Struggle for half a life, the second generation to zero: the defective product of the middle-class chicken baby

Letsight

2024-05-09 09:00Published in Guangdong

Recently, a Hong Kong movie has attracted much attention, some people say that it is a "painful diary" about the growth of teenagers, and some people say that it is a "healing diary" for adults.

But it's more like a trial that ruthlessly dissects the suffocating side of middle-class schooling.

"Youth Diary" was formerly known as "Suicide Note", and the film scored 8.4 points on Douban and was shortlisted for 12 awards at the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards.

This education-themed movie tears the fig leaf of middle-class family education, and also exposes how middle-class families "kill" their children step by step.

01

Who killed the teenager

The beginning of the story stems from the teacher Zheng Sir finding an unsigned suicide note, when he wants to track down the child behind the diary, but through the diary he sees his past scarred self.

The little protagonist Zheng Youjie is a typical "bad student", and in the eyes of his lawyer's father, he is "garbage".

The father played by Cheng Zhongji is a successful person in the traditional sense, a typical Hong Kong middle-class generation, who has a successful career externally and has created very good material conditions for the family internally.

In the face of a poor son, he can blame and abuse at will, because he thinks that such a child has no training value, and having such a child with mediocre qualifications makes him even more disgraced.

He firmly believes in the "law of the jungle" and once said: "Family and society, like the family, are the people who are capable and can make money have the final say, just like me and your mother, isn't it the most illustrative?" ”

His family education philosophy is "if you can't do it, you can hit it", Zheng Youjie will face fists and kicks whenever he doesn't perform well.

But he didn't know that Zheng Youjie had worked very hard, only slept 5 hours a day, studied and practiced hard, but even so, he still didn't get good results, and he was so nervous that he vomited in the primary school exam.

He encouraged himself to be in the top 15 of the class next time, but his father questioned why he was not in the top 10.

The mother is cold, unable to protect the child's help, ignoring the child's psychological problems, even if the father is abusing the child at home, she doesn't see it.

And the younger brother Zheng Youjun, who has excellent grades, is diametrically opposed, always surrounded by the love and warmth of his parents, they watch performances and travel together, just like a middle-class model family.

Under the violence of his father and the cold violence of his mother, Zheng Youjie began to identify himself as garbage and thought that he was not an important person, and finally jumped from a high-rise building and ended his life at a young age.

Sadly, until the last moment of his life, he still hoped that he could be a good boy who studied hard.

Middle-class parents finally forced their children to death, and it was not until the father, who was strong all his life, became disabled in his later years that he realized that not everything would be successful if he worked hard.

When he was dying, he suddenly woke up and said sorry to the child who "didn't work hard".

02

Excellent children, fashionable items for elite parents

Zheng Youjie's difficulties in growing up are challenges that many children from middle-class families will experience.

He is not excellent, so he is not loved, and he has been pursuing to be loved all his life, but he has not been recognized by his parents all his life, and he is constantly suffering from internal friction in a desperate family environment.

He wrote in his diary, "I'm not an important person" and "Anyway, I'm leaving, everyone will soon forget about me", and he cried blood.

In the movie, Zheng Youjie's father is obsessed with whether his child is excellent, on the one hand, because he knows the benefits of reading best, which is his practical experience.

Most of these first-generation middle-class people were born as problem-solvers, and they counterattacked through the entrance examination, stayed in the big city to work, and finally turned over to become a new generation of urban people.

As the beneficiaries of education, they have also put on the ideological stamp, thinking that by letting children follow their own path, they can copy their own life experience and lead to success.

Wishing for a son to become a dragon and a daughter to become a phoenix is the common dream of East Asian parents, and Zheng Youjie's name also pays attention to his parents' desire to get ahead and become an outstanding talent.

The intentions are good, the results are intriguing, but the process is devastating.

In fact, it is just the parents' desire to prosper the family and break through the class, all of which are projected on the children who are not yet mentally sound.

The quiet years of middle-class families are based on the premise of children's excellent grades, and if the grades are not good, it will be a scene of chickens and dogs.

On the other hand, in the eyes of Zheng Youjie's father, these elite parents believe that tiger fathers have no dogs, and children who are not excellent are like stains on life, and they are defective products of middle-class chicken babies and worthless.

Excellent children are fashion items, no matter what occasion to mention a sentence or two, can gain everyone's envy of the eyes.

Therefore, Zheng Youjun is in line with this set of values, and he is a "tool" that parents can use, so he deserves to be loved, encouraged, educated, and placed on high hopes.

But can the success of the previous generation really be replicated? What if you follow the route your parents have planned?

The movie tells us the answer, the younger brother who has been excellent all the way has grown up, and in the end he has just become an ordinary middle school teacher.

Under the development of the times, the economic cycle is changing, and the second generation of the middle class cannot replicate the successful experience of the first generation, and the decline is a fact that cannot be changed.

What's even more cruel is that the shadow of his younger brother's childhood has been passed from generation to generation, affecting a new stage of his life.

03

Save the scarred child

According to the China Child Suicide Report of the Beijing Medical Child Development Center, about 100,000 adolescents in China die by suicide every year. Every minute, 2 people die by suicide and 8 suicide attempts.

In the world, the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15~29 is suicide.

As adolescents are at a critical stage of physical and mental development, the causes of suicide are complex, but one key factor that cannot be ignored is depression.

The "2022 National Blue Book on Depression" points out that about 280,000 people commit suicide in the mainland every year, of which about 40% are depressed patients.

According to the data of the "China National Mental Health Development Report (2019~2020)", the detection rate of depression among Chinese adolescents in 2020 was 24.6%, of which 17.2% were mild depression and 7.4% were severe depression.

Depression and major depression also tend to rise as students move up grades.

In addition to the pressure of a high-pressure oven, the family environment and parental relationship are more important triggers that lead to student depression.

According to relevant survey statistics, 69% of student patients are prone to depression due to family relationships, and 63% of student patients feel neglected, lack of love, control, strictness, conflict and domestic violence in their families.

A real-life case recorded in "The Diary of a Youth" is very similar to that recorded in "The Boy Who Was Not Understood".

A girl named Zhen Zhen has been someone else's child since she was a child, and she started planning in the first grade of elementary school, up to the exact hour, getting up at 4 a.m. and ending at 12 p.m. every day.

Even so, her parents still felt that she was not good enough and was dissatisfied with her.

In her sophomore year of high school, the pressure became more and more intense, and her emotions were difficult to control, and sometimes even the hand holding the pen would shake unconsciously.

After examination, it was found that she was diagnosed with severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, with severe somatization and moderate bipolar disorder.

A 14-year-old girl in a middle school in Shanghai once committed suicide by jumping off a building, leaving a thousand-word suicide note, she wrote:

"It's not me you love, it's me who rushed into the top 10 of the class, me who ranked in the top 20 of the grade, and I got a perfect score.

The perfect daughter in your mind is too good for me to reach... I am honored to meet you in my life, and if there is an afterlife, we will not meet again. ”

When a child has depression, the first person who needs treatment should be the parents.

But many parents don't think so, but maliciously speculate about their children, ignore their children's requests for help, and even intensify their oppression.

Most of the anxiety of middle-class parents is the anxiety of education, they hope that their children will become talented and jump into the class, become the best so that their faces will shine, and they are desperately afraid of losing at the starting line.

They can't see the pain of their children, and they always use their anxiety to coerce their children with a "I'm all for your good" mentality, and they have super high expectations for their children.

Use grades as bargaining chips in exchange for "love", and use rankings as the standard for evaluating good and bad, but whenever a child expresses pain, it is considered ignorant...

It's not that the child has become vulnerable, it's that the purpose of parental education has deviated too much.

It is anxious parents and the stress and negativity they bring that destroy children and create tragedy.

Director Zhuo Yiqian once said that only by facing the pain can the problem be solved. "Diary of a Youth" stung each of us, and perhaps this pain will usher in a new life.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•