Filipino parents.....Please explain?

In my Filipino household, the only three acceptable professions were doctor, lawyer and engineer. It's prestige orginates somewhere in Greek mythology, but Filipino culture is fixated on people holding advanced degrees and sophisticated titles. Filipino parents also enjoying bragging about their children to other Filipino parents. Titles of doctor, lawyer and engineer immediately conjure up images of success, fortune, intelligence and stability.

Not only do they tell you what to aim for but they also tell you how to go about doing it. For many it means live at home, study hard in school, get that degree, forget about having a dating life, start grad school without taking any breaks, find a safe and stable career, and then date and marry.

As you can see, multitasking is not encouraged. The point of having a career first before getting married is so you could pay for an extravagant Spanish style wedding with 500 guests and a live band so you won't have, God forbid, a redneck DJ or a VFW as a reception hall. You need to have that $30,000 wedding so they can show you off to their friends. Also in the Philippines, the guy pays!

I suppose they want to live their lives through their children.

From what i've gathered, I guess getting a medical degree there was pretty expensive, and thus since it is more affordable and less elitist (well we'd like to think so. but that's a different topic altgoether), than in the philippines, then they push their kids to pursue those careers because they feel they never got that choice.

Sure it is unfair. Kids should be able to pursue their interests. But the care of those parents comes at least from the right place. At least they're pushing their kids towards some goal. Now its just the child's job not to fall prey to their pressures, and since the parents love their kids enough to want the best for them, with enough encouragement from the children, eventually the parents will bend to the interests realizing it is their childrens' happiness that they were most motivated in pushing their children to in the first place.

lol.. you're reallly fixated on subic smith, now years after it is old news.. technically, we can no longer say subic smith was 'convicted' because it was overturned on appeal. rumor has it that filipina bargils in subic were very 'hospitable' to danny boy the week prior to the starex tryst with nicole. they found him handsome, charming, cute, a nice fun date, and 'performed' bedroom gymnastics better than most dull dates, something of a 'stud', with no prior indications of anger, disrespect or malice toward filipinas or other women. he was barfining two at a time, and spending money on drinks and girls like a sailor on leave, which he was.. if you were to take a survey of bargirls around subic, you will probably find they still have a good opinion of him.. imho, they would be a good character witness for dan smith. subic smith was 'scorned' by the leftist, pro-moaist, pro-china, anti-usa, anti-vfa, npa/gabriella funded media and lawyers, which is hardly the same as the 'voice and heart' of the philippines? Subic Smith was indeed scorned by 'romance tourists' and other players for being such a dumb fool to try lewd public van antics with an amatuer filipina gold digger, wanna be player.. who was not in his league. if Subic Smith stuck with seasoned bargirls, who are more his type, there never would have been a scandal for the npa/gabriella backed lawyers and media to hystronically exhagerate. imho, the most remarkable thing about the Subic Smith case, at this point, is that it is a good example why the UCMJ should encourage, and not outlaw, the ancient customs of barfines. the recent (bush ) barfine rule puts soldiers and sailors in harms way, and fuels propaganda for anti-usa, anti-vfa terrorist groups. the current barfine ban falsely presumes all bargirls are traficked, when few really are. reputable bars 'screen' or weed out the sort of women who would frame up, extort, infect, or otherwise harm men, especially us soldiers and sailors. the ban on all barfines should be revoked, and focus placed on shutting down notorious trafickers, and helping those few bargirls that are traficked and/or want to get out of the lifestyle.

Haha yeah totally. I'm not filipino myself, but I have a lot of filipino friends. I've heard all about their parents pressuring them to be doctors, nurses and it's not just filipino people. I think it's the whole asian culture itself. My parents also do that to me. But I guess it's just in their culture? They never had the chance to do something like this when they were our age and they never had the chance of being rich or making so much money. So they want to live through us and give us their dreams. That's my opinion of it :]

its your life do what you want