Quote:
Originally Posted by The Cloud  They are playing the game of "He is our son and he has to succeed to prove that we are good parents." They probably want him to succeed in order to validate their own egos, to feel as if everything they did in the past to help him along was the right thing to do and was not a waste of their time, because time can be wasted if the result being sought is not achieved. |
I assume you are not a parent yourself, otherwise you would first assume that they want their child to have the qualities that will serve him/her in the future, and they want that for the child because they want it for him/her, not for themselves. It's interesting that you first assume selfish motives.
Trust me, I never gave a crap about anyone's opinion of my parenting skills, but I still wanted my kids to have the tools to make a decent life for themselves. And that includes being able to do work that is unpleasant. Otherwise they'll turn out to be the common veal that's being raised nowadays.