Do Parents Put Too Much Pressure on Students?

Even Tiger Moms seem to think they’re pressuring their kids too much.

That is one possible reading of a new Pew Research Center global survey of parents’ attitudes to the pressured placed on students.

The survey, conducted March 18 to May 15 by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, found that China was the only one of 21 countries or territories where a majority believes parents put too much pressure on students to do well in school. In China, 68 percent of adults think parents pressure students too much, and just 11 percent think they don’t push them hard enough.

On the other side of the spectrum is the United States, where more than 6 in 10 Americans say parents do not put enough pressure on their children.

It’s hard to know what to make of these attitudes. The countries where people are most likely to say students are pressured too much do have reputations for being pressure-cookers for students (China, Pakistan, India). And the United States has repeatedly disappointed on international testing.

Does that mean surveyed attitudes are correct? If they are, why aren’t they affecting behavior?

Job Insecurity Remains High

For the last couple of years, the problem plaguing the job market was that companies have been in a holding pattern: Companies weren’t laying off workers in high numbers. But if you were already laid off, finding a company willing to expand was impossible.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Even so, workers still employed remain anxious about their job security, according to new survey data from Gallup.

Dollars to doughnuts.

A USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted in mid-August, based on a survey of 489 adults employed full or part time, found that 30 percent said they were worried about being laid off, similar to the 31 percent who answered this way in August 2009.

The survey also found that workers were concerned that their hours, wages and benefits would be cut back. Benefit cuts were the most common worry, with 44 percent of workers surveyed saying they thought benefits might be on the chopping block.

Lower-income workers were especially likely to be concerned about their job security:

As you can see, workers in households earning less than $50,000 annually were about twice as likely as their counterparts in households making at least $75,000 to be concerned about layoffs, shorter workweeks and off-shoring.

Maybe the anxiety is unfounded, and companies are not planning layoffs at any increased pace. But such worries can become self-fulfilling if workers start cutting back in preparation for potential job losses. If they cut back their spending, companies don’t sell as much and then starting paring down their own staffs.