Memories of Malaya - 8. Why do Chinese parents pressure their children to be doctors?
My father continues his series on Memories of Malaya with a response to my post about Doctors in the Family.
He writes:
Why do Chinese parents pressure their children to be doctors? The usual quick answer is that doctors make money and therefore that is the attraction. Looking more deeply into the question this may not be the only answer and is certainly not the most important answer. My remarks here on why parents pressure their children to be doctors are limited to my observations in Malaysia during the period starting about 1940s to the present day.
Most children who became doctors in the forties usually come from homes whose fathers were already doctors or members of the professional class like lawyers or engineers. So these children had come from reasonably comfortable homes and from their own experience these children knew that if they wanted to continue to have a comfortable life they should join one of the professions.
They would have seen and felt the respect given to their fathers as doctors and they also want to have that respect. Like most young people these children have a large dose of idealism too; they saw doctors doing good work with the sick and if the patients are poor, often, the doctors waived their fees and the cost of medication. Practising medicine had not become a business like the big private hospitals you have in the present day where you have to pay a deposit before you get to be seen by a doctor.
There are also children that come from poor homes who are idealistic and would want to serve the sick and who also want to be doctors but the medical course lasts for 6 to 7 years and their families could not wait for them for such a long time to contribute to the upkeep of the family. They could become lawyers or engineers but Malaysia in the forties did not have law or engineering schools which meant they had to go overseas and this the family could not afford; they would have to get a scholarship. A few did for engineering but there were no scholarships for a law degree.
All this is not to say that there was no father, who did not say to his son at the dinner table “Son/Daughter, you must study hard to become a doctor.” But by and large I believe a lot of people who became doctors have a large dose of idealism and humanity in them. The Chinese and their community have a great deal of respect for doctors because they know doctors have gone through a rigorous learning process and the Chinese instinctively respect learning and scholarship and also on the whole doctors have conducted themselves well in their community thereby earning its respect. Doctors, in my experience, are generally kindly, soft spoken, gentle and compassionate all qualities that appeal to the young idealistic and usually shy school boy. So there is little need for a father to exert a great deal of pressure to direct his son to read medicine if he is scholatiscally able.
Another reason for fathers wanting their children to take up medicine is this: in the history of the Chinese, the Chinese had always suffered the ravages and disasters from wars, civil wars and other local fighting from neighbouring warlords famines and floods. Any of these could occur at any time in the forties and before, especially, in China. So in the psyche of Chinese fathers their children must be able to move at short notice whenever any of these occurred, even from one part of the country to another in a vast country like China, or to move to another country and not only to move but to be able to earn a living in the new country. A doctor will often be accepted as an immigrant because he will not be a financial burden to the new country. (Actually being a scientist has this advantage too; Chinese children are also encouraged by their parents to take up science.) The recent generations are more relaxed about having to be prepared to suddenly drop everything and emigrate and then to earn a living. As a sign of this I have come across names of Chinese students from Singapore in the class lists of Greats in Oxford. It is well and good to want to do medicine as a safety net but it is also necessary to be able to pass the examinations. This requires concentration of the mind, attention to details and other intellectual abilities. The Chinese students appear to have enough of these mental requisites.
The new Chinese children now want to be rich in the quickest possible time when they grow up and being doctors do not bring in wealth quickly enough so they are going into studies in business, finance, banking, share brokering and such related subjects. Presently they can find employment in these sectors in their new country and in their own.
I have to declare my connection with the doctor profession. I am not a doctor but my Father and one of my siblings were, and my son and the wife of another sibling are. My wife’s Father was also a doctor and three of her siblings became doctors. My wife is the only one who is not and she is therefore regarded as a bit of a duffer by her family because she did not take a medical course but she did extremely well when she took up English literature instead. She is therefore not a duffer; she simply does not like to deal with blood and nasty sores and wounds and see people in pain.
Photo: thanks to laburbuja on flickr.com (CCL)
memmlya
- Posted on
Wed, April 23rd, 2008 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
- 7 responses
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April 24th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Nothing said that I would fundamentally disagree.
Quote:
..the medical course lasts for 6 to 7 years..
In my time, only local medical school was in Singapore, prospective medical
students in sixth-form science were among the very brightest, they - the majority - would get good-enough exam results at matriculation called Higher School Certificate enabling direct entry into 2nd year of 6-year MBBS course thus shortening course to five years absent any repeat year.
Quote:
The new Chinese children now want to be rich in the quickest possible time when they grow up and being doctors do not bring in wealth quickly enough so they are going into studies in business, finance, banking, share brokering and such related subjects.
A contemporary of mine trained as an engineer in UK but turned to calling or
vocation of stockbroker for a more lucrative reward, I imagine.
April 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
So we have three fundamental considerations to drive one’s ambition to become a medical doctor: social respect/status, wealth, and compassion, in no particular order, at least in the early decades covered by YM’s dad. While the first and second usually come together, even including ill-gotten gains, the third seems like a character trait that is independent of the first two. The article also alludes to the gradual erosion of the third in the grand scheme of things today to the extent that wealth has assumed the pole position as the over-riding impetus to becoming a medical doctor.
I do not intend to dwell on what has been eloguently covered in the article plus the earlier comments, but would like to seek the societal view of another profession, teaching, rather, its plight. The vicious cycle of the ambition - medical profession - wealth spiral has relegated the teaching profession to such a lowly regard that it has become the career of last resort instead of being both a noble and ennobling profession.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Say Lee - good point: teachers in the UK are particularly hard done by these days
Yeeton - yes, stockbroking is definitely lucrative. But “vocation”? I’m not sure that one can be “called” to be a stockbroker as one might be “called” to enter the church, say…
April 28th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Compact Oxford defines ‘vocation’ as
1. a person’s employment or main occupation, especially one requiring dedication
2. a trade or profession
— ORIGIN Latin, from vocare ‘to call’.
YM, in view of above, how else would I describe my buddy’s full-time occupation of stockbroker [very dedicated to it!] that makes or has made him loadsamoney. His old classmate who came to UK on an identical scholarship for similar study retired as Chief Engineer of a large commercial outfit but probably earning [or retiring on] nowhere quite as much, in short, NOT as well-off as his former work-colleague who had the foresight to change his career for the better in terms of remuneration ecetera.
*Stockbroking
Guy came from a very poor family that I know, with the usual privations associated therewith and I can fully understand the psychology or mentality of wealth acquisition as his overriding or compelling aim in life -as seems to be the case.
[BTW, I understand there are exams that a prospective stockbroker could take much like one would take exams to enter one of the professions].
Interesting point, SL, I’ll see if an ex-teacher friend has a view on what you say.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Yeow Khean [characterised by modesty], an emeritus professor at a
major Australian university, writes:
I consider myself a lowly university teacher and research scientist,
modestly rewarded, accorded little status in a country where academics are
dismissed as largely irrelevant. I had the grades in my A-levels to do
anything I wanted, but I chose to be an engineer-scientist, and eventually
ended up an academic. I would not decide otherwise if the clock were to be
wound back. It has been a satisfying profession for me, making both
fundamental and applied discoveries, participating in systems design, and
producing doctoral graduates who have gone on to achieve so well that a good
number have surpassed me. They are my pride and joy. I now know how some
of dedicated teachers in the VI must have felt as they watched their old
students become leaders in their chosen fields.
Medicine and Law are also noble professions. But like the commentator, I
wish that school teaching had retained the status it once had. It too is a
noble profession, and in many ways a higher calling than all others, similar
in dedicated service as those who answer the call of the clergy.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Yes, a personal sense of achievement for having helped deliver social good is what drives many in the teaching profession despite the lowly regard that it wields and the “modest” financial reward that it generates.
I, for one, would like to salute these “engineers of the soul” who persevere thereby contributing to the mental upliftment of the society.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Well said, Say Lee. As well a teachers, we need to recognise the valuable work that nurses do too. Their role is generally less prestigious than that of doctors but what they do is very important.