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Americans have always been anxious about how their kids are turning out.  But at this moment in history -- when that traditional source of anxiety has been joined by growing nervousness about the rise of China -- any writer who hit upon the idea of connecting the two by arguing, essentially, that Chinese parentage is just better would have been guaranteed to strike a nerve.  Just ask Amy Chua, whose recent Wall Street Journal piece, provocatively entitled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," became an overnight internet smash. Indeed, "strike a nerve" is not really an adequate metaphor to describe the...

Amy Chua, the Yale law professor who enraged parents and morning show viewers everywhere when she published her parenting book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, must be feeling somewhat vindicated today. Chua's eldest daughter was just accepted to Harvard. Chua, better known as Tiger Mom, made headlines earlier this year for preaching the benefits of ultra strict parenting practices -- rooted in her own Chinese upbringing. The WSJ article that accompanied the release of her book was called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" and preached a childhood free of video games, playdates, and TV and listed all the ways...

I have not yet read what Tiger Mother Amy Chua penned in her book regarding why Chinese mothers blow western moms away in raising sharp, solid kids, but having just gotten back from the mall I’m already siding with Chua. Western kids are, by and large, becoming frickin’ animals (at least that’s how they are in Miami), and it’s clearly because their parents are animals. Whether or not parents want to own it, as Larry Winget wrote, your kids are your fault. Period. Monkey see, monkey do. Deal with it. I hear that the Tiger Mother drilled her kids with...

-SNIP- Rahna Reiko Rizzuto says that she never wanted to be a mother. "I had this idea that motherhood was this really all-encompassing thing," -SNIP- ...when her children came to visit, she had an epiphany: She didn't want to be a full-time mother anymore. When she returned to New York, she ended her 20-year marriage and chose not to be her kids' custodial parent.

The Tiger Mother controversy sets up a false alternative between "Western" and "Eastern" parenting.  Western parenting is the liberal parenting method of coddling children and shielding them from the natural consequences of their failures in order to protect their self-esteem.  Eastern parenting is the tyrannical method of destroying a child's individuality through psychological and even physical abuse in order to shoehorn the child into a one-size-fits-all mold of perfection.  Both methods ignore basic facts of human nature and historical facts about what actually leads to success. Liberal (Western) parenting starts with the false premise that self-esteem is something a...

I read an article the other day about a Chinese mother called “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” (you can find the article at http://online.wsj.com). The article profiled the woman’s rigorous parenting style. I didn’t realize it was such a hot topic until I started seeing conversations about the article pop up on Facebook and other chat boards I belong to.The article describes the mother forcing her children to spend hours practicing piano (with not even water, bathroom, or dinner breaks) until the child got the piece right. She says that anything less than an A would be completely unacceptable (and...

Oh, the irony. While Americans are busy chastising ‘Tiger mom’ Amy Chua for her observations about the state of parenting in the United States, at Markham Elementary School in Oakland, CA, second grade students got naked in their classroom. And engaged in oral sex. And the teacher was there. In the classroom. While it was going on. Here we are, publicly debating whether or not parenting in America is seriously lacking, and along comes a story about seven-year-olds who are licking each other’s private parts in school. Good Lord, America: wake up. This is pathetic. Pitiful. Egregious. Flat out disgraceful....

f you haven’t heard of Amy Chua by now, you’ve been living under a rock. Chua is the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is currently ranked #5 on Amazon, thanks to the enormous amount of media coverage her Wall Street Journal article generated. I weighed in on the debate both in my last NewsReal post (where I point out the pitfalls of Chua’s parenting style, not philosophy), as well as in the New York Post. I also spoke with Ms. Chua, who was so happy to read my Post article, entitled ‘Why America needs tiger mom,’...

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....

Writer Amy Chua shocked the world with her provocative essay, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” when it appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month. The article, excerpted from her new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” described “how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.” It led with a manifesto: “Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, 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...

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do: have a playdate • be in a school play • complain...

A certain essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday, titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” to which one excerpted reaction from the Journal community itself was “I am in disbelief after reading this article.” The author is a Chinese mother, Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale perhaps best known for writing the New York Times bestseller World on Fire. The essay affirms that stereotypical Chinese parenting produces stereotypical cases of success for the children raised in that fashion — impeccable grade reports, precocious competence in the violin and piano (but mind you, those instruments and no...

’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...

An editorial cartoon in the Jan. 13 edition of Hong Kong's English daily the South China Morning Post shows a family — a father, mother and frowning boy — together in the kitchen. On the table sits an untouched breakfast — the sodden castoffs, we infer, of the insolent child. "If you don't eat it," the father threatens, "we're going to have you adopted by Amy Chua." The child looks horrified. Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School, an author and, as of last week, one of the most talked-about mothers in the world. On Jan. 8, the...

Have you read the article on wsj.com by Amy Chua, a Chinese-American mother (and law professor at Yale)? If not, you probably don’t have children. It is a must-read! I was both mesmerized and appalled by the article; like driving past a horrific car accident and wondering whether anyone survived. I realize that her article has lit up the blogosphere, but, as the author of three parenting books and the father of two girls myself, I just couldn’t resist tossing my two cents into the cyber-well.