the one paying the application fees and ultimately, my tuition. Question: Where does the “Tiger Mom” approach to parenting stem from (and in particular, the Asian American emphasis on college) especially since other * Americans seem to have different statistics on college enrollment? 

References: 
1.   Poon, O., & Byrd, A. (2013). Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Difference in Asian American College Access and Choices. School of Education: Faculty Publication and Other Works, 23-30. Retrieved October 1, 2017. 
2. "UCR Today: Hold On, Tiger Mom" [digital image]. Retrieved October 1, 2017 from https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/24565