How do Chinese parents turn out music and math prodigies? Easy, says one mother in the Wall Street Journal. They're stricter, stress academic achievement more and don't let their kids get away with the stuff that Western parents do.
Amy Chua, a Yale professor, describes an incident of hair-tearing, screaming, full-out war in her house when she demanded her daughter play a piece of piano music correctly. The article has inspired more than 5,000 comments on the WSJ site, with good reason: it drives to the core of what parents believe about raising kids. (Chua has also responded to readers in a further article that - as I read it anyhow - seems to soften her message. It also points out that the title of the article was chosen by WSJ editors, not her. A piece in today's Sunday Times also describes how her method didn't work on one of her daughters.)
The story has generated loads of interest. Lisa Belkin in the New York Times's Motherlode blog agues that this "Chinese tough love" is simply the latest trend in parenting.
Do children simply need the hard-nosed motivation parents provide to be excellent? Do parents owe something to their kids or do kids owe their parents? Are Western parents too preoccupied with nurturing self-esteem instead of just assuming strength in their kids as parents from other cultures do? Is tough love the best way to raise accomplished, confident children? These and a whole lot more questions are raised by the piece.
I personally found the article a bit depressing, mainly because I struggle with settling on one philosophy for raising my daughter. I have high hopes that she'll succeed in one particular area (art) and we promote those activities at home and at school but we don't force her to do art projects when she doesn't want to.
I've seen how sometimes she takes criticism to heart and it seems to discourage rather than encourage her. I'm also aware that while I may think she'd have a great career in the arts, she may eventually want to be a vet or a scientist or whatever.
Sometimes we're very tough. Sometimes we are free and easy.
Finally, how much should I be centreing my life, my expectations and indeed a part of my self-worth around the life that my daughter leads?
Chua is starting from a very different cultural background and childhood experience than most Westerners. Should we just chalk it up to different strokes for different folks and feel fine about celebrating our emphasis on personal excellence and innovation with a more hands-off parenting approach?
Tell us what you think.
-- Jennifer Howze (www.jenography.net)
Photo credit: Aubrey C
