Parenting - Part I

I recently saw a show on TV. It was just a reflection of the level of parenting paranoia happening around us.It made a deep impression on me. It has made me put into words what I have felt for long.
Come 10th or 12th standard, all you see is parents scurrying behind children, picking and dropping them from one class to another, tuition, extra coaching, special coaching, last minute tips, pillow-sized study guides.. What a nightmare for the child? What a BIGger nightmare for the poor parents? Does anyone think the parents enjoy doing that? We have seen and heard many teenagers taking their life for failing or the fear of it. What goes unreported is the agony and trauma that the parents go through.
Who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs?
Convenient answers: Society, Educational system which focuses only on bookish knowledge, blah blah blah….
Actual answers :It is something parents bring upon themselves. It is some kind of parents’ peer pressure.
Niveda, my neighbour is in 12th std. Her moms colleague’s cousin’s son got 98% in 12th standard, 99.54 in medical entrance last year. Her mother comes home daily at 4 to supervise her studies, and stays up till 12, lest her daughter should fall asleep. She gets up at 4 in the morning to wake up Niveda to study and pack her bags for the 6 o clock before school coaching classes. All in an effort to push poor Nivi to get state 1st!!!
What drives our moms and dads to such dizzy heights of expectations? It is definitely not wrong to expect something of one’s ward. Its only when things goes overboard that problems surface. One can expect a kid to get decent scores, but is it possible for every student attending the exam to come out first? All horses in a race don’t emerge winners!