Free Republic

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...

Controversy over the Wall Street Journal's "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" book excerpt by Yale professor and author Amy Chua heated up even further today, as a Jewish author and mother responded with a new essay in the same newspaper championing a more relaxed approach to parenting. Titled "In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom," Ayelet Waldman's essay humorously outlines differences between what she sees as the lackadaisical approach taken by western mothers and the strict regimen Chinese mothers use on their children that Chua discusses.

-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...