Everything I Want for You: Helicopter Parenting as the Mechanism to the American Dream

            Growing up the child of immigrants, I always felt a certain pressure to succeed: to make my parents get a return on their investment of leaving their families behind and coming to this country. This pressure was placed on me (and my brother, and my sister) because my parents thought it the best way for them to achieve their American Dream. Now that's a really big concept-- what the heck is an American Dream anyway? To my parents, I think it's the ability to give your children more than what you had-- whether or not they want that. Because of this, I saw clear parallels between my parents and the parents in Celeste Ng's novel Everything I Never Told You in the mechanisms they use to achieve the American Dream.

James Lee is very much like my father. From his childhood, it is clear that James’s version of the American Dream is to be seen simply as an American, while for my father it has been to blend in-- not make any waves. To achieve this Dream, therefore, James’s mechanism is to assimilate to American culture. But the hardships James quickly faces, such as Marilyn’s mother rejecting him on their wedding day simply because he is an Asian man, proves that James is unable to achieve his ideal American Dream and so James attempts to overcome this by living vicariously through his son Nathan. My father did this to my brother through activities like baseball and ensuring that he was getting good grades and staying out of "trouble". However, both James's and my father's constant pressure to achieve the American Dream through their sons ultimately fails, as “something between them already broken” (Ng, 134), thus halting the progress of their mechanisms.

The American Nightmare

Marilyn Lee, fittingly, is like my mother, as they see the American Dream as the ability to be and do whatever they want. However, the traditional gender roles that dictate that women must be mothers and wives before individuals keep both Marilyn and my mother from achieving their Dream. Because of this, they too turn to living vicariously through their children, specifically in their daughters. Just as the men do, this mechanism too is harmful because the “weight of everything tilting toward her [Lydia] was too much” (Ng, 154), which may have contributed to Lydia’s eventual death. Now, neither my sister nor I are dead, but the depression and anxiety that have built up in us over the years illustrates that the mechanisms our mother used inadvertently kept her from pursuing her American Dream.

I don't think there is any right mechanism to achieving the American Dream, although some (like being a white male) do make the Dream much more achievable. Regardless, living vicariously through others is not the way to do it. I don't resent my parents for attempting to do that with my siblings and I, but as this video shows that in many ways their "helicopter parenting" was detrimental to us, just as it was to the kids in Everything I Never Told You.