Understanding the mindset of Asian parents: the role of rituals

I had a little exchange with one of my readers Davin recently - Davin is currently at university and he told me that his mother made him promise her that he would not date anyone or get involved in any kind of romantic relationship until he has graduated. Whilst I found her attitude laughable, it was all too familiar for that was the kind of thing that my parents would say as well. So why are our Asian parents so paranoid about us dating whilst we're still students then?

I have talked about this before - it's called the generation gap. In Davin's case, his parents are clearly very concerned that he studies hard and graduates with good results. Let's be fair, this is a valid concern as it is a big investment for them in his education. However, why are they so fixated on the issue of dating and sex as the primary distraction when there are a whole range of other potential distractions for Davin at university? Computer games is one of the main distractions that many students face - we're talking about anything from Grand Theft Auto series to the World of Warcraft to the Battlefield series. These games are highly enjoyable and addictive and it has a far greater potential to keep a student like Davin away from his studies once he is hooked on one of these games.

No dating for Davin until he graduates...

In contrast, if Davin did get himself a sensible girlfriend who cares about him, she would be the one who would be telling Davin to study hard, helping him prepare for exams and being an important source of emotional support when he is very stressed out during exam time. So why is Davin's parents assuming the very worst of any potential relationship - why are they assuming that any kind of girlfriend would tempt Davin into a hedonistic world of sexual pleasure, distracting him from his studies? Honestly, like how many of you have had girlfriends or boyfriends who would say to you, "stop studying, come and make love to me again... let's fuck!" Reality check, people.

Let me be frank on the issue of sex here, allow me speak as a sexually active adult who has been around the block and back rather than a squeamish Asian parent. There's good sex and bad sex: trying to find good sex is hard work, it depends on having a connection and sexual chemistry with the person(s) you're having sex with, it so dependent on that mutual attraction. Nobody becomes an expert at sex and fucks like a pornstar just because they have watched some porn on the internet, it's like trying to play the guitar after you've watched some guitarists at a concert. Most university students are inexperienced to say the least in the sexual department and their first sexual encounters are likely to be awkward, to put it nicely. By that token, the amount of pleasure these students get out of sex is actually grossly over exaggerated by their parents. Let's get real, please.

What are the pitfalls of being in a relationship as a student?

Furthermore, we live in an age where young men like Davin have access to so much free porn on the internet. Take American porn label Brazzers or French porn label Marc Dorcel for example: they present a world where beautiful porn stars with perfect bodies having stunningly good sex - they know how to make sex look good, the same way a great restaurant knows how to make food look so delicious. Young men who have seen porn like that would have had their expectations raised pretty high in the sex department now that they know how the professionals do it and the gulf between what they can actually get and the high standards set by the pros is pretty darn huge - and these young men know that. So Asian parents, time for a reality check please. Your son is going to spend a few minutes a day wanking to quality porn and then get back to their studies, rather than spend a few hours a day fucking because your son is not a pornstar. He is a geeky Asian student. He is not Johnny Sins or Peter North.

But why are Asian parents so paranoid and insistent on trying to keep their children away from sex and relationships even when they are at university then? To understand this mindset, we have to go back in history for this is nothing new and something that humans have been doing for centuries. In pre-Columbian Aztec culture (from central America), human (and animal) sacrifices were regularly made to appease their gods and deities - whilst the concept of sacrificing a human may seen absolutely horrific to us in this day and age, the Aztecs obediently offered up humans for sacrifice because they believed in the concept of a god who would protect them from harsh weather, would guarantee the next harvest, would protect them from diseases and enemy attacks etc if they offered up that sacrifice. They believed that such rituals enabled them to influence the outcome of things which were important to them.

Why did the Aztecs believe in offering animal and human sacrifices?

Let's pick one of those and delve a little deeper: let's talk about the harvest. Now it was not that the Aztec farmers lacked all this knowledge - they had a very sophisticated society during the between the 14th and 16th century prior to contact with the Europeans. Nonetheless, there are still things that even your most high-tech farmer today cannot control - such as extreme weather events (floods, tornadoes, cold snaps producing sharp frosts before the harvest, long periods of droughts, hailstorms etc). There's really little a modern farmer can do to protect his crops against typhoon Haiyan which ripped through the Philippines this week, causing widespread destruction and over 10,000 deaths. It is just heartbreaking to see some of the news reports on typhoon Haiyan.

Now here's the bitter truth: there's little us humans can do to protect ourselves against unexpected, unpredictable catastrophes in life. Often it is a matter of luck, sheer bad luck. We are powerless, we are helpless - there's little we can do in the face of fate. Let me give you an example of how humans deal with this. My sister had a nasty bout of dengue fever when she was in her final year at university and this was in the run up to her final exams. It was just her bad luck to have been bitten by an aedes mosquito in that period which gave her dengue fever. No amount of hard work, discipline, revision schedules or "no dating" mandates by my parents could undo or compensate for that kind of disruption that bout of dengue fever caused.

I remember being at my sister's bedside in hospital, seeing that look of desperation and helplessness on my parents' face as they looked at their daughter, lying there in that hospital bed, looking so ill. The instinct of a parent is to protect one's child and my parents were willing to do anything, try anything at that point to make my sister get well as soon as possible, to minimize the disruption to her studies and exams. They then started trying anything and everything anyone would suggest to them from prayer to Chinese herbs to good luck charms. Did any of those things they turned to in desperation make any difference? No, thankfully my sister was in very good hands in a Singaporean hospital and the doctors knew exactly what medicines to give her to make her better. Nonetheless, my parents did genuinely feel that they were doing something constructive in trying all these quite random things to make her better. It did go some way to relieve them of this sense of helplessness as a parents of a very sick child.

Have you ever felt totally powerless and helpless?

By the same token, the Aztecs were equally worried about things they had no control over - such as the weather. Hence in this context, these human sacrifices represented rituals that these helpless people did to give themselves the impression that they were doing something constructive to take control of their destiny. Okay, sacrificing a virgin or child seems a bit extreme, surely burning some joss sticks or sacrificing some fruits may have achieved the same psychological effect, but the mindset is the same. The more people perform these rituals, the more they believe it works. Let me give you another example - this time from Northern Thailand. And thankfully, this time it doesn't involve the sacrifice of any human beings - just singing and dancing.

There is a long tradition of doing "rain making rituals" in drought prone regions of north, northeast and central Thailand - these involve processions, dances, songs and prayers specifically to 'ask' for rain. Do any of these rituals (such as doing a "rain dance") actually have any meteorological effects? No, but what is the alternative then? For the farmer to just sit there, feeling totally powerless and helpless, staring at the sky wondering when the next rains will come to water his crops? These rituals do serve a purpose, not to bring rains per se, but to give the farming community a healthy distraction from their problems and the songs and dances often lift their spirits. Most of all, they save the farmers from dejection and hopelessness: surely that is a good thing even if their rituals are completely futile when it comes to actually having any real effect on the weather.

Even in our modern life, you can see how these elements of superstition is still practiced around the world. People do all kinds of little rituals such as praying to try to influence the outcomes of things in life they normally don't have much control over. I am a big fan of the reality TV show The Amazing Race and it is amazing how many teams resort to prayer as a last resort when they are struggling with a difficult task. They would say out aloud, "oh please god help me do this/find this/finish this/solve this etc" as if their prayers would actually be answered.

Would such a prayer actually help them solve the task at hand? Actually, like the Thai rain making rituals, they do have a positive effect - they calm the contestant down by giving him/her something to do (ie. pray) instead of giving in to blind panic or hopelessness. Thus yes, they often do help the contestant complete the task at hand.

However, in the case of Davin's parents, here's the situation: Davin is at an American university probably studying something so advanced and complex his parents have no understanding of. My parents would certainly have understood none of my syllabus at university - for most of us, our parents are simply not in a position to be able to help us whilst we're at university. (Okay, if you're one of the rare people whose parents actually can, then this does not apply to you.) But it doesn't stop our parents from caring about our studies and wishing to help, so what do they do? Some give us money, some give us moral support, others resort to rituals to try to influence the outcome of our studies. Now let's look at the three examples of rituals I had listed previously and see what they have in common.

1. The Aztecs offering human and animal sacrifices
2. The Thais and their elaborate rain making rituals
3. The Amazing Race contestants praying when they are desperate

Can our rituals change our luck and help us control our destiny?

One common theme that these three have in common is that in all three cases, the people involved treat the ritual as if it is a solution to their problems, even if it does oversimplify the situation. "Oh there is a drought, if the rains don't come in the next few days, the crops will fail, the village will starve. Oh no, what do we do? I know, we'll do this traditional rain dance and sing this Thai rain song, then everything will be alright." There is an element naivety involved in these rituals, but us humans gladly suspend our disbelief and believe in the potency of our rituals.

Now in Davin's mother's case, she is oversimplifying the challenges Davin is facing. He is halfway around the world, doing an expensive and difficult degree - she doesn't want him to fail and there are so many obstacles that he faces. Even if he falls ill, she cannot sit by his bedside and take care of him: she is powerless, she is helpless. She cares so much for her beloved son, she wants to help, but that's absolutely NOTHING she can do to influence the situation. What does she do? She creates a problem that doesn't exist: she imagines that her son may be distracted by a wicked girlfriend who will lead him astray, make him indulge in so much unsafe sex that he will totally lose his focus on his studies. In her mind, she paints a vivid picture of this wicked girlfriend - now she has a mission to save her son from this wicked girlfriend and she offers a solution to a problem that doesn't exist anywhere else but in her own head. She makes her son promise her that he will not date anyone until he graduates - Davin doesn't want to displease his mother, so he agrees. This makes her very happy, of course.

Davin's mother has created an imaginary enemy in her head.

Thus she has sacrificed his love life the same way the Aztecs have sacrificed a child to please their gods - the mindset behind the ritual is pretty much the same even if those sacrifices are about five centuries apart. She realizes that denying her son the pleasure and privilege of having such relationships is a sacrifice and like the Aztecs, she believes that the bigger the sacrifice, the greater the reward.

At this stage, she is feeling pretty smug and pleased with herself having saved her son from an imaginary enemy that doesn't exist. But here's the problem: what does Davin get out of this? Nothing. After all, there are still plenty of other distractions that could get in the way of his degree (such as computer games, for example), yet his mother has simplified the situation to the point where she has chosen to ignore all other factors and focus on just one issue. She may feel more calm and confident about Davin's education - but really, has she done anything to help Davin's studies? If anything, her lack of faith in his ability to manage his time and focus on the task at hand is quite insulting - after all, she is not trusting him to handle the matter like an adult and take responsibility for his choices. No, she is treating him like a child, "mummy forbids you from doing this and that." Her heart may be in the right place (no one is doubting her love for her son) but her parenting methods are terrible. Instead of relying on logic and reason, she defaults to rituals. Oh dear. And this is Singapore in this modern age of the internet?!

Science vs superstition

The Aztecs were an ancient civilization who did not have the benefit of modern science. The Thai farmers weren't very educated and hence believed in superstition instead of science when it came to rainfall patterns. As for the Amazing Race contestants who resorted to praying, they usually only did so when they were utterly desperate and under a lot of pressure. However, if you have the luxury of both modern science and the serenity of mind to consider the issue calmly, surely one could come up with a better solution than a 'ritual'? Maybe Davin's mother isn't that educated, maybe she wasn't that rational when she came up with that idea - but then again, my parents would have come up with the same stupid rituals as well, as would thousands of other Singaporean parents.

Time for a reality check: what are the main distractions that a Singaporean student studying abroad would face? Speaking from experience, I would say that the biggest challenge is that of time management. You have so many things you have to do on top of your studies: you need to cook your own meals, clean your own room, do your own laundry, sometimes you may have part time jobs to get some work experience and you have a social life as well. You need to learn to become very good at managing your time very quickly, to make sure you get everything that needs to be done on time and efficiently. So it's not a sex-hungry girlfriend "stop studying, I'm so horny, I want to fuck now!" who is going to drag your beloved son away from his studies, hell no. It's that pile of dirty dishes in the sink or the fact that you have not done any laundry for three weeks and have run out of clean clothes - it is the mundane, boring domestic chores like that which were the main source of distractions for me when I was trying to get work done!

Domestic chores can take a lot of time. 

It's not a question of being squeamish about sex and relationships - this is about Singaporean parents lapsing into this 'ritual' mindset which simplifies the situation by creating a boogeyman and a corresponding ritual to deal with the boogeyman. The Asian parent then take great joy in indulging in this ritual of offering a solution to an imaginary problem by saving their children from an enemy that doesn't exist. What is the alternative then? Accept that life is full of random crap and we're actually quite powerless in this journey through life? What do you do to deal with this potential random nature of life that we are hopeless to control? Especially for you parents out there, do you accept that you have way less influence than you think on your child's life and there are just things you have no control over?

What do you think? Do leave me a comment below, thanks for reading.

Do you try to influence your luck?