alt Hacker News> have high expectations of them and are gravely, mortally disappointed if they let us down
That sounds like a recipe for long-term psychological complexes. I know plenty of high-achievers that don't constantly feel like they have to prove themselves. And I wish I didn't have to work so hard to challenge that feeling in myself.
I don't know any high achievers who don't feel they have to prove themselves, so maybe I'm in the wrong cirles. It absolutely is a recipe for all kinds of long term complexes. But when you do work hard and you are satisfied with yourself, that satisfaction comes from something greater than yourself. Having no goal is worse than having an artificial one... and achieving something to make your dead parents happy is better than achieving nothing at all.
The measure of whether it was done in the proper proportion, I think, is whether you find later in life that it was, on balance, a service to you.