Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
This piece by Amy Chua is really remarkable.
"You just don't believe in her," I accused.
"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."
"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."
"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.
"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."
I 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, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.
I have no idea where I stand on this. My parents produced two kids who got good grades, for the most part. We were never forced, bullied or shamed into studying in the fashion Chua describes.
Not a day passes in which I don't feel guilty for not working hard enough.
Both of us failed to learn to play a musical instrument.
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Dec '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
All morning I have been completely addicted to reading the comments on this story in the WSJ.
The ones by Asian adult children of this style of parenting are heartbreaking. Most telling are the ones relating that after college never wanting to see their parents again, or allowing them near their own children. The hatred is palpable.
Edited on Jan 9, 2011 at 12:56pmDec '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
On reflection, my daughter, little Ms. Funeral Guy, ended up an Art Major at UC Santa Cruz, so maybe I'm not the best judge.
However, she does appear to have a fondness for her dear ol' dad. (Irredeemable right-winger that he is.)
Edited on Jan 9, 2011 at 2:21pmMay '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Well, it's done a couple of rounds among my facebook friends and has made it's way to Ricochet.
Not knowing much about Amy Chua, I did wonder for a bit if this wasn't some kind of Swiftian diatribe. However, that kind of upbringing, because of my background is not unfamiliar to me.
I myself was raised by a Chinese mother in a rather competitive environment like Singapore. My mother was very hands-on. However, I think she was wise enough, as an experienced teacher, to realise the individual limitations of her children. Thirty plus years on, I appreciate the strong work ethic that I've gained from this experience.
I personally have no issue with parents being hands-on and showing interest in their children's education but being Chinese, I am well aware of mixed motives that may drive parents to desperate measures. It's not that I don't think that Chinese parents aren't concerned for the future welfare of their children because they are... but there's often a fear of failure which they believe results in a loss of face.
(TBC)
May '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
(con't from before)
Now that I'm a Chinese mother myself, I find that parenting is a deeply emotional job. Often I have to untangle my emotions, as I am desperate to see my children do well academically from the reality that my children aren't mature enough to see the importance of thinking ahead. My eldest, who is 9, is a brilliant wordsmith but an underachieving math student. But she also has issues of concentration and focus which complicates matters when it comes to things she has less interest in.
Prof Chua, appears to believe that there's a one-size fits all approach to raising children and therein lies the problem. It also puts emphasis on coercive external pressure for decision making rather than developing healthy boundaries.
At the end of the day, I'm a Christian also and my number one priority in parenting is to guide our children to become God worshippers/Jesus followers.
"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
My wife is a music scholar and musician. In her experience many kids trained like this grow into technically flawless, artistically souless performers. When I was studying physics, at least half the graduate students were Chinese but maybe onle one or two of the faculty were. The Chinese we proficient at slogging through the technical details of a calculation but lacked the creativity and the social abilities to collaborate with their peers necessary to succeed as a working scientist. China has plenty of trained programmmers who produce nothing of interest in the world of software (Baidu, the closest they've got, succeeds because they cloned Google and have a cozy, subservient relationship with the ChiCom government). Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Chinese Mommy I'd say.
Jun '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Thanks for the new parenting paradigm. I'm already talking about "going all Chinese mother" on my kids.
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
I know what you mean.
The flip side is that, when you've got scientific creativity to spare, but you never learned in childhood the discipline of drilling yourself in routine calculation and memorization, you're going to suffer, too.
It's much easier to learn routine proficiency in your childhood than it is to learn it in your twenties.
Also, as a musician myself, I'd add that it's much easier to express the soul of the music with good technique.
Some of us are born with creative fire in our souls. This fire is best served by technical proficiency. If the fire is not there, but the technical proficiency is, is that so great a loss?
On the other hand, if the fire is there, but the technical proficiency is not, then there is a loss. And pain.
We do not choose inspiration. Inspiration chooses us. But we can choose increased proficiency -- or rather, our parents can help choose it for us.
May '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
I'm more concerned that those kinds of tactics would produce the next Jared Loughner than whether they might result in the next Yo-Yo Ma.
Dec '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Lilium: (con't from before)
"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" · Jan 9 at 3:02pm
Here, Here Lilium!
I read Mother Chua's article with horror. I asked myself the question, "Why?". Why feel the need to do that to your children? What possible reason could you have? Then it hit me. It can only be because she (and by her own extension other "Chinese mothers") is preparing her children, not for eternity, but for the here-and-now. A hyper-competitive world in which only the smartest and best-est will "win"! Win WHAT? Great, you can do algorithms in your head. You can play glorious things on either a piano or violin (as a former trombonist, I am in a huff!). Then what? Are you happy? Are you content? Is contentment in that environment even possible?
I suppose I should shudder that our up-and-coming enemy, China, could well be populated with the spawn of such loving parents. Man, will they be ticked!
May '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Amy Chua's story made me wonder if there were perhaps an interaction between Chinese mothers and Chinese children. It reminded me of the Freedman (1979) research on infants:
From: Daniel G Freedman, Human Sociobiology. Free
Press, 1979. pp 144-6
GROUP DIFFERENCES IN NEWBORN BEHAVIOR
... The first study was conceived when my wife who is Chinese, and I, in
the course of learning about each other and our respective families, began
to suspect that some character differences might well be related to
differences in genetic backgrounds.
...
.
Now, armed with our baby test, my wife, Nina, and I went in to San
Francisco to the hospital where our first child was born. ..
the Chinese were of Cantonese background, the Caucasians of northern
European origin; that the division of sexes in both groups were the same;
that the mothers were the same age; that they had about the same number of
previous children; and that both groups were administered the same drugs in
the same amounts during labor. Additionally, all families were members of
the same health plan and all mothers had had about the same number of
prenatal visits to the doctor and were of the same, middle-income bracket.
May '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
part2:
It was almost immediately clear that Chinese and Caucasian babies were
indeed like two different breeds. Caucasian babies started to cry more
easily, and once they started, they were more difficult to console. Chinese
babies adapted to almost any position in which they were placed; for
example, when placed face down in their cribs, they tended to keep their
faces buried in the sheets rather than immediately turning to one side, as
did the Caucasians. In a similar maneuver (called the "defense reaction" by
neurologists), we briefly pressed the baby's nose with a cloth, forcing him
to breathe with his mouth. Most Caucasian and Black babies fight this
maneuver by immediately turning away or swiping at the cloth with the
hands, and this is reported in Western pediatric textbooks as the normal,
expected response. However, not so the average Chinese baby in our study.
he simply lay on his back, breathing from the mouth, "accepting" the cloth
without a fight. I must say that this finding is most impressive on film,
and audiences have been awed by the intergroup differences.
May '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
part3:
Other, more subtle differences are equally important. For example, both
Chinese and Caucasian infants would start to cry at about the same point in
the examination, especially when they were undressed, but the Chinese would
stop sooner. Furthermore, if picked up and cuddles, the Chinese babies
would stop crying immediately, as if a light switch had been flipped,
whereas the crying of Caucasian babies only gradually subsided.
In another item, we repeatedly shone a light in the baby's eyes and counted
the number of blinks until he "adapted" and no longer blinked. It should
now not be surprising that the Caucasian babies continued to blink long
after the Chinese babies had stopped.
Jun '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
"Also, as a musician myself, I'd add that it's much easier to express the soul of the music with good technique. "
Midget, I can't condone abusing a child because the goal is good technique. I think Andrew is correct, and more often the result will be "technically flawless, artistically souless performers."
My daughter's show was fantastic, by the way. When we parted company she was off to NYC to catch her friends' band and then hit a late night session with musicians from a wide range of genres. You can't force that kind of musical passion. It develops over time, and is reinforced with each joyous musical connection and relationship the artist forms. It would be quickly exterminated if the development of technical proficiency were achieved through cruelty.
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
StickerShock:
Midget, I can't condone abusing a child because the goal is good technique...
I'm not condoning the use of child abuse to force good technique, either. Far from it!
As I said in my first comment, I found Chua's methods creepy.
But I can tell you that, without good parental support (which does include discipline -- and positive reinforcement -- but not abuse), early childhood talent may become a source of lasting grief rather than joy.
It is difficult, after all, for a child, who is so much at the mercy of his parents' decisions about use of family time and resources, to develop the necessary
when the parents communicate indifference or (as in my parents' case) decidedly mixed messages ("we'll nag you when you don't practice but even more when you do") towards their child's musical gifts.
That some children have the innate self-assurance to overcome parental indifference to or discouragement of their talents is obvious -- and more power to them. But what of children with equal talent and desire who are simply less self-assured? Should their parents not encourage them, with discipline where necessary?
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
What I am trying to say -- from my own experience -- is that, however poisonous "Chua style parenting" may be, "anti-Chua style parenting" -- where parents strive to "do the opposite" of pushing their children in a particular direction -- also has its toxicities. And is also largely an illusion:
Parents are going to push their children around some one way or another -- they are the parents, after all, and the children cannot help being molded by them. If parents consciously try (as mine did) to "not push their children", they will not succeed: at a certain point, they only substitute thoughtless or ill-considered pushing for thought-through or goal-oriented pushing.
Moreover, parents who (as mine did) discourage their children from focusing on a calling "too early" on the grounds that "one should be well-rounded" are not necessarily doing their children a favor:
Those years of childhood quietness, when a child is free -- in a suitable home environment -- to concentrate uninhibitedly on developing proficiency in his areas of talent, free of the distractions of family responsibilities, bills, and other cares, cannot be relived.
It is harder to make up for it later. Passion only compensates for so much.
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Both extremes of parenting clearly have their costs -- tragic in either case, I would argue.
Children lose something by not being pushed; they lose something else by being pushed too hard. Any way you do it, children lose something -- that's part of growing up.
What is fortunate is when a balance is struck so that those losses are minimized.
Or, since perfect minimization is probably as unattainable as eliminating the losses in the first place, it is fortunate when the losses come within some tolerable margin of being minimized.
Edited on Jan 9, 2011 at 7:32pmAug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
Midge, I agree with you completely. Children need to be taught self discipline and it is a parent's job to do that. Left to their own devices, kids will give up in things that they are good at and would in the end really enjoy doing. My plan for my own son is to apply the no quitting till you see it through rule. If he sings up for little league and wants to quit because he decide he "hates" baseball, fine, but not until the season is through. If he's taking piano lessons he can stop, but only after the next recital. Hopefully that will strike the right balance between pushing him to stick with things but not forcing him to do stuff that he genuinely has no interest in. Of course I can say this now because he's a baby. We'll see how this works out when he has something to say about it.
Dec '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
I read the article to my wife, mother, and three kids while we prepared dinner tonight. My wife and I have definitely had our differences regarding how hard to push and how to motivate our kids. I've been the one who tells them they have to walk to school (a very short distance) and my wife likes to drive them, as one small example. We had some good laughs coming up with "Chinese Momisms", scolding my mother (who has Alzheimer's) who had proudly announced she had completed her design with colored blocks on the dining room table. "That sucks!" I said, "get back to them and try again".
The one paragraph that I felt was right on for me was that kids need to learn not to give up. The success achieved after failing, and struggling is the epitome of self-esteem.
Aug '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
The Chua article is great. She’s engaging in hyperbole -- but only just -- so it’s provocative stuff.
I live in Hong Kong; I have a Chinese wife and an eight-year-old daughter , so I’m immersed in the ceaselessly-fascinating debate between western and Chinese education methods.
Chua is on the mark praising Chinese indifference to children’s ‘self-esteem’. Parents here hold an overwhelming future-time orientation that defers childhood fun and games for the promise of ‘the good life’ down the road. I don’t think this hurts kids nearly as much as the American obsession with boosting self-esteem.
But eventually it’s brutal to tell kids that success in any field is simply the product of hard work. It’s also distinctly unbiblical and unchristian. God gives many diverse gifts, and their distribution often seems unfair to us. To rebel against this truth is a sin at some point.
But at what point does a parent know a kid’s not just lazy – that she’s banging her head against the wall of God-given limitations and will no longer benefit from parentally-enforced perseverance? That’s the hard question.
Edited on Jan 10, 2011 at 12:55amOct '10
Re: Are Chinese Mothers Superior?
this is another example on why the chinese will dominate the world one day-militarily and economically.