Sometimes parents placed many expectations on their children, hoping they would grow up to become scientists or concert pianists, sending them to all kinds of tutoring classes from a very young age.
For most people, it was impossible to master architecture, surgery, and violin performance all at once. Such unrealistic fantasies gave teenagers ambitions so vast that they exceeded their own control.
He thought he was Superman, when in fact he was an ordinary citizen waiting to be saved by Superman. That kind of blow could easily dishearten him, making him give up his efforts and start over elsewhere.
If it was a woman, she hoped to rank among the best in some field while also being a perfect housewife and a fashionable woman who knew how to dress.
This required the cooperation of her husband and children. She arranged everything for the family, drove the children to tutoring classes, went home to clean up, made dinner, did a little writing herself, and lived in a luxurious suburban house. Such a woman's life ought to have been the envy of everyone.
Yet one day, she suddenly discovered that her husband was having an affair, while her children seemed to have entered their rebellious phase and refused to listen to her about anything.
An American TV series called "Desperate Housewives" was currently hugely popular. It told of the married lives of ordinary middle-class housewives in a Muggle town. A housewife's suicide set off a storm, and the plot explored the truth behind the lives of these fairy-tale heroines supposedly "living happy lives."
That gated community was far from perfect. Behind its glossy surface lay all kinds of problems.
Compared to an unfaithful husband, rebellious children were even more troublesome. After all, you could divorce your husband and kick him out of