Posted on 01/12/2011 10:34:44 AM PST by Rhonda Robinson
’d be curious to know what my old friend — we’ll call her Leeann — thinks. Leeann is a Chinese mother of three who lived in my town temporarily while her American husband was completing his residency. After three years, she and her family moved away.
Like many Chinese women, Leeann was petite, with smooth skin and silky hair. She was also a perfectionist who was constantly – and I mean constantly – comparing herself to other people. Leeann was a great girl and a great mom, but her insecurity consumed her. No matter what I said to try and get her to stop comparing herself to others, she continued to do so. It drove me mad.
This constant need to make sure you’re good enough seems to me an inevitable result of a Chinese upbringing — at least the kind Amy Chua describes in “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” the cover story of this past weekend’s Saturday Review in the Wall Street Journal. In her article, Chua gives new meaning to the word strict. American parents may be hopeless in this regard, but Chinese mothers, well, let’s just say they have a different approach. In a nutshell, they scream, berate, and belittle their children.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
I’ve seen the result of this model at the university level - students who are extremely technically competent but have a complete lack of creativity.
This is probably why they spend their time pirating our software, stealing our intellectual property and backwards engineering every piece of hardware in the globe.
One caveat I would offer, however, is that most of this was said about the Japanese in the 80s. When you strip off all that culture you’re left with human beings that eventually raise a generation of children that say “I’m not willing to achieve your level of success and will be content with less.” Slackers basically.
There - I can be just as stereotypical as the author :)
This only comes across as jealousy on the author's part. Deep down the author knows that Leeann's children will be her kids' bosses.
Loving your small children and respecting and treasuring them every day, helping them learn with fun and unconditional support, is not left wing. It’s important. Little children’s biggest achievement should be development of a healthy self, the ability to love, and to understand Goodness as opposed to moral wrongs. Children come in all intellectual packages. Those with Down Syndrome are as important as the geniuses.
Chinese mothers as in the original article would dump a child with developmental delays in an orphanage without a second thought. This attention on my child achieving educational greatness is empty and selfish; it’s all about the mother and her own insecurities, probably from her own abusive mother.
Life is more important than school achievement. If you had a nine year old daughter who was shot down by a crazed killer, how would you feel at her funeral if all you had done all her short life was tell her she wasn’t good enough and wasted every free hour with boring studies, denying her playing, denying her unconditional love?
Loving your small children and respecting and treasuring them every day, helping them learn with fun and unconditional support, is not left wing. It’s important. Little children’s biggest achievement should be development of a healthy self, the ability to love, and to understand Goodness as opposed to moral wrongs. Children come in all intellectual packages. Those with Down Syndrome are as important as the geniuses.
Chinese mothers as in the original article would dump a child with developmental delays in an orphanage without a second thought. This attention on my child achieving educational greatness is empty and selfish; it’s all about the mother and her own insecurities, probably from her own abusive mother.
Life is more important than school achievement. If you had a nine year old daughter who was shot down by a crazed killer, how would you feel at her funeral if all you had done all her short life was tell her she wasn’t good enough and wasted every free hour with boring studies, denying her playing, denying her unconditional love?
This is part of the Chinese elite class despite anything being reported to you.
Most all of the Chinese live on $100 a month with sleeping spaces for homes the size of your closet.
They maintain quite the slave class to produce all the cheap goods financing the Red Army/Government Leaders.
LOL! There is a good deal of truth in your observation, but to be honest, I don’t think regimented parenting is healthy.
So have I. Students in Electrical Engineering classes who could regurgitate calculus equations for circuit analysis flawlessly, yet not even know what a capacitor was.
Sorry for the double post - the first time the wifi said “no Internet connection”
Sorry for the double post - the first time the wifi said “no Internet connection”
I read this and all I could think of was the fact that I know plenty of Asians who were raised this way that are pretty far from being geniuses.
There’s more to it than you think. We have a type 1 diabetic who’s seven. The advice we got when he first exhibited type 1 was to strip the carbs out of the diet, and start getting him used to ‘diabetic friendly foods’.
Research has shown that by the time they reach age 12, those kids start hiding sweets, failing to bolus for the sweets they eat, and in general hospitalizing themselves.
The A1C (average blood glucose level ( about 6 for normal people) in kids raised on strict diets at age 12 was 10 or better. Kids raised on the idea of simply covering the carbs you eat with the right amount of insulin at the same age was 8.5.
The thing about diabetes is that the distance between action and consequence is very short compared with that of ‘life goals’ like becoming a doctor, etc.
You eat a pizza and you don’t cover it with enough insulin, and you are going to go ketoacidotic and die. Use insulin as a weight loss drug, and you’re going to eventually go into a coma and die.
Parenting is a customized process. You may be able to more or less generalize the strategy, but the tactics that prove effective are particular to each child.
I have become friends with a few people from China and they are terrified that their children will take up the American MTV public school culture as immigrant Korean's American kids seem to. They actually believe in two parent (opposite sex) parents, savings, education and personal achievement as opposed to the kids thinking their parents and world owe them a living for being born. This one woman from China I met told me that the Government just wastes the taxpayers money as she was doing research for it.
You do NOT want a Chinese woman mad at you. They reach high decibels really quickly. I’ve seen it.
The most perfect model of motherhood is the Christian model....where you give dignity and respect and love to children (only can be done in the right, effective non-narcissistic way if there is a God). Morality that has proven the most perfect is the Christian model. True self-esteem can only come with this paradigm. No other paradigm (atheist/pagan ones) creates such an equal, free, and trusting society.
Christianity puts an emphasis on responsibility for all actions, the moral absolutes of right and wrong, and the importance of the idea of exceptionalism and creativity because we are made in the image of the Creator and He is our first example in all things. It lists ALL things that destroy civil societies and cohesion and family structures as EVIL so it is discouraged in society.
De-Christianization is what is destroying our culture. The Marxists are doing it intentionally through the ideas in the media and schools and through our legal system
This woman missed her flight. Imagine if one of her kids failed math.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3E-PAPiuyE&feature=related
I do not know whether you read the original article but it has little to do with your statement since it is mostly about professional-class immigrant Chinese parents. I grew up in such a family and the “slacker” lifestyle was unacceptable. My parents actually called the teachers and demanded they assign more homework since I would often finish my schoolwork before dinner.
As for the Chinese living on the mainland, many do live a subsistence life but others, like my relatives, have left poverty and are earning a good living. My cousin in Shanghai runs an indoor landscaping business for commercial office and hotel spaces. My niece is a regional manager for Wal-mart and her husband works for a private equity firm that invests in Asian businesses.
What you get with Chinese parenting is that even the rather untalented can get enough in terms of education/work habits to maximize their limited inherent capacity.
You are getting the top 50% of their talent pool, while with American whites you may be getting the top 5%.
Its not really the mother and her desires. Chinese families are communal enterprises - a communal enterprise that spans generations and even life and death.
One is responsible not just to ones mother but all who are currently living and all ones ancestors as well.
Compared to all of them, ones own troubles (or desires) amount to a hill of beans, to quote Rick.
I read Chua’s article and frankly, I don’t favor either a permissive upbringing or the kind of upbringing Chua foisted on her kids.
Too many American parents care only that their kids are popular, or don’t care at all as long as the kids stay out of their hair. Expecting your kids to put in their best effort ought to be a no-brainer.
But Chua admitted to calling her daughter “garbage” when said daughter was “disrespectful” and mentioned a time when she wouldn’t let her frustrated daughter finish her piano practice until she got a certain part that gave her difficulty right...including not letting her eat or go to the bathroom. She even threatened to destroy her child’s dollhouse. I’m sorry, that’s just cruel and abusive. I also didn’t like the way she dismissed creative endeavors or sports. What if her daughter WANTED to be in the school play? What if her other child WANTED to be on the lacrosse team? Sure, you might have an accomplished person and that’s all fine and good, but I’ve also met a lot of accomplished basket cases.
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