I first came to Canada when I was 19 years old. At that time, there was a joke in Winnipeg that it was easy to distinguish “fresh-off-the-boat” (FOB) kids like me from Filipino children who grew up in the West. They said that if the kids are obedient and courteous, they are most likely to be FOB.
That’s true to an extent. Like other Asian children, we Filipino kids knew that we would be severely punished if we didn’t comply or use honorifics when addressing our elders. Moreover, we were told to study hard so we could get good jobs that would help us financially support our relatives.
But that’s where similarities with other Easterners generally end for Filipino families. That’s both a good and a bad thing.
Westernized Filipino Parenting: Pros and Cons
Like Westerners, Filipino students are most likely free to choose their hobbies and undergraduate degrees. Many (if not most) Filipino elders don’t emphasize academic achievement and STEM education as much as other Asians. Although Filipinos are told to do well in school, a good grade can mean earning mostly B’s to get into a decent university. They are generally unpunished for getting C’s or D’s. Even when the report cards are littered with such low albeit passing marks, many Filipino parents still allow their kids to have extra co-curricular activities on top of spending lots of time with their friends.
Western influences on Filipino parenting have produced good outcomes. Because of it, Filipino kids grow up to be open-minded towards different careers, lifestyles, and routes to success. Moreover, many of them feel that their parents love them for who they are regardless of their performance. This gives them the desire to give back to their elders for the latter’s sacrifices that enabled them to live comfortably. As a Filipino occupational therapist trained in Western thought, I can also attest that many children thrive when they’re free to explore their interests and when adults teach them various skills by using what kids find inherently motivating.
But when unbalanced, that liberal approach can induce the Golem effect: children perform poorly, or might do even worse, because they’re held to low standards. Moreover, many kids don’t have the maturity to know which hobby or undergraduate degree will give them the most fulfillment in the long run. So they just watch YouTube all day! They also end up with college majors that barely teach them any profitable skills. This is where Asian parenting is most needed.
In Defense of Eastern Parenting
It is very much ingrained in a lot of Eastern cultures to demand children to get A’s in all their subjects. Many Asian parents also make their kids practice playing musical instruments. Moreover, they tend to demand their teenagers to go into STEM careers for the prestige and high salaries.
Asian parenting sets high standards that are an expression of confidence that the child can accomplish great things. It can induce the Pygmalion effect, in which the child ends up performing at his best because he was told that he can and must be the best. Asian parenting can also give kids a vision of what their professions must be to serve their families and communities instead of wasting time and resources on college degrees that have a poor return of investment. That vision can discipline them into acquiring habits that increase the likelihood of success.
Such a parenting model is often vilified in Filipino TV shows. The truth is, a lot of young Filipinos will benefit from it to end our society’s “heritage of smallness”.
My Grandpa’s Piano
We pediatric therapists must therefore develop practice guidelines based on the strengths of this Eastern framework of child rearing like what we did with Western approaches. Doing so will equip us with more techniques on how to prepare children to navigate a more complex, fast-changing world. That way, kids don’t end up penniless while living under a bridge.
My grandfather and I greatly illustrate why Filipinos must learn from the Asian child rearing model. My Filipino great grandfather and my Filipino-Spanish great grandmother were quite Westernized in their parenting approach. They taught their kids good manners, gathered them for Bible study, and then gave them as much freedom as possible.
Their children turned out well. My grandfather (“Lolo”) ended up with three engineering degrees. He spent his professional life designing transformers. His parents also produced an architect, a dentist, a bank associate, and a dressmaker for upper class families. This was during the time wherein Philippine academic institutions had superior quality because the Philippines was still wealthier than many Asian countries.
Moreover, Lolo and his siblings were proficient at playing various musical instruments. Lolo said that they were never forced to learn any of them. They loved music, so they mostly taught themselves with occasional assistance from older relatives.
That approach never worked for me. When I was young, I asked Lolo to teach me how to play the piano. Because the child-directed approach was effective for him, he taught me by demonstrating to me how to play a few notes and leaving me to practice by myself. I tried to play the piano on my own at first. But I was distracted by my toys and lots of TV shows. In contrast, the Imperial Japanese Army shut the schools down and there was nothing else to do other than learn musical instruments at home when Lolo was a child. So after a few days of practicing by myself, I abandoned the piano to watch one anime after another.
I now wish that my grandfather forced me to play the piano. That skill could have opened a wide array of opportunities for me on top of the ones that I now have. Still, I’m grateful to my grandparents and my aunts for giving me a secure, relaxed home environment. That gave me the sanity to excel academically. I probably would’ve hated studying if they pressured me to come first in all my subjects. More importantly, growing up in a home where the Bible was taught gave me those fresh-off-the-boat manners instead of the rebelliousness that’s typically associated with children of overseas Filipino workers, which my parents were.
(Photo by Charlein Garcia)
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