This thread is based on what I’ve learned about Nigerian culture from watching Bob Hearts Abishola. DISCLAIMER THE FIRST: Yes, I know that BHA is fiction, and that Nigeria’s cultural quirks are played for laughs, but I’m sure there’s a kernel of truth in this. DISCLAIMER THE SECOND: I’m sure this idea extends beyond families in just Nigeria. Hell, I’m sure many white-bread American families are like this. But the USA doesn’t have a culture-wide push to make children high-achievers.
With all that out of the way: One of the Nigerian characters in BHA said something to the effect of, “There are only three career paths for a Nigerian child: doctor, lawyer, and engineer.” That’s all well and good, but the entire population of Nigeria does not consist solely of doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Someone has to make the sandwiches. Someone has to provide speech therapy. Someone has to shovel the pig shit. And so on.
So if you’re a Nigerian and you become a bus driver, a dishwahser, an accountant, whatever, are you for the rest of your life being a disappointment to your family?
This thread is in no way meant to denigrate Nigerian culture, or any other cutlure. I’m just trying to understand how this pans out in real life.
While I have no specialized knowlege about Nigeria, that sounds like the sort of statement that is likely to be true of upper-middle-class Nigerians in particular. (And upper-middle-class people, the world over, tend to overestimate the degree that that their own values and mores are typical of their culture. Super-rich people do not do this as much, because no matter how much of a bubble they live in, it is usually obvious that they are outside of the norm. But if you are an upper-middle-class professional, it is easy to find yourself part of a big social circle populated with other upper-middle-class professionals and fool yourself into thinking most people live the way you do, or at least most of the people who count.)
Consider Leonard Roy Frank. Jewish family, graduated from the Wharton School of Business, had a cutting-edge career in the business and investment world. Got interested in his cultural roots right around the time there were layoffs, and when he was cut in one of the rounds thereof, since he had saved a bunch of money and could coast, decided to do a deep dive into Judaic observances and readings and values.
Parents threw a hissy fit when they saw him with an orthodox beard and had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Cuz he’d obviously fallen mentally ill if he was no longer pushing his resume across hiring managers’ desks, you know? Got a series of insulin shock and electroshock procedures.
Made his subsequent career as a leading activist in the psychiatric rights community.
From what I’ve generally noticed, most parents/families just accept it. They may grimace, they may make some cutting remarks, but they won’t generally ostracize or punish the underachieving sibling for not becoming the doctor/engineer/accountant. 90% of the time, the response seems to be just resigned, unhappy acceptance. Or they may even embrace it as time goes on when they see what a good musician, painter or writer their son/daughter has become.
I’ve rarely seen families that truly pushed - as in, seriously, threat-of-consequences - pushed their kid to be a surgeon or engineer. It was more usually like passive-aggressive hinting, cajoling, “Dad and Mom will be happy if you _______ and disappointed if you don’t” clucking.
And this is pretty universal in many different cultures (especially in the cases of people one or two generations up from lower classes), where parents will not want their children to “coast” or “take it eas(ier)” because they see instilling the value of always striving for more as the way to ensure you don’t fall behind and/or don’t become an entitled ass – partly out of memory of how hard it was to get up the ladder the first time around and out of awareness of how easy is it to fall harder and faster than you expect.
The more general notion that your own social level is “the norm” cuts accross cultures and classes until you get to the level of the true elites (who, mind you, may still believe their way of thinking/acting is the “right” one, but they know it’s not the majority’s)
The difference between upper middle class people and the super rich (or even just regular rich) is that the rich largely don’t have to care how their children choose to earn a living.
Upper middle class people in my experience tend to be fairly homogenous. We all tend to go to the same schools, work in the same professions, live in the same communities, and have the same interests and hobbies.
My wife thinks people in our town are “standoffish”. Thinking about it now, I don’t think they are. I think it’s just we just can’t be bothered to have the same dumb conversation with a total stranger in our socioeconomic class because we already know the answer to 90% of the questions.
That’s what the doctor on the new show “Dr. Down Below” said; she was born in Nigeria and emigrated.
Living in an area where a huge percentage of physicians are of South Asian descent, I have long wondered what happens when these families have a child who is mentally handicapped, or in any case does not wish to toe this line.
I had never heard of him (1932-2015), so I’ll probably pursue this rabbit hole later on.
I do know that involuntary commitment was not uncommon of people, especially men, were even suspected of being gay. Abusive wealthy men whose wives were threatening to leave could also do this if they made a few phone calls and greased some palms.
I am 99% sure that this is not so much Nigerian culture as the culture of Nigerians *who have emigrated to the US. As far as I can tell , it applies to many immigrant cultures and my suspicion is that it has to do with who emigrates to the US from those countries. It’s a little exaggerated - there are more than just those three jobs that are acceptable but all the acceptable ones require college and jobs like police officer , sanitation worker , bus driver are unacceptable. And of course " back home" someone has to be the police officers , bus drivers, sanitation workers - but the thing is, the social class that fills those jobs “back home” tends not to emigrate to the US.
* I worked in a government social work type job with a lot of Nigerian immigrants. Social work OK, accounting OK. Doesn’t need college- no good.
I knew one of those. She was the daughter of a man whose last name was the brand name on a lot of shops’ drill presses, radial arm saws, band saws, table saws, lathes, etc. Man died, she inherited, her asshole husband conspired with one of the nephews and a doctor they knew, and she ended up on a locked ward with her male relatives in control of the assets.
Encanto is a pretty good discussion of this. I’ve taught so many immigrant families from all over that had that same dynamic: the pressure on the kids is based on the tremendous sacrifices the family made to get as far as they have, and often the trauma of the older generation is not resolved: they want their kids to be wildly successful (or, in Encanto, magically gifted), because they believe on a really deep level that wild, over the top success is really the only way to keep the family safe, and that total disaster is always closer than it appears. The power of the movie because it shows that this sort of pressure is all entangled with deep love–it’s not about pride or greed or status.
In my experience, most families treat the “less successful” child much like they treated Mirabelle: they try to be cool and accepting, but at the same time, the child ends up somewhat alienated and denied real adult status or full membership in the family. And often that status quo holds indefinitely.
In my family, my brother and I were strongly pushed towards physical achievement. “American Sports” with great accolades, revord setting, and “gladiator” status snd its awards/rewards. My brother was stunted after his masculine glory and middle age and went to prison for a teen girl and pain killers. Glory Days.
I went the opposite way, and pursued my intellect into madness, and bipolar schizoaffective autism.
I’d say that it’s very much the same sort of begrudging acceptance that happens when people have kids late or don’t have them at all. They’re disappointed, but there aren’t any consequences either.
I find that in US white middle class society, the “achievement” is typically to get a professional white collar job of some kind, OR get a job that makes a living in something you’re really passionate about. If someone’s really intent on being an artist and they can swing a living doing it, most middle class families respect that. Or getting some sort of reasonably successful job in the corporate world, academia, or government is also looked upon favorably.
It’s only when people do some combination of not making a career out of their passions or don’t manage to get a job commensurate with their education, that the disapproval and disappointment sets in. Going to college and ending up doing something other than working a professional salaried job is seen as failure, and so is doing something like working at a coffee shop and being a half-assed musician at night.
Generally the “doctor, lawyer, or engineer” demands are typically either first generation immigrant families from developing countries, or families where the kids are the first generation to go to college. And @MandaJo is spot on- there always an element of family and community pressure because of the sacrifices and efforts of everyone else involved- they’re in effect, representing the community and are expected to excel.