“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”;
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
How should you raise your child? Is there a right or wrong way of doing it? And so, what is the right way? Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, has written an article that was brought at the website of "The Wall street Journal" at January 8, 2011, named "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", where she gives us her opinion on the topic.
Amy Chua is a Chinese mother of two daughters and believes in Chinese way of parenting. She believes that discipline and expecting nothing less than perfection from your children, is the way happy and successful adults are created. In her article she explains why the Chinese way of parenting is the best and most successful one. Because she is married to a Westerner, she sees three big differences in the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, she claims that Western parents are too concerned about their children’s self-esteem and mentality. Her exact words are: "Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently. (LINE; PAGE). At some point this is a true statement; Western parents do tiptoe around their children, because they are afraid to harm their feelings or their self-wort. What she means with this statement is that if you act like your children are fragile, they will become fragile, but if you expect strength, they will show you strength. Chua says: "That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it." (LINE; PAGE). This way of showing you’re disappointed in your children is very far from the Western parental mind-set. Of course, if you are disappointed in your children you should just straight up tell them that you expect more from them and know that they can do better. But it seems to me, that Chua almost wants to make her children fear her, which I find horrendous and very old fashioned, because you should not fear your parents, but respect them, and that is not the same thing. You should be able to seek comfort and safety in your parents.
The next big difference in Chinese and Western upbringing is where the children are in the social hierarchy. Chua says that Chinese kids owe their parents everything, but the Western parents have a very different view, and she uses her husband who is a Westerner as an example: "It’s parents who foist life on their kids, so it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide for them. Kids don’t owe their parents anything." (LINE; PAGE). This is a widely spread opinion the Western world. It is a big culture shock. That type of social hierarchy, where the older you are the wiser and more respected you are, is not only Chinese but also Muslim, Jewish etc. culture. Chua may come in a bit strong when she claims that Chinese children owe their parents everything, but we could definitely learn something from each other’s upbringing, and to show a little more respect towards our elderly.
Chua then points out the last big difference between the ways of upbringing. "Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences." (LINE;PAGE). This is indeed a harsh statement, so Chua explains is with an episode from her own life: Her daughter was learning a hard piano piece, and eventually refused to play anymore, because she could not do it. Then Chua got mad and forced her to do it, and in the end her daughter learned the piece and could perform it perfectly. It is okay to push your children in to something because you know they can do it, and because you want them to improve, but you have to be careful not to keep them away from the things they like. If you have a desire for something and then are being kept away form that thing, the desire is only going to grow bigger, and someday the parents might end up with some vigorous reaction from the child. Again, this is very different from the Western mind-set, because the Western usually lets the child follow its dreams, where the Chinese claim that they know what is best.
In fact the Chinese parents believe that they take more care of their children than the Western do, because the Chinese won’t let them turn out as failures. Then on the other hand the Western thinks that the Chinese is frigid and cold, when they won’t let their children have a childhood. Even though Chua believes in the Chinese way of parenting, she says that there is a misunderstanding on both sides: "All decent parents want to do what is best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that." (LINE;PAGE). Actually Chua respects botch ways of parenting, but it is clearly that she thinks the Chinese mind-set is the way to do it.
Chua argues well for the reasoning behind her slightly provocative views on parenting, but she does not talk about the consequences of the Chinese way of parenting. She does not talk about what can happen when the children finds out that not every child is being raised so strictly. They might even resent her. Alsp she is keeping them away from everything social, like gym, play-dates and sleepovers. Later in life, when they are going to fx. job interviews they need a lot of social qualifications , and they will never learn them if they are being kept away from all that. There are consequences of the Chinese mind-set, just as there is of the Western.
Chua is a supporter of the Chinese mind-set, but she does not exalt it. "If a Chinese child gets a B – which would never, happen – there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion." (LINE ; PAGE). Here she uses humor and over-indulgence to engage the reader. Furthermore she engages us by backing up her personal story with statistics and surveys, and because of that it becomes more believable. She also engages the reader by making the slightly provocative headline "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". This headline makes us want to find out which arguments she has. She ends the article with a summarizing part where she shows the contrast between the Western and the Chinese way of parenting. She does not talk negatively about any of the ways, and that tells us that they can be equally as good.