Without a voice, without a choice

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

Every night at dinner, Ethan, a junior, eats facing a wall plastered with index cards his mother has made of the colleges he will apply to, as well as a print-out of his SAT score sheet.

The purpose of the wall is not to celebrate his achievements, he says, but rather to shame him for his failures and motivate him to study harder. To his parents, SAT scores below 2350 are unacceptable, and grades below a 4.0 are inconceivable.

According to a March 21 article in The Washington Post, overbearing parents, like Ethan's, can hinder not only their children's academic life but limit their independence as well. "Many young adults entering college have the academic skills they will need to succeed but are somewhat lacking in life skills like self-reliance, sharing and conflict resolution," says Linda Walter, administrator of new-student orientation at Seton Hall University. The Washington Post notes that parents of children born after 1982 have become hyper-involved in their children's education as a result of an increasingly high-pressure academic climate. Faced with challenging schoolwork and a pressure to excel, many Blazers like Ethan are forced to balance their needs with those of their parents.

All work and no play

Even since the first grade, Ethan's parents expected him to be at the top of his class. At age six, Ethan spent his "free" time memorizing multiplication tables, and his parents frequently gave him pop quizzes to measure his progress. Every time he responded with the wrong digit, he was barraged with a litany of threats and laments that he would never succeed in the future. "Play was a foreign concept," he says. "They'd just tell me how stupid I was and compare me to all the other kids that knew [the multiplication table] already."

Growing up, Ethan was often hurt by his parents' harsh rebukes, but by middle school, he had grown used to the criticism. He assumed that all parents behaved this way, so he was surprised to hear his friends' parents congratulate their children for receiving Bs on their report cards.

Even when Ethan tried talking to his parents about their over-involvement in his education, he says they wouldn't listen. Rather, they told him to appreciate all the necessities they provided for him. "They think I should be happy," he says. "But grateful is not the same as happy. They're not even remotely similar."

Ethan believes his parents are "out of touch with how society works these days. They don't understand how parents function, and they think they are the best parents in the world." Last year, he says, his parents remembered every day report cards came out, but they forgot his birthday.

For a brighter future

According to the book, "If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World," by Dan Neuharth, 15 million adults in the U.S. were raised under "unhealthy" parental control. Of these adults, 90 percent admit to feeling forbidden as a child to question or disagree with their parents, and 96 percent felt trapped and hopeless. According to Neuharth, overbearing parents often criticize more than praise, give affection as a reward but withdraw it as punishment and inflict physical, sexual, verbal or emotional abuse.

Matt, a senior, also feels pressured to meet his parents' demands for perfect grades. They often prevent him from attending parties or participating in extracurricular activities, he says, because all they want him to do is "study, study, study." His parents let him attend only two to four parties each year, but they go out of their way to make sure he attends all the study sessions he is invited to.

According to Matt, his parents' strong emphasis on academics, at the expense of his social life, has rendered him reclusive and antisocial. Although he was gregarious as a child, his parents' restrictions - which began once he started high school - soon limited his abilities to develop and maintain friendships. Now, he says, he prefers to be alone most of the time.

Matt's experiences echo those of millions of children who grow up with controlling parents. According to Neuharth, many of these children have difficulty expressing anger, fear or sadness as adults. Only 14 percent felt encouraged by their parents to connect with others outside of the family, and 86 percent felt that pleasing their parents was more important than being themselves.

Still, Matt attributes his academic success to his parents' pressure. In his junior year, he took eight AP exams and scored 4s and 5s on all of them. He has maintained a 3.7 GPA throughout high school and has been accepted to some of the nation's top colleges. Although it has been difficult to live up to his parents' unreasonable expectations, he says he is thankful for all of their work to ensure that he has a bright future.

A worthless effort

By high school, Ethan realized that he could not win the constant battle with his parents over his grades, so he resorted to deception. Every time he receives his report card, he goes home and scans it into his computer, changes the Bs to As, and reprints it. He no longer feels guilty, he says, because lying about his grades to satisfy his parents lessens the pressure they put on him. "I change things because it doesn't hurt them in the end," he says. "Knowing that my parents aren't going to freak out lifts a lot of stress."

Still, Ethan's parents have never rewarded him for his achievements. Whenever he meets his parents' expectations, they simply raise their standards, he says, so they are never satisfied. "If you have perfect grades, they want perfect scores. If you have perfect scores, they want more extracurricular activities," he says. "There's always something new to complain about."

Because of his parents' involvement in his life, Ethan approaches school with a cynical mindset. In every class, he calculates the grade he needs on the next assignment to maintain an A, and he has lost his thirst to learn. "I don't care about learning anymore, I just want the grades," he says. "If your parents want you to be perfect when you really obviously are not, you can't waste energy by throwing yourself into one subject."

Similarly, Matt believes that his parents' overbearing attitude has prevented him from becoming self-reliant. He not only depends on them for food, money and rides, he says, but also relies on them to make important decisions about his future, including which college he will attend and what major he will study.

Although he has taken measures to obtain independence by looking for a job, Matt will not be allowed to work during college because his parents want him to focus on his studies. "They told me that I have to respect that they're paying [college tuition] for me, so now I have to balance respecting what they say and making my own decisions," he says.

Still, Ethan hopes that his parents' strict attitude will help him become more successful in the future. He is eager to leave for college next year, he says, where he hopes to finally experience the true meaning of independence - from his parents, especially. "I've given up on trying to make them happy, because they never will be - not with me at least," he says.