Part of the problem is our culture lauds perfectionism as a case of someone caring too much or being too ambitious. That's not what it is.

Perfectionism is a failure to optimize across a complex goal space, settling, instead, on ignoring the difficult (and beautifully complex) prioritisation problem in favour of over-optimizing a limited set of easily-defined goals ("getting an A") over longer-run priorities ("being a fulfilled and productive citizen").

In Japan perfectionism is not encouraged. The rough translation kanpeki shugi (完璧主義) will bring up more ways to fix it than become it on the first page of google.

What the Japanese culture and other Asian cultures similarly encourage however is discipline (majime, まじめ), and the proper way (matomo, まとも）. This means parents instill time management (basically they force kids to take the time to study) and procedure (study environment, tools, focus, resources). This is the true cultural advantage.

With regards to suicide, this too can be correlated to culture with statistics, but it has nothing to do with perfectionism. I would attribute it more to their naivety when it comes to mental well being, and to self sacrifice. In other words, they think it's okay to suffer and sacrifice their mental health far past the safe line, and fare more than most would permit in the west. In Japan, your "self" takes a back seat to the onus of being the majime and matomo Japanese citizen.

The answer is to learn time management, discipline, and procedure, but while staying healthy, both physically and mentally. That's what OP's father did. He made sure his daughter's mental health was okay. That's what parents ought to do, and he deserves all the credit in the world.

Do you think there is more uncertainty about the future today than there was, say, 50 years ago?

Anxiety about school and grades may be an outcome of an increasing sense of uncertainty. The less confident one is about the prospects of the future, the more safety net they will desire. Getting the best possible education is perceived to be the best safety net short of a trust fund.

One major difference between 2016 and 1956 is the perceived likelihood (for Americans, anyway) that you'll be able to work on an assembly line, or, a customer support group, or that your white collar job will be done on-shore.

My advice to my kids was to seek a profession that could not be sent overseas, one way or the other. Such as dentist or lumberjack :-) But of course, we now have hair transplant robots which bodes poorly for both professions.

What it means to me is that navigating the rest of the 21st century requires thoughtfulness, sound analytical skills and a sense of agency. People have to be able to understand the relative impact of all manner of dynamic systems in the world, not just technology, but economics and government, and the way they all interact. Then, they need to plan how to do to stay relevant and execute their plan.

Learning that seems like a lot to ask from a public high school education these days, yet, I believe I learned it 40 years ago.

What has changed?

This sentiment, while important to remember if you ARE a perfectionist, also sounds like a really slippery slope similar to something like eating right. "Well if I just eat when I'm hungry" you'll find you're frequently "hungry" if you're a certain type of person. That said, if you're a certain type of person, "not being a perfectionist" could be a great avenue for never pulling yourself out of your slump.

"I messed up at school" Well, I'm not a perfectionist so that's fine I'll just keep at the same pace. TURNS OUT, that pace wasn't so useful. "I am failing Chemistry" OH WELL. I'm not a perfectionist so it doesn't matter.

You can see how this can be a problem as a mantra to a certain type of person.

These parents were able to send their kid to NYU, an extremely expensive private college with almost no financial aid.

Many of the parents who put insane pressure on their kids to succeed academically do so because they can't afford schools like NYU- they have to get into more competitive schools that offer more financial aid or lower tuitions.

I have experienced both types of approaches from my family. As a kid attending school in Ukraine we had classes 6 days a week and hours of homework each day. My grandmother was a teacher before retirement - I remember her having some very harsh words over my late nights doing math homework in 3rd-5th grade (I can't remember why but in my school there was no 4th grade, everyone in my class went from 3rd into 5th). I just could not get long division for the longest time - there was yelling and tears.

When my family (not including grandparents) moved to the U.S., my parents noticeably loosened up. I think it was because they didn't feel like they had to chase after me to do well so much anymore. They were kind of caught off guard by the school system. Math was the most important, but the stuff we were learning in math at the U.S. school were things we learned long ago in Ukraine so to them it looked like I was doing well and needed no chasing. In truth I was only doing well because my grandmother made me drill math so hard in Ukraine in prior years!

Unfortunately when in later years what we learned in American schools started to overtake what I had already known from Ukrainian schools, the relaxed attitude began to show in my grades. Perfect scores slipped to mid-lower 90s, then to Bs, and even some Cs. I remember failing one test - still can't remember why, even my teacher was shocked. I ended up graduating high school with "above average" grades, but nowhere near as good as they would've been had my grandmother kept charge of my learning.

While I don't miss my grandmother's yelling, I do wish my parents were a bit more strict back then (and at the same time realize that my lack of motivation in school was entirely my fault). I turned out ok, but feel like having a stronger grasp of math and more structured study habits would've been very beneficial later in life.

My dad always believed that if you're going to do anything, you should try to be the best at it. In terms of grades I certainly have not seen a positive effect, but I think the reason is I don't value professional education as much as passion learning, which for me is much more rare. The sentiment however has been instilled in me, and when I discover something that I enjoy doing its hard for me to be second place.

That motivation may have been contextually valuable for Ms. Chia, but speaking as a former teacher, the majority of American students would probably benefit from parenting that sits further down toward the "Tiger Mom" end of the parenting spectrum. Not off the deep end, of course, but definitely further than at present.

If my parents bought me a present after I had received a bad mark in school when I was a teenager my twisted mind would have interpreted that as a catastrophe, "my god, they really do think I have failed and now they are even trying to bribe me to be better, they must be desperate".

By the time her father said this to her, she obviously already had strong intrinsic motivation. Her parents just did a good job of managing it.

How to create intrinsic motivation is a harder question. There is some research that parents can create it by setting and clearly communicating expectations from an early age. But it's not conclusive.

We're clearly deep into nature/nurture territory here.

I agree with the sentiment and hope to raise my children without tiger parent pressure. Though graduating with a psychology degree and studying copywriting seems to make for a tough life ahead. I certainly don't want my child to "have to break [their] neck to make a living", but it seems like that might end up being the case here anyways.

I seem to be saying it even more, but once again I must state that perfect is the enemy of good.

Often people strive for perfection in their grades, to the detriment of their finances, friendships, and personal development.

It happened to several people I know, they'd lock themselves away and study for hours instead of being social and forging relationships (which in the real world outside university are a lot more important than grades).

At the end of the day, everyone gets the same Degree (unless you're doing honours, where there are grades). It doesn't really matter what your grades were if you can network yourself into a job instead.

As others in the NYT and HN comments have said, the best parenting strategy seems to depend on the psychology of the kid.

My parents were more or less in the pussycat camp, which led me to put an enormous amount of pressure on myself as I felt like they just said that to be nice, because they knew I was "gifted" and would ultimately do "what they really wanted". It wasn't good for me mental health wise.

The work ethic correlation with suicide at the end of the article in a common sense way is sort of sound but it also begs the question: "maybe some cultures are more comfortable with suicide" (a->b) instead of idea of the author has "since asians work harder/have higher expectations more asians must commit suicide" (a->b->c). Obviously the author has the stats that asians are in more prestigious schools but that doesn't necessarily mean they are pressured more or that they are consequently more likely to commit suicide.

For example you could have devout catholics that have the same work pressures and stressors but would never commit suicide (I don't know if that is true but I'm not sure about the authors position either).

My parents and collegiate experiences were much like the author's. I would call them asking for advice, only for them to ask about how I'm pursuing happiness. That openness and lack of using perfection as a goal allowed me to pursue first (pre-)medicine, then (pre-)graduate school (Biochemistry), and finally Computer Science throughout college. After four years, I found myself with two majors (Biochemistry and CS) and can only thank my parents for not pushing me in one direction, as I've never been happier as I am now developing software in the biotech space.

> Kate Chia, a 2015 graduate of New York University [with a degree in Psychology], is studying copywriting at Miami Ad School.

Not sure we should be looking to this person's story as a role model.

In my experience, asian parents tend to vastly underestimate the importance of genetics that predetermine a child's strengths and dispositions. Kids that are born with some combination of great working memory, processing speed, and abstract reasoning ability will do fine at math and science with an order of magnitude less effort than others. For these kids, being pushed to perfection in school can be beneficial. For others, the expectation that they need to do as well as the other kid on the SATs or in engineering or medicine or whatever often leads to the problems the author describes (suicidal ideation, depression, etc...). Sure, everyone should be encouraged to try their best but there needs to be more focus on cultivating everyone's unique strengths. Often times the people getting perfect SAT scores aren't studying any more than others (in my experience, less), yet asian parents will tend to believe that their kid's imperfect score is due merely to a lack of effort.

I was raised the oppossing camp. The effects: psyche to fix, loneliness and I still have to work in warehouses.

This phenomenon reminds me of what it's like to send PRs to a project, hoping it gets approved and merged ASAP... Then being given push rights, and suddenly finding yourself on the other side of the fence: hoping PRs are reviewed very rigorously and merged only after much scrutiny, to keep the code quality and maintainability up, scope low, etc.

In high school I asked my parents if they'd pay me for hood grades, like I'd seen from some of my friends.

Mh parents agreed they'd pay me my GPA, which converted from the Danish grade range and currency meant I could make from 0 to 2 dollars a year..

I actually quite liked that system.

What amazing parents. I know Asian parents well, and this is utterly extraordinary.

I had to tell my son something similar as he was terrified of getting detention at school. I told him if he got detention, I'd get him whatever toy he wanted.

Had to think for a bit about the sign or direction of "or lower". A and B are less than C in my everyday existence.

I'm gonna show this to my mom now. Hope she doesnt smack me.

That was a very good clickbait for me as a college student.

maybe it's just genetics then.

When I was a 3rd grader in South Korea I had the hardest time solving the simplest arithmetic problems. My teacher used to keep me after hours as a punishment until I was able to solve them. I think it was literally something like "2+3-3+2+2-100+39". You could say that I was pretty much in the opposite end of "exceptional" on any subject — was NEVER serious about school back then and completely ignorant of education (probably didn't even know what this meant).

To me school was a place where I went to hang out with friends for 7 to 8 hours, and yet, I don't remember my parents doing anything about it, not even a light discussion about my education. This went on for several years even during my early school years in the U.S. (my family immigrated in the middle of my 3rd grade year).

It was only when I started watching stargate and other scifi movies/tvshows that I got interested in science and technology, and thought "Hey, maybe I might try this thing called education so that I can do things that these guys are doing in the tv!", but realized that I was still extremely subpar at math and english (not to mention i even sucked at korean - got worse now, but i think i got a little bit better at english), and pretty much everything else, flunked algebra in high school and mostly Cs and rarely Bs on other subjects, and miraculously A in PE hahaha.

At the time I knew I had to do something about it, so I asked my parents for help, but sadly got close to none. They hired some tutors for me but it never worked out (you could really tell, the tutors were frustrated at how stupid I was). At some point I realized that I had to take this matter into my own hands - had to start all over from the fundamentals. At which point I actually started reading books, writing, memorizing, solving (math problems), I had to pretty much make up for what people usually learned in their primary school up to jr. high years. I eventually managed to do well in math, improved speaking/writing/reading in english a little bit, trained myself in scientific thinking, got into physics at a university and now I'm working as a software engineer. Buried in financial aid debt... :(

The thing about people though... is that we forget quite a lot of things we learned 10 years ago, but the most coolest thing nowadays is that as long as you have a way of getting information into your head, your education only ends at your last breath. Although when I was growing up I hardly saw my father, and my parents never intervened in regards to my education, they were there for moral support, life lessons, and the list goes on. I think that in the near future if I were to have children of my own, first and foremost I'd hope to see them growing up healthy, and that they'd find something they're interested in earlier in their lives, but I'm not sure if it will help to be strict with their education, we'll see.