WSJ: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

sheila022 said:
Ehhh, I would have preferred to have things done bit differently if possible. It does get old to be scolded and berated over, over, and over for minor things.

Once I have children, I won't do what Amy Chua do to her children, but still hold my children in high expectations without all of the emotional and verbal abuse. I don't believe that beating down children constantly is a way to make them succeed. After all, you can keep beating them down but there's a limit to it.
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word.
 
guys, haven't you ever thought that now because Amy Chua had published the book, her children may not be able to get into Harvard, Yale, or any other such colleges because they can't spin it so it looked like they just happened to have good grades? Way to go, Amy!

(Unless Yale is willing to accept her kids since Amy is a current Yale Law professor.)
 
There's still downsides, even if (your) children of asian heritage become successful, racial stipulation remains dominant out in the workforce. Getting fame as an asian is not quite easy when you have factors playing down on another such as the glass ceiling complex. While asians as well as any minority race in the USA can still undermine and become successful in fields of applied, natural and formal sciences (Math, Chemistry, Physics, Compsci, Engineering, Biology, etc) they are still one notch down the playing field when it comes to regions within the liberal arts, law, political science and so on. The glass ceiling concept is still in effect for those in the aforementioned certain fields, and likely is going to remain that way for decades to come.

This is ultimately the reason why the subject fields that asians take are often require approval (or not) of the parents, or their children simply don't get much of a choice.

I'm honestly not inclined to believe racial barriers would be broken until the end of this century, although it is slowly creeping the way there.
It is nice to see children perform well in school, typically observed in the oriental countries like China and Japan. But at the expense of feeling like they've lived a life they wanted? I am not too sure about that. We have traded our free time for studying, PE/Sports for tougher courses, leisure for clubs and activities. All this comes at a toll of the individual. Some can't stand it at some point and give up, others burst into flames and go out along the road while the remaining continue on.

Like the suicides of Japanese Grummer mentioned, there has got to be a reason to why incidents occur that reaches rates beyond all nations in the world. Frankly I am going to lean on an edge and state it is all interconnected one way or another by western influence and the motives of their own native countries.

It must be another story for children with biological parents of different races - cue families of Bruce and Linda Lee, Steve & Jean Chu, Hispanic-americans, so on. They must distinguish between sides whether to align with a western or eastern concept to their lifestyles.
 
Amy Chua Is a Wimp
Sometime early last week, a large slice of educated America decided that Amy Chua is a menace to society. Chua, as you probably know, is the Yale professor who has written a bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style.

Chua didn’t let her own girls go out on play dates or sleepovers. She didn’t let them watch TV or play video games or take part in garbage activities like crafts. Once, one of her daughters came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made the girl do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained her supremacy. Once, her daughters gave her birthday cards of insufficient quality. Chua rejected them and demanded new cards. Once, she threatened to burn all of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly.

As a result, Chua’s daughters get straight As and have won a series of musical competitions.

In her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chua delivers a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities.

The furious denunciations began flooding my in-box a week ago. Chua plays into America’s fear of national decline. Here’s a Chinese parent working really hard (and, by the way, there are a billion more of her) and her kids are going to crush ours. Furthermore (and this Chua doesn’t appreciate), she is not really rebelling against American-style parenting; she is the logical extension of the prevailing elite practices. She does everything over-pressuring upper-middle-class parents are doing. She’s just hard core.

Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals (swimmers are often motivated to have their best times as part of relay teams, not in individual events). Moreover, the performance of a group does not correlate well with the average I.Q. of the group or even with the I.Q.’s of the smartest members.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths.

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions?

These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time.

So I’m not against the way Chua pushes her daughters. And I loved her book as a courageous and thought-provoking read. It’s also more supple than her critics let on. I just wish she wasn’t so soft and indulgent. I wish she recognized that in some important ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library. And I hope her daughters grow up to write their own books, and maybe learn the skills to better anticipate how theirs will be received.
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what is going to happen in the next few years when millions and millions of chinese men realize they cannot get married?
 
inmate23 said:
that is the right way to parent
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I disagree! I think it is way too strict! You're only a kid once, and should be able to have some fun and not be molded into some person to made your parents happy! I would had told my mother to get lost if she tried to this to me.
 
whatdidyousay! said:
I disagree! I think it is way too strict! You're only a kid once, and should be able to have some fun and not be molded into some person to made your parents happy! I would had told my mother to get lost if she tried to this to me.
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just a question to keep in mind - do you want your kid to live a successful life - better than yours or.... a mediocre life with constant worrying over paying bills?
 
Beowulf said:
That would be barbaric. They will probably try a new society first, where the women are communally shared. The war will be from the women, most likely.
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Yes, it is a barbaric solution but it's not out of the realm of possibility. It's a barbaric solution to what some might deem a result of a barbaric law that limited one child to each family, resulting in more boys than girls surviving infancy.

War traditionally balances out the male/female ratio.

BTW, you don't find a society that communally shares its women to also be barbaric?

Interesting topic for a novel, eh?
 
'Tiger Mothers' leave lifelong scars - CNN.com
(CNN) -- When CNN called me this week to see if I'd share my thoughts on the backlash surrounding Amy Chua's Wall Street Journal article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior," I told them I would have much to say. You see, I was raised by two tigers.

My Chinese father and Vietnamese mother personified the parenting style advocated by Chua. Chua's January 8 article -- based on her new memoir "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" --unleashed a firestorm of criticism for its unabashed assertion that the harsh stereotypically Chinese style of parenting is superior to that of the West.

I received more than 1,000 emails from fans, family, and friends the day Chua's article ran. When I finally had a free moment to read the article (writing isn't my day job), I was briefly overwhelmed by a visceral, gushing panic.

Tiger Mom: I'm not backing down

You see, growing up in a home like Chua's was no piece of cake, and although I'm close to 40 now, I still bear wounds that haven't healed.

I believe that Chua's abusive parenting is motivated by her own unhappiness. How do I know this? My father told me so. He's the man whose tiger-infused parenting produced the catch phrase that became the title of my memoir, I Love Yous Are for White People.

The only difference between Chua's and my father's parenting technique is that Chua never laid a hand on her daughters (as far as we know).

Chinese Mom: American 'Tiger Mother' clueless

All the same, Chua's modus operandi is to keep her daughters in check via the emotional mind game -- brain-washing, derision, negative reinforcement, and reverse psychology.

Writing I Love Yous Are for White People helped me to cope with the wounds the tigers' claws left behind. Since its release I've met countless others who bare similar scars.

A 'Tiger Mother' rebuttal from across the ocean

All my young life, my parents were quick to remind me of my stupidity. Their burning desire to see me achieve at any cost resulted in the same belittling imparted by Chua on her daughters. My parents were particularly preoccupied with my lack of progress in school.

Fixated on the idea that I was a slow learner, they confused my cautiousness with a lack of desire, and my need for affection as the wants of a spoiled American brat.

In telling me that I was a stupid, worthless, waste of space, they believed they were spurning me on to do great things. Like Chua's daughters, they didn't allow time with friends, and no matter how hard I worked, or how dutifully I obeyed their commands.

It was never enough.

When the mind games -- and even beatings -- didn't make me smart enough, my parents resorted to an ancient Chinese "cure" for my stupidity. One Saturday morning when I was in third grade, they sat me down at the kitchen table and plopped a throbbing, round lump of pink flesh the size of a softball onto a plate in front of me. It landed with a splat. I knew it was meat, but nothing I'd ever eaten before.

The oblong hunk of flesh was a cow's brain, and my parents made me eat one every weekend for a year. I didn't get any smarter from the effort.

Three years ago, during a family gathering, my father confessed regret about his choice in parenting. I didn't know what to say. The damage had been done.

I feel for Chua's daughters and imagine they'll have similar conversations with her one day. Chua doesn't seem to wonder if her tiger techniques are overboard, and neither did my father while I was young. He never asked if the abuse was unwarranted, and never questioned whether isolating me from the world was the best way for me to learn how to maneuver in it. In his mind, he had done the right thing.

Now that her parenting has been subjected to intense public scrutiny, Chua has gone on the defensive, saying that the Journal article got it all wrong and her book is really about discovering the error of her ways.

Of course, she also went on the Today Show and said that, if she was given the opportunity to do it all over again, she would, "basically do the same thing."

Not exactly the words of a reformed tiger.

Only by seeing me as an adult, taking a nurturing, accepting approach in rearing my children, did my father realize that there is a better way.

Now in my mid-thirties, I'm sure I appear successful and happy on the surface. I'm a published author, a successful executive, and I have a Ph.D. in psychology.

In spite of this, my parents' approach failed. I'm torn to pieces on the inside.

I've been through countless hours of psychotherapy, and my lack of self-worth beckons me to rely on alcohol to numb the pain.

I should be chasing my dreams, not chasing pain.

Children need their parents' love and acceptance in order to develop real self-esteem. Belittling children sends the message that they are not worthy of love and support -- as do mind games, emotional abuse, and tight-fisted control.

This message lasts a lifetime. I still question every day if I am, indeed, stupid. I didn't even raise my hand in class until graduate school because I honestly believed that a moron like me has nothing worthy to say.

If I could say one thing to Amy Chua, it's that I would trade every last bit of my success in life to live without the deep wounds given to me by a Tiger Mother.
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