Basic Trope: A character's parent — usually their mother — is overly obsessed with their formal schooling.
- Straight: Bryan's mother Alice is constantly riding him to go study when he'd rather play.
- Exaggerated: Bryan isn't allowed to have a social life or any friends his age because it might distract him from his studies.
- Downplayed: Bryan's mother Alice keeps getting on him about studying and keeps an active check on his school-work. He tends to get out once she's checked all his work.
- Justified:
- Alice only wants the best for Bryan, as she had to undergo some rather tough studies to become who she is.
- Alice's own education stopped at middle school and she couldn't continue her studies because her parents needed her to find a job and help the family stay financially afloat. As a result of her own poor education, Alice doesn't want to see the same thing happen to Bryan.
- Alice may simply be using Bryan as a means of gaining prestige in the community.
- Alice is a teacher and, whether she is assigned to lead any of Bryan's classes or not, she wants him to follow the good example she sets.
- Queen Dowager Alice is acting as regent for her son King Bryan, and is well aware that a badly educated or ill-prepared ruler could spell the end of the country, the royal regime, or both.
- Alice flunked school when she was Bryan's age and it ruined her life. Now she desperately wants to make sure he doesn't repeat her mistakes.
- Alice's academic efforts were not merely discouraged but actively sabotaged by her dysfunctionally anti-intellectual family. She managed to make it out but is over-correcting with her own offspring.
- Inverted:
- Any time Bryan tries to study at all, Alice gets in his way and forces him to play outside.
- Alice is taking post-graduate classes, and her son Bryan is constantly stepping in and refusing to let her do anything but study.
- Gender-Inverted: It's Bryan's father, Bob, who pesters him about his progress on his schoolwork every few breaths.
- Subverted: Bryan's been studying for several hours. Alice comes up to his room and tells him to take a break.
- Double Subverted: ...to go outside and collect soil samples, which he is then to study intensely.
- Parodied:
- Bryan has large welts and cuts all over him, and tends to rub a specific one whenever he's asked a question in school. His weight also fluctuates regularly, and the teachers know when he's having trouble focusing is when he's skinny.
- Bryan's resentment of Alice causes him to put all that studying she made him do to good use: He becomes an evil Mad Scientist who takes over the world, and keeps Alice locked in a cell, forcing her to do boring and tedious activities constantly, under threat of Agony Beam should she take a break for longer than a few seconds.
- Alice only acts like this to Bryan out of all her children. Even though he does his best to please her and outperforms his Massive Numbered Siblings by considerable margins academically, she still treats him as The Un Favourite.
- Alice makes Bryan study around the clock, which makes him a Know-Nothing Know-It-All. Because she is also one, she thinks she's succeeded.
- Alice is the Anthropomorphic Personification of perfectionism.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Bryan's been studying for several hours, after which he's allowed to go outside ... to collect soil samples, which he studies immediately. After which, he's legitimately allowed to take a break. A very short break.
- Alice rides Bryan to study harder than hard only every other day; all the other days, she lets him do whatever he wants.
- Averted: Alice is not overly concerned with Bryan's grades.
- Enforced: "We've got our team for this shonen series all squared away. We just need this one character to have some limiting factor that would prevent one of the heroes from going on missions... wait, I've got it. Let's make it to where his mother is one of those pushy school types. I'm sure the audience would find the show more relatable."
- Lampshaded:
- "You'll thank me when you don't end up on the street!"
- "Geeze, is she helping you studying, or trying to get you to skip a grade?"
- Invoked: Bryan doesn't do so well in his first years of school — and Alice, realizing that a change in her parenting is needed, becomes far stricter.
- Exploited:
- Alice's business partner, David, kills her and frames Bryan, claiming that she abused him until he snapped.
- Damian, a former classmate of Alice's back in high school, resents her for having better grades than him. He notices her son Bryan having a hard time because of her pressure and acts like a supportive father figure to sway him to his side and spite Alice.
- Defied: "Getting into a good college is important ... but so is growing up properly."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice's constant riding of Bryan causes him to start to resent her. He makes the grades, but their relationship is soured for the rest of their lives.
- Alternatively, it's revealed that Bryan isn't really all that bright, and Alice, who wanted a smart boy, can never get past that.
- Bryan does his best to graduate high school and college at the top of his grade so that Alice will stop nagging him, then he will promptly stop talking to her once he is done with his education.
- Alice gets Bryan to make the grades, but she never gives him a chance to develop his social skills or prepare for the real world. She never realized that it takes more than good grades to succeed in life.
- Alice's efforts do help Bryan become a success, but after focusing so much on hard work for so long, he becomes a Married to the Job Workaholic who never gives her grandkids and spends time with her.
- All that hard work and pressure takes its toll on Bryan and he develops severe emotional or mental issues.
- Bryan starts cheating his way through school to ease off Alice's pressure. When the school caught him, he was expelled and banned from going to other schools, destroying all of Alice's hopes for a better future for him.
- Alice is outright abusive to Bryan when he brings home The B Grade — she beats him, screams at him, calls him worthless, and makes him feel like trash.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice eventually realizes that while Bryan doesn't excel in studies, he shows skill/talent in one or more extracurricular fields and supports him for it.
- Bryan makes the grades, after which Alice backs off considerably and gives Bryan some breathing room.
- Alternatively, Bryan reveals that while he may not have enjoyed it, it was Alice's determination that got him through school.
- While Bryan initially resents her, he eventually comes to understand why Alice pushed him so hard (i.e. to prepare him for the future).
- Alice genuinely thinks she is helping Bryan by making him study. When she finds out all the pressure she has put him under, she is horrified and does her best to back off.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice disowns Bryan because she refuses to raise a child who isn't academically competent.
- Bryan snaps and kills Alice, after being pushed too far.
- After being verbally upbraided, degraded, and shrieked at by his mother for over four hours for getting a less-than-perfect mark at school, Bryan feels so unloved he hangs himself within an hour afterward.
- Bryan is prompted to start taking speed to keep up with Alice's various demands, which soon leads to Bryan taking other drugs ... and alcohol.
- Bryan graduates at the top of his class through high school, college, university, even through his doctorate. It's when it's time to put his education to use that Alice discovers her son has absolutely no idea how to function outside of school, making him unemployable and permanently dependent on her.
- Bryan's teacher Carol offers to give Bryan a passing grade on any test if he sleeps with her.
- Played for Laughs:
- Bryan has a Hilariously Abusive Childhood thanks to this characteristic of Alice's and others she or Bob has.
- Bryan ends up treating Alice's homework regimen as Incredibly Lame Fun.
- Implied: Bryan's friends are waiting for him to join them on their latest adventure. He arrives nearly a half-hour late and says, "Sorry. My mom was making me do extra-credit homework."
Troper, you can go back to Education Mama after you've studied pages 219–343 of your textbook.
