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I wouldn't give parents too much grief about expectations as long as it's realistic expectations.
But as bpollen stated - it's better than not caring at all. And there are parents who don't give a crap about their kids education. Those are often the kids who don't live up to their potential because no one was around to encourage/guide them. Parents can overdo it for sure, but it's not too often you hear of a doctor/engineer or highly educated individual saying "my parents didn't give a crap about my education." Most of them have parents who had a high expectation.
As far as the high expectation for high income careers - that probably has more to do with parents wanting their kid to be financially secure. Which, nowadays is harder to achieve with low income but satisfying careers.
I think there are two different issues (1) school and (2) career path.
I have 3 kids - 8, 6 and almost 4. Will I accept them not doing well in school? No way. The fact is, if you are school age, you don't fully appreciate the "bigger picture" of a good education. For the majority of people, education equals more opportunity which equals more choices. If my children have the intellectual ability to make straight As then they better do it. According to my calculations, it will cost my children $35K-40K (per year) or more to attend University of Texas. Right now, it's about $26K per year.
That is a lot of money. We will not qualify for any financial aid. If they want to go to college, they better do their best in high school so that they get some scholarship to help with costs. If I am going to invest $120K, heck, they better do well.
And I say this with all sincerity, after they graduate from college, then whatever career path they choose - I will not judge them AS LONG AS they do NOT come back to us with their hands out.
It is my job as a parent to provide every opportunity for my children that I can. After that - good luck!
BTW, when I taught, I hated it when my students would use Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak or Michael Dell as reasons why it's OK to slack in school. I always used to reply - "Do you have a 160 IQ? Do you have an invention that will change the world? Did you get accepted into an elite college? NO? Then what do those people have to do with you?"
This post is perfect!
Here is what I'll add. I was very encouraging and supportive of academic achievement with my children from first grade on - and it has paid off.
When it came time to go to college, their habits paid off. During high school my children mostly received "A"s and an occasional "B" plus. They intentionally chose challenging courses, AP classes and chose activities that they both enjoyed and that would look good on their transcript.
The result? Well, I happen to have my youngest child, my daughter's, most recent result right next to me, in my desk. She earned $200,000 in merit aid alone.
She will graduate from a prestigious New England college debt free. This is a university that is well known around the country. No, make that the world.
She applied to our flag ship state university as a safety school. She did not get as much aid and we would have had to have helped out. We were not being snobby, but state schools are not generous with money. That is a well known fact. Working hard in HS pays off at the right elite private schools.
As to career, when you come from a family of white collar professionals and business owners, why on earth would you suddenly decide that you want to be a hairdresser or a mechanic?
We don't personally know any hairdressers or mechanics. People are influenced by others in their family and in their "place round". Those with whom their family associates.
We are not a family that is especially "good with our hands". We read a lot. We enjoy attending museums and plays. We attend lectures at local universities for pleasure. It's who we are.
I am glad that I am not the only one who is tired of hearing about Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. When you drop out of Harvard or Reed, remember you first need to be accepted.
There are certain schools that look good on your resume weather or not you have completed your degree.
Every parent wants the best for their kids. A problem can occur though if a child always gets A's. I want my kids to struggle to get a good grade. I want them to work for it. If after everything that they have done and they end up with a B or a C then I am fine with that. I would never be fine with an F or a D.
In todays world if a child gets an F or a D then they are doing very little. To explain, I have a son that is now in his first year of college. He did so so in school. He could have had all A's. What he would do is test well and end up with a C. He had figured out the game so to speak. He skated thru school. Some classes he did all the home work or what have you. I asked why he did not do both for all his classes. One time he tells me that he knows if he does either the home work or the test he will pass the class with at least a C. For classes he did not get he did all the homework or what have you to make sure he got at least a C
Another son would work his butt off and get A's and B's. He placed a lot of effort into what he was doing to maintain the grades that he earned.
Our youngest two do very well in school. My youngest son had 4 A's and 2 B+ for his current report card. Our daughter is still in elementary so has a different kind of grading system but still managed to get the top grade in her classes.
As far as parents wanting their kids to go into money making fields I can tell you what we have done.
We teach our kids it is all about choices. If they want the house on the hill they may not want to settle for a job as a janitor. If they want to drive a Ferrari then they need to have a way to make some money. I will have no problem with any of our kids choosing professions that pay little. They have heard me tell them over the years to choose the kind of life they want and then work toward building that kind of life.
A friend and former co-worker was told by her mom to go into Nursing. While she was taking classes she changed her major to film. Her mom was upset at the choice. She told her daughter that she would never find a paying job in that field. This friend ended up taking an internship program at a studio, made some contacts, and then went on to get a job working on a show. She has been there for the past four seasons and during the off seasons has managed to work on other film projects. She is currently writing scrips on her off time. Parents do not have all the answers. Sometimes, many times it works out for the kids. At some point a parent needs to let them follow their own dreams.
Hey don't knock someone who wants to be a janitor! Someone has to clean up after others. There's no shame in being a janitor! None at all. The world would be a horrific place without janitors, plumbers, electricians, welders, salters and plowers etc.
Every parent wants the best for their kids. A problem can occur though if a child always gets A's. I want my kids to struggle to get a good grade. I want them to work for it. If after everything that they have done and they end up with a B or a C then I am fine with that. I would never be fine with an F or a D.
In todays world if a child gets an F or a D then they are doing very little. To explain, I have a son that is now in his first year of college. He did so so in school. He could have had all A's. What he would do is test well and end up with a C. He had figured out the game so to speak. He skated thru school. Some classes he did all the home work or what have you. I asked why he did not do both for all his classes. One time he tells me that he knows if he does either the home work or the test he will pass the class with at least a C. For classes he did not get he did all the homework or what have you to make sure he got at least a C
Another son would work his butt off and get A's and B's. He placed a lot of effort into what he was doing to maintain the grades that he earned.
Our youngest two do very well in school. My youngest son had 4 A's and 2 B+ for his current report card. Our daughter is still in elementary so has a different kind of grading system but still managed to get the top grade in her classes.
As far as parents wanting their kids to go into money making fields I can tell you what we have done.
We teach our kids it is all about choices. If they want the house on the hill they may not want to settle for a job as a janitor. If they want to drive a Ferrari then they need to have a way to make some money. I will have no problem with any of our kids choosing professions that pay little. They have heard me tell them over the years to choose the kind of life they want and then work toward building that kind of life.
A friend and former co-worker was told by her mom to go into Nursing. While she was taking classes she changed her major to film. Her mom was upset at the choice. She told her daughter that she would never find a paying job in that field. This friend ended up taking an internship program at a studio, made some contacts, and then went on to get a job working on a show. She has been there for the past four seasons and during the off seasons has managed to work on other film projects. She is currently writing scrips on her off time. Parents do not have all the answers. Sometimes, many times it works out for the kids. At some point a parent needs to let them follow their own dreams.
I agree with following one's talents as well. There is an old saying about not putting square pegs into round holes.
The recent pressure to major in a STEM subject has many casualties. (Science Technology, Engineering, Medicine) - your example of the film major who was pushed into nursing by her mother, but resisted and is doing well in film, is one of the happier stories I have heard.
There was a recent post in Education from a young man who will graduate with a 2.0 average because his father insisted upon medicine as a profession.
In a way the student is lucky that he even made it to graduation.
I agree with this post.
However the OP was asking why parents push grades and college, white collar careers over blue collar. That's a whole other subject.
Is he failing though? If not, I wouldn't go too crazy wondering. Being a straight A student requires the intellectual capacity AND the personality (a certain kind of ambition, sometimes the drive to please authority figures, organization skills, etc). Not everybody has the specific personality needed to succeed at the tippy top of the high school food chain... NOR SHOULD THEY HAVE TO in order to have a good life. It's crazy I think that we are setting up a society that only wants to reward these very specific types of people with comfortable wages.
He's smart but the whole sitting in class after class, taking tests and handing in papers/homework thing while being president of 12 clubs while simultaneously being captain of a sports club thing is not for him. LOL. Maybe look into alternative high schools? What are his strengths? I would start looking for a setting they works with what he already does well and is interested in.
He would be failing if he wasnt getting tons of support from me and his teacher. He is just way too busy spending his intellectual abilities on his own interests to be able to squeeze in what he is supposed to be learning. I'm ok with this to some extent. But in 4th grade, there are so many building blocks he needs to learn.
He's Ina really good, but not competitive, private school. It's all about his own pace, really. And he can incorporate much of what he is interested in into his own work.
It's all about the parent's bragging rights and their own insecurities. It has nothing to do with the kids. They are just the victims of emotional and mental abuse.
Ironically Bill Gates and many other famously successful people were/are dropouts!
On your first sentence, you take a small number of parents and conflate it into most. Rest assured many parents are not that way, yet know the road to success is not built on apathy or ambivalence. Instead to keep kids on track, they must guide/push their kids in the right direction on a regular basis. Far too often kids are left to their own devices, and will falter along the way. It takes involved parents to get them back on track. Granted some kids are self starters, and nothing with hold them back. Still there are also lazy slackers who would take the path of least effort/work and text and play video games all day if allowed to.
In this highly competitive world, you must be a great student to get the limited number of positions in colleges. For example at Univ of Florida which is a decent but not prestigious medical school, out of the 3,304 people who applied for admission, only 383 (12%) were even granted an interview.
Of those 383 kids, only 133 were admitted out of over 3K applicants.
The average GPA of admitted students is 3.82
Therefore, if you allow your kid to slack off, have a senior slump, or just get average grades, they are not going to be admitted into any program of higher learning.
As to your 2nd comment, again you are trying to use the exception, and imply it is the rule. Most people with successful careers have gotten a higher education, whether that be engineers, lawyers, MD's, etc., etc., etc.
So while some very successful entrepreneurs have started in their garages with little to no higher education, rest assured they are the exception, not the rule.
The recent pressure to major in a STEM subject has many casualties. (Science Technology, Engineering, Medicine) - your example of the film major who was pushed into nursing by her mother, but resisted and is doing well in film, is one of the happier stories I have heard.
This is hardly new. In the 70's when I went to college, easily 90% of the pre-meds bombed out of the program. Everyone wanted to go to medical school because that was the sure-fire big pay then. My electrical engineering fall semester sophomore classes had about 100 students. It was whittled down to 40 in the spring semester. My junior year, it was down to 25. Less than 20 actually ended up with EE degrees. I was doing a double major in Computer Science. That was similar attrition.
I considered community college for a while, but here's the thing about that. There are SO MANY kids who go to community college just to kill time after high school and don't really want to be there. I took a class as an adult at a community college, and I was just appalled by the attitudes of the younger students. I went to an Ivy League school and the attitudes of the students were very different - far more focused and motivated. I fed off of that drive, even if it could sometimes be intimidating.
As for changing majors, we weren't expected to declare our majors until the end of our sophomore year. Those first two years were about exploring different options, knocking out core class requirements and just getting an education. I basically knew I would major in English Lit from the beginning, but I explored government, history and psychology as well.
Agreed. The attitude of fellow students is why I would NOT want my kids to attend community college with the hopes of transferring. It seems like high school, part 2. Sometimes it works out alright. But it seems like a lot of kids just...wither there. I'm sure mostly due to lack of motivation, but surely it also has to do with the quality of peer influence.
My first 2 years in a top tier private college were comprised of classes with 30 students max. Some were 6-12 students. Engaging and approachable faculty who were well-respected in their field. Interesting and challenging peers. I learned a lot about myself and my abilities. I was not cut out for Mega State U or community college. Not to mention I met my husband at college There's something to be said for being surrounded by high-achieving, intelligent young men and women
Agreed. The attitude of fellow students is why I would NOT want my kids to attend community college with the hopes of transferring. It seems like high school, part 2. Sometimes it works out alright. But it seems like a lot of kids just...wither there. I'm sure mostly due to lack of motivation, but surely it also has to do with the quality of peer influence.
My first 2 years in a top tier private college were comprised of classes with 30 students max. Some were 6-12 students. Engaging and approachable faculty who were well-respected in their field. Interesting and challenging peers. I learned a lot about myself and my abilities. I was not cut out for Mega State U or community college. Not to mention I met my husband at college There's something to be said for being surrounded by high-achieving, intelligent young men and women
I agree with you. I am not a fan of the so called "2-2" plan. Students don't get to develop the same relationships with faculty when they come in as juniors. While their peers are wrapping up their education, these transfers are just finding their way around. They are handicapped socially and academically.
I advocate that students attend the best liberal arts college or small private university that they can from the beginning.
People go into debt over a 30K vehicle, but heaven forbid they go into debt over education.
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There's something to be said for being surrounded by high-achieving, intelligent young men and women 
