Week 2_Zijing Wu_A04

Week 2

Zijing Wu  A04  913957457

After reading all the articles for week 2, I found the research paper "Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices" most interesting to me. The story about Tiger Mom drew many attentions a fewer years ago and I am always curious about to what extend is this stereotype about Asian American parents true. What's more, the way this research paper is presented could be used as an example when I have to do my own research in Ethnic Studies. Dr. Poon and Dr. Bryd started by asking a question: Are Asian American students college choices significantly influenced by their parents? They than conducted a nationwide  survey and collected the data. Finally they conclude that although Asian Americans students do value their parents' opinion, other factors such as high school consular' input also plays a big role in their college choices. I am an International student, so my parents influence on my college choice should not be a valid input in this study. However, my aunt moved to America about 30 years ago and she is a mother to two 2nd generation Asian American children. My aunt went to Brown University and got a M.D degree there, and one of my cousin is now studying Pre-Med at UC Berkeley.  Before I read this research paper, I assumed that my cousin's college choice is defiantly influenced by his parent. But now, I realized that we cannot assume anything before we hear the full story. Many other factors could result in his decision of pursuing his mom's career path, or this could simply be a coincidence. Correlation is not equal to causation. If everyone understand that, there probably won't be that many stereotypes about Asian American parents. I think this Tiger Parents thing just shows that it is so easy for the general public to overlook other aspects of a social phenomenon and only focus on factors like race and gender simply because that catches more eyeballs.

My Question: Is Dr. Poon and Dr.Bryd''s research enough to prove the Tiger Parents stereotype wrong? 

Poon, O., & Byrd, A. (2013). Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices. Journal of College Admission, 22-31. Retrieved September 29, 2017.