The story of the Chinese Canadian girl who tricked her parents into thinking she was a straight A student and then plotted to kill them has led some to ask ‘how many more Jennifer Pan‘s are out there?’
Hopefully the answer is zero.
Betty Ming Liu, an adjunct professor from New York University, offered some reasons why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from ever happening again in a blog for the Huffington Post.
In 2010, three gunman shot and killed Pan’s mother and injured her father. Pan and the hit men she hired were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
According to Liu, studies have shown immigrant parents are harder on their daughters than they are on the sons. Pan’s parents were ethnic Chinese from Vietnam.
Asian American women also think more about suicide than anybody else. Pan, although Canadian, has said the attack on her parents was part of an elaborate plan to commit suicide. She also began cutting herself as early as eighth grade.
So what can parents do to counter these trends? You can read about that in the Huffington Post.