Why Chinese Mothers are Not Superior (from a female Chinese engineer)

One of my favorite MeFi comments on the original op-ed:

Dear Asian-Americans,

Thanks for taking over from us that stereotype of the overachieving, uncreative grind! Feel free to hand it off to someone else next generation. Should be pretty easy, since we're planning to pass you control of the media.

Love,

The Jews

http://www.metafilter.com/99339/Why-Chinese-Mothers-Are-Supe...

I read that WSJ article and had it clanking around in my head for a few days... I was countering it with some of the 'free-range' parenting styles you read about.

The most valid insight of the article was that some things (ie - violin, number theory, LISP, organic chemistry) are inherently hard and require discipline to get through the 'rote-learning' boring parts. The 'touchy-feely', "let's make math interesting" style of parenting/ teaching misses this. There is something to 3 hours of violin vs 45 minutes and 2 hours of TV as a reward...

I am no 'Chinese Mom' but see that this style of parenting is best for a kid who has certain proclivities. If they have an impulse towards music it is important for them to push them selves past the drudgery of practicing scales onto real accomplishment.

If the kid hates music then drop it and find something else. But push them enough so that they understand that if they work through the initial tough part some real beauty lies ahead.

Pinker puts the number around 10% as I remember. And, yes, he's aware of all the qualifications that attend such a crude number.

The ability to talk is obviously a significant trait. But it is not an extraordinary one. Everybody uses language in some form (a subject in which Pinker is strongly versed.) What language you speak is decidedly less significant and something most parents don't get to choose. I'd be surprised if the differential impact among parents on this point was even 1%. Most kids don't end up speaking like their parents. They end up speaking like their peers.

Dropping a kid on her head or locking her in a closet for her teenage years (with or without a violin) are obvious ways a parent could have a more extraordinary impact on her child's development, but, happily, they are not very typical.

Harris and Pinker's point is that parents have a pretty perfunctory role in a child's development (feed, protect, provide the rudiments of cognitive development) and much less influence than most people generally suppose (probably, most of all, parents that think they are having an impact). What influence they do have is regularly mixed up with genetic characteristics that the child has inherited.

Chua's argument seems to reinforce the point: to move the needle requires draconian measures.

I am Chinese and grew up in China. although I wasn't subjected to such parenting style growing up, I have many friends who were. now we are at the age when we are beginning to have kids. for what it's worth, all my friends swear that they'd never put their kids through what they went through. unanimously they hoped for a happier childhood for their children, "like those children in America", even if it means less career success and (Heaven forbid!) less virtuoso-ness with a Western instrument.

I suspect by the time their kids reach school age, some of that parental competitiveness would return, but so far the evidence is clear which way the pendulum is swinging.

I have a feeling that this article is just product of our time, in which the sole remaining superpower of America suddenly realizing China is hot on its heels -- a fear that I think it's largely blown out of proportion. As a reaction there arise all this interest in China, including our parental style. I remember reading Gladwell's book "Outlier" in which he attributed math abilities to Chinese ancestors growing rice and not wheat. seriously? Such farce is more telling of the changing balance of power than parenting styles having anything to do with said change.

On a similar note, we Chinese have been interested in how Americans raise kids for decades. the thinking goes, surely you guys must be doing something right to hold your position in the world for so long.

That's a lot like how abuse works: cut off from any social reality outside the abuser's, you come to think you deserve it; being abused becomes normal.

Reading that WSJ article made me angry, because it's obvious that's what she's trying to do. She wants something from her daughter (probably doesn't even herself know what), is abusing her until she gets it, and cutting her daughter off from any outside support so she'll put up with it.

She said that she gives praise and affection only as a reward for getting good grades. Of course that works; the motivation to do anything to get love from your parents is incredible.