The timing could not have been more ironic. The day I returned from visiting my son in China I found a slew of controversial stories, everywhere from The New York Times to the Today show, about Amy Chua’s new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” in effect a how-to guide for Western parents who want to raise “math whizzes and music prodigies.”
The gist: Chinese moms are tough on their kids and produce the most successful students as a result.
For anyone who missed the dust-up, Chua is a Chinese-American who is a professor at Yale Law School. Her theory is that for kids to be good at anything, they have to work hard, and that’s something they simply won’t do on their own, “which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.” Western parents, she feels, fail here, by being too indulgent and letting their kids give up too quickly. Her parenting tactics, in contrast, include threatening to burn her children’s stuffed animals, making her daughters stand outside in the cold, and forcing them to go to bed without dinner until they accomplish the goals she has set — among other approaches that are likely to make many moms cringe. She has also accused her daughters of being “lazy, cowardly, self indulgent and pathetic,” not to mention, “garbage.” She never permitted her two daughters to attend sleepovers, have play dates, watch TV, play computer games, or get any grade less than A.
In return, Chau has been called “mean,” “a bully” and “abusive” in the press.
This topic hit home for me for a number of reasons. First, not long before my trip, I’d read the news reports that students in Shanghai had outperformed the rest of the industrialized world in standardized exams in math, reading and science. Second, my son went to a specialized high school (any Bronx Science alums out there?), to which entry is strictly based on test scores, and a very high percentage of the kids were Chinese. I vividly recall him saying to me more than once about his Chinese classmates, “mom, they’re just smarter” and my replying “no, their mothers just make them work harder” and wondering why I couldnt bring myself to do the same.
Chau says that her children’s happiness is her primary goal and that her intense, some would say excessive, focus on achievement is her way to help prepare them to find fulfillment in life.
What do you think? Is Chuan’s approach the best one, if it results in academic and professional success? Does that kind of success lead to happiness? And if so, why don’t American parents exert the same kind of pressure and have the same expectations?
What is the right way to parent — does anyone know?
Chua does go overboard to the point of being abusive, but parents need to be tougher and stricter with their kids. As someone who was raised by two over-indulgent parents, I wish they had been a lot harder with me when it came to my studies. However, I suppose that the attitude they took was mostly due to how they were raised–strict parents who harped about the value of good study habits.