My wife is Taiwanese, so I see a bit into both cultures. Thankfully on this though, we're in agreement. Part of why we're in the US rather than Taiwan, and in the public school system is that there isn't that insane academic pressure here.
Time for another, longer anecdote. One of our friends from college, another Chinese heritage guy of Singapore & Taiwan descent, had a rather stressful upbringing with a lot of parent pressure. He's was an electrical engineer at Xilinx at the time, but he didn't have any say in it. His dad was an EE, and damn it every one of his kids was going to be an EE too. They all went through engineering school. The "Tiger Mom" book had just come out, and out friend was ranting about it with his cube mate at work, talking about how messed up it was that they (both Chinese) had to deal with this pressure, but most of the rest of the kids out there don't. How it's apparently so uncommon in America that this lady is getting speaking tours to explain what everyone in East Asian communities take for granted. How American kids won't put up with this shit.
What happened next I wouldn't believe, except I saw the later emails and pictures. My friend's cube mate, who was in his late 20's and he'd known for a couple of years, just gets up and walks out. They never see him in person again. He just ghosted the company, bought the cheapest plane ticket to anywhere, and started backpacking around the world. About six months later they got email replies from him in South East Asia, where he'd been living in a temple for a month to learn Yoga or something. Apparently he never wanted to be an engineer, hated engineering, had no idea what he really wanted to do, and outside of his job at Xilinx he just stayed at home, alone, depressed, and hating his life, but feeling obligated to keep it all up to make his parents proud.
When I heard this story (and saw his pictures from Thailand), I just felt sorry for the kid. And he was a kid, even if he was in his late 20's at the time. Because he never had a chance to figure out who he was, what he wanted, or to choose for himself. He did work it out in the end, but only after accumulating tons of student debt, setting up all sorts of expectations from his family, and wasting away most of his youth. Everything was setup for him, and he utterly lacked agency, like a child. Most of us spend our teens and early twenties trying new things and figuring out who we are. He didn't even get to start that until he was almost 30.
I do not want that for my kids. Money helps, but it not sufficient to make one happy. Far more important is how you treat and value yourself, your confidence and self-assurance, and the company you keep. I spend far more time worrying about whether my kids are fitting in at their new school, whether they're making friends or being bullied, or whether they got an invitation to that upcoming party their friends are talking about, than I do worrying over their math scores or standardized tests. And most of our peer group feel similarly.
