You've probably seen or heard how Chinese kids that get straight A's in school, play the piano like a pro, and start prepping for med school in kindergarten. But how do they get to be so ambitious ... so driven?
Well, it's because Chinese kids have Chinese mothers. Amy Chua explains why Chinese moms are superior in scorched earth, no holds barred, extreme child-rearing techniques:
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% 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% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams. [...]The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—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, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
Amy - a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," a book about raising children the Chinese Way - explains the 3 big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets in this intriguing article in the Wall Street Journal.
See if you agree: Link (Photo: Erin Patrice O'brien/WSJ)
I am not sure at all that here in France or there in Germany it works the same way. Parents can get much more exigent, depending on how they were raised.
Let's address a few things:
1. Children raised with more academic pressure have less opportunity for creativity. Sure they may practice "creative" hobbies like musical instruments (indeed many Chinese/Taiwanese parents consider musical ability essential to being well-rounded, and of course it does have benefits), but the focus is definitely on meeting expectations and not on artistic or creative exploration.
Although I can't prove it, I think it's VERY reasonable to assume that there is a connection to the "shanzhai" and knock-off culture in Chinese industry and the culture of mental rigidity surrounding Chinese education systems and beliefs about child-rearing.
2. Corporal punishment is often considered acceptable in Chinese/Taiwanese families. Of course no one can make an objective judgement about the morality of beating one's children, but that's exactly my point. It's subjective. Just like rigid domination of a child's academic behavior is subjective, thus the PREPOSTEROUSNESS of saying one way is "superior" to another.
3. Amy Chua so blatantly lumps together and makes presumptions about the "norms" of Western parenting, it's honestly astonishing that anyone could take it seriously. Oh right, silly me, I forgot that Western parents all have fat kids because we're too sissy to be mean or abusive. What was I thinking.
4. Chua acts like Chinese parenting creates more successful children, but it's absolutely (and rather idiotically) overlooking the facts that-
A: MANY IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR FAMILIES IN THE U.S. HAVE A CULTURE THAT ENCOURAGES HARD-WORK.
B: TONS OF CHINESE PEOPLE (in China) GET BAD GRADES, DO DRUGS, ARE CRIMINALS, ARE CONTINUOUSLY DESTITUTE, etc. etc. etc.
This whole thing reminds me, horrifyingly, of Ann Coulter. "Let's saying something really polemic, borderline racist, and totally mindless, so that I can sell my crappy book and make a lot of money." Woohoo. Please people, think before you buy that book, and think before you accept some bombastic, pretentious person's beliefs (even if they have a J.D. or PhD).
If anyone would like to defend this foolishness, feel free to email me at hello@anopencircle.com, or leave another comment here. I'm committed to doing my best to prevent the world from getting any dumber.
Well said. My thoughts (mostly, yours were much better formed) as I read it.
Unlike the human rights challenged Chinese, sports, dating, creative thinking, freedom of expression was also encouraged with the same "best or nothing" type attitude.
Although I believe the concepts started a long time ago in a galaxy far far away....
"do, or do not. there is no try."
Also: personal experience time.
Of all the Chinese or half-Chinese kids I grew up with, only one was ever pressured this way by her mother. It got so bad that she would have panic attacks when she wasn't top of her class; she developed deep psychological issues due to the pressure in college and eventually cut all ties with her family.
But she is a vet, so that parenting must have worked.
I am a hippie. I want my kids to be free, love peace and people. At the same time they need to do their homework and graduate, with honours if possible.
Second, "balance" is subjective. If an extreme amount of time to practice piano is 8 hours a day, then Amy Chua's 3 hours is the "balanced" option.
It's funny how a "balanced" approach is coincidentally the same as what you're already doing.
Public school there is ferociously competitive.
I am Chinese, as are many of my friends. I went to a 'selective school' for high school, which offer places to 'academically inclined' students, and 80% of us were Asian. My parents had always made it clear that not going to University was not an option - it's quite simply a compulsory part of ones education. I always had tutoring as a child and when I started to tutor, my students were all Asian. Slight difference with my parents was that my brother and I did sports as well as the academic stuff, so it was a rather busy childhood.
And yes, my mum calls me fat! My western friends find it completely unthinkable that my mother would say that to me.
I think part of the problem also lies in the fact that we have, as a society, tried very hard to objectively measure everything - progress ,creativity and personality. This is simply not possible or desirable.
And the effect of this has been that certain folks go totally overboard, giving it way too much importance.
It was my dad who was the one who constantly nagged about my academic performance and my weight not my mum; a thing he does now even though I'm all grown up :)
That all said I don't think Chinese parents are superior - they're just different from 'western' parents because of the upbringing and culture they have. It is perfectly acceptable to talk about a person's weight and how much a person makes from their job on the first meeting with someone which is something that is a big 'no no' in other cultures.
A side note is when 'Chinese' and 'Western' is used they are incredably large generalisations. Shanghai's norms and customs are different to Hong Kong's and Hong Kong's is very different to Taiwain so to say 'Chinese' is to cover a huge group of people. This of course, goes the same for 'western' cultures.
@Le Putsch - I normally think of French and Germans as 'European' but that could be just me :)
Not every Chinese or French or German person turns into a brilliant human being with nothing but good qualities. You can go to the best schools and still be a jerk. You can also go to a mid-level school and still be a success. Whatever.
What if this approach were to be widely adopted by parents of all cultures, so that two thirds of the students had parents demanding they be "no. 1"? Only one student would reap the family praise of achieving that status, while the rest would be degraded as "garbage" for the rest of their lives.....
My mother is Korean and def wasn't afraid to tell me I needed to lose weight. Hell, now she even tells my husband.
She could def be lumped in to this woman's generalizations, except replace Chinese w/ Korean.
And guess what I did whenever I got pushed? Rebelled rebelled and rebelled some more.
this does a huge disservice to the asian community - i especially hate how she lumps all asian groups as chinese.
every family is different, but my mother was very much like chua herself. my eldest sister is schizophrenic and another has bipolar disorder. i'm not drawing any conclusions between my crazy mom and the mental health of my sisters, but her rigidness and incessant calls for perfection definitely exasperated their conditions.
There seems to be a weirdly pervasive misconception in our (American) culture that creative pursuits spring out of leisure, not hard work. But you can rest assured that Michelangelo spent very few days lounging in his condo, sipping pinot noir and staring at a blank canvas.
My sister teaches fashion design, and she's told me that a disproportionate number of her most successful students are Asian females. We can't draw specific cultural conclusions, but Chua's references to the Asian-American immigrant community's generalized work ethic hardly implies a suppression of creative outlets.
I refute that Chinese moms are better compared to 'westerners', if that was the case, the Chinese would not be migrating in hordes to the Canada and the US. They’d be great where they are. Creativity never comes from repetition and strictness. These are teachings of the past.
As a boy, my parents struggled to find, what I could do best and what I really wanted. They went all over art, literature, medicine, physics and history with me. They never forced me into what they thought was right. And I love, and respect them for it.
I won't comment any further as this article is a waste of time.
http://www.redtri.com/are-chinese-moms-superior
anyway, parents like her contribute to anorexia and bulimia. Her daughters may be able to take it but did she think of other children?
But try or wish as one might, you cannot ever get back your childhood. Riding your bicycle at 9:30 PM on that longest day in June and then catching a jar full of fireflies, spending snows days sledding, building snow forts and oddly-shaped snowmen, sleeping over (but mostly talking and laughing about the opposite sex) and if, you're lucky enough, feeling wonderfully sick to your stomach and tingly all over during that first teenage romance.
I think good parents can foster an environment where these once-in-a-lifetime experiences can happen as well as serious application to academics, music, sports, and other activities. I'm not saying it's easy, and a child may get off track now and then, but it can be done.
When those 18 years are up, they are over forever. There are no do-overs of childhood; to use another cliche, you cannot go home again. The best you can hope for is that you want to go home again.
If you want to be a pianist in a world-famous orchestra, or an Olympic ice skater, you almost certainly have to give up a good part of your childhood. And for the vast majority of kids, getting into an Ivy League school requires straight A's in hard classes and really good SAT scores. The cost in time, and maybe in peace of mind and soul, can be quite high, though.
Rosebud?