I just finished Bill Gates’ memoir Source Code: My Beginnings - 11 hours, 42 minutes - by a narrator trying too hard to sound like him imo. But I was pleasantly surprised that rather than self-aggrandizing his grit and genius, there was an honest examination of the factors that helped him realize his dreams.
Chief among them was the role played by his parents during his childhood and teenage years. He credits them in creating opportunities for him to build his social skills and giving him space to follow his own path, after some years of friction, which included sneaking out at night to program computers.
I remember reading Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011, a memoir in which she practiced the Chinese style rigid parenting she had grown up with on her rebellious daughter, including hours of violin practice and other grit-inducing habits.
Two very different models of parenting that I and other Indian-origin Lotus Leaders I am writing about grapple with, for sure.
As my Dutch Pakistani husband Omar and I raised our multicultural, multi-racial daughters in San Francisco, there were many reflective moments along the way. “Stop being an Asian parent,” was their refrain if we asked too much about grades or were unduly impressed with elite extracurricular accomplishments of their friends. As immigrant parents, maybe we had the unspoken expectation that they would excel at school and were guilty of the labels trap. And I can definitely admit that I have passed on Indian superstitions like the fear of the evil eye and the belief in the power of Hanuman to ensure safe travels.
At the same time, the freely shared opinions around our dinner table with no taboo topics at all, reflected the dinners in Vienna that Omar had grown up with. And we tried but did not push mastering excellence in dance, sports, or piano, allowing our girls to find their own passions in mock trial, journalism, and lab experiments instead.
I’m wondering if there is a middle path - what I think of as Eurasian parenting - in which kids are raised with the anchor of cultural expectations along with the freedom to make their own choices. Will the balance between transmitting values while allowing self-discovery equip them better to navigate our changing world?
