Posted on 01/19/2011 6:45:14 AM PST by Kaslin
Amy Chua may or may not be a superior mother, but she is a superb marketer -- and I say that with admiration. Who among the literate has not heard of her defiant declaration of independence from the American style of cosseted childrearing -- "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"? My 17-year-old son demanded to know whether I had seen the Wall Street Journal excerpt -- "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." I hadn't. Before I could catch my breath, he had uncovered research showing that Asian females ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rate of any race or ethnic group.
Talk about touching a nerve! My son had lots of company. A follow-up piece in the Journal sampled some of the 4,000 comments (a record) the piece had elicited on the paper's website. (It reportedly received more than 100,000 responses on Facebook.)
Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, purports to let the rest of us in on how Chinese families produce so many straight-A students and musical prodigies. "Here are some of the things my daughters ... were never allowed to do: attend a sleepover; have a playdate; be in a school play; complain about not being in a school play; watch TV or play computer games; choose their own extracurricular activities; get any grade less than an A; not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama; play any instrument other than the piano or violin; not play the piano or violin."
Some Americans might be prepared to call child protective services on the evidence of that list alone, but Chua is just getting rolling. "The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable ... to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, 'Hey fatty -- lose some weight.' By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of 'health' and never ever mentioning the f-word ..."
The really hair-raising part is Chua's account of a battle with her then 7-year-old daughter who was having trouble mastering a piano piece. Declaring that her older sister had been able to play it at her age, and flinging a fusillade of insults and threats at the child, Chua "rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts." Then the child mastered it.
Happy ending? Chua thinks so, to a point. According to her follow-up comments published the next week, her book actually chronicles her evolution away from such tyrannical tactics. But only a little.
Some of the comments about Chua's piece were negative, even vehemently so. But others, a surprising number, were admiring and even envious. That even an exaggerated and half tongue-in-cheek account of a rigid, demanding, insensitive approach to parenthood elicited positive comments reflects, perhaps, our awareness of how soft and indulgent we've become.
"In one study," Chua writes, "of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70 percent of the Western mothers said either that 'stressing academic success is not good for children' or that 'parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun.' By contrast, roughly 0 percent of the Chinese mothers felt the same way."
Chinese (and other immigrant) parents believe that drill, effort, and some rote memorization are paths to accomplishment and that it is mastery -- not empty praise about how "special" each child is -- that builds self-esteem. The tiger mothers may overdo it a bit -- but let's face it, many American parents are too reluctant to demand work that isn't "fun" and too ready to believe that our children have something to teach us rather than the other way around.
Americans may also be spooked by an unavoidable reality of our shrinking planet -- our kids will have to compete with more than 2 billion Chinese, Indian and other Asian kids who, through whatever combination of genes, culture, and technique, are outperforming us. On a 2007 international test of math and science (in which China and India didn't participate) U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders lagged behind those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Latvia, England, and Korea.
But parenting, in the end, is not about winning trophies, nor even about keeping up with the Asians. Could we stand a bit more steel in our spines? Sure. But to want your children to be happy is no sin -- after all, it's in our founding documents.
Someone doesn't understand what "the pursuit of happiness" was intended to convey.
Culturally, Chinese mothers murder their baby girls.
Nuff said.
“Be happy in your work”
My grandmother found a very good way to raise and educate children back in the 20s: The Maria Montessori Method. My mom was bright, accomplished, and BALANCED. (So were her siblings.) She raised us the same way using these same methods, although she did not take us to a Montessori school. I have always marveled at how my mother was able to read the hearts of her children so well and to encourage them toward accomplishment without tyranny.
Montessori was dedicated to helping the child develop the mind as well as the heart by using the natural curiosity and interests of the child and to allow that to guide the natural God-given plan for unfoldment. There is/was certainly discipline in this method, but not in the way described by the posted article about Chinese parenting culture.
Are you forgetting that they were forced to abort their babies, when it was found out that the fetuses were girls?
Bump
In the main, I didn’t think that Ms. Chua’s parenting was anything other than exemplary.
The excerpt that comprised the original article was from a memoir that she wrote, detailing her journey as a mom. The more extreme examples in the original article represented her own self-admitted extreme starting place, not where she ultimately wound up.
But her focus on high standards, pushing kids beyond what they think they can do, not accepting poor performance and then working with one’s kids to remediate poor performance, requiring kids to do things that are good for them, even if they don’t like them, requiring kids to get good at a thing before they’re permitted to think about giving it up, limiting things that are fun but not so good in any significant amount (TV, computer games, video games, etc.), these don’t seem so unreasonable.
“While the children of tiger mothers may be successful they will never enjoy the relationship as adults that my Irish mother does with her children. Laugh lots, sing loud, tell good stories and work hard.”
If you read Ms. Chua’s follow-up article, you will find that at least in her family, this isn't true.
Although we don't have such extreme tales to tell as Ms. Chua, the way we've reared our own two sons isn't all that different from Ms. Chua, and yet, we all manage to laugh a lot, sing loud, tell good stories and work hard.
sitetest
I’ll stick with good ole American ways thank you. Love how people write a book and holy smokes...they are wonders.
The poster’s original statement reveals ignorance about Chinese culture away from the Communist bureaucracy. While immigrant Chinese parents in the US or other western nations do favor boys, the female children get almost as much support. In the Fifties, one Chinese family in the Chicago area had two girls and a boy. All of us were raised in a similar manner to Ms. Chua’s children. In the local Chinese-American community, their daughters were the stars because they both became doctors with the help of academic scholarships, while their son went to law school but was only in the top half of his graduating class.
Unfortunately, the doctors and lawyer are raising their own kids (total of 9) in a more relaxed manner and all, except one, are part of the slacker entitlement culture. The one exception is using ROTC to attend pre-med and she hopes to become a surgeon.
I’m talking about KILLING their daughters. Whether it be outright infanticide or “Dying Rooms”, orphanages where they are abandoned to “whatever” fate.
Some abortions are forced, but many are willingly killing their daughters. Especially outside the cities.
So no, I would NEVER look up to “Tiger Mothers”. I’ll take a Momma Bear any day.
PBS has kids shows that tell how wonderful Chinese culture is.
“The Karate Kid” became a travelogue for China.
Now we have FReepers saying how wonderful a “Tiger Mother” is.
Perhaps a bit of brainwashing by the MSM to accept how wonderful the Communist Chinese are?
They are good at emulating machines, but not so good at intelligent creativity. That's why the Chinese government, like the Soviets before them have to steal our technology.
Mmmmmm, I like the ABC ladies.
All things being equal, I'd rather have Anoreth. Maybe I could, with unremitting effort, have forced her to be and do only what I chose for her ... but it was really fun waking up to find a warrior goddess travel journalist with the spirit of a Spanish duellist.
And everyone I meet thinks that having a daughter join the Coast Guard, be an artist, and confront liberals on the streets of Seattle and Moslems in the harbor of Brunei, is a praiseworthy parenting outcome. I think the culture of Yale law professors is just different from ours, whether such persons are of Chinese descent or not.
>>All things being equal, I’d rather have Anoreth. Maybe I could, with unremitting effort, have forced her to be and do only what I chose for her ... but it was really fun waking up to find a warrior goddess travel journalist with the spirit of a Spanish duellist. <<
THAT is what people are missing.
LOL.
Yeah, I guess we were “Chinese,” too, growing up. My wife and kids, too.
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