• defense of western parenting (水城百事)

by 999, Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 10:49 @ 999

Are U.S. Parents Too Soft?

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By John J. Edwards III

Erin Patrice O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal
Amy Chua with her daughters, Louisa and Sophia, at their home in New Haven, Conn.

How do we motivate our children to succeed in school, and in life? It’s a fundamental question that animates every parent’s juggle, and there are as many answers as there are families. Amy Chua, author of the new book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” shares her own forceful, unyielding answer in an excerpt published in Saturday’s Review section.

Near the beginning, Ms. Chua writes, “Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.”

Ms. Chua says that being a “Chinese mother” doesn’t require being Chinese, but it does require ignoring most of what parenting has come to mean in upper-middle-class Western societies. Where Western parents obsess over a child’s self-esteem and couch criticism in only the most oblique and supportive terms, Chinese parents “assume strength, not fragility,” and thus deploy insults and pressure with abandon.

“Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, ‘Hey fatty—lose some weight,’ ” Ms. Chua writes. “By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of ‘health’ and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.” (Interestingly, in China, books that encourage parents to nurture their children’s independence and confidence, as opposed to focusing exclusively on high academic achievement, have grown increasingly popular, as we’ve posted about before.)

A centerpiece of Ms. Chua’s excerpt is her tale of teaching her daughter Louisa, known as Lulu, to play a difficult piano piece at age 7. Lulu struggles with the different rhythms required for each hand in the piece, finally tearing up the sheet music in frustration; Ms. Chua tapes it together, laminates it and forces Lulu back to the keyboard. As the battle rages, she eventually tells Lulu “to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic,” which draws a gentle rebuke from the Western parent in her own household, her husband, Jed. Ms. Chua, undeterred, goes back to work on Lulu, through dinner and into the night, with no water or bathroom breaks. Finally, Lulu succeeds, leading to a joyful, snuggly night at home and, weeks later, a brilliant recital performance.

In sharp contrast to Ms. Chua’s philosophy is the cult hit documentary “Race to Nowhere,” made by a parent, Vicki Abeles, who was prompted to shoot the film after her daughter started having stress-related stomachaches. The book features boys who take leaves from high school because of the intense pressures, girls who suffer stress-induced insomnia and other maladies, and rampant cheating, as students struggle to keep up, according to a New York Times feature about the film. “When success is defined by high grades, test scores, trophies,” a child psychologist says in the film, “we know that we end up with unprepared, disengaged, exhausted and ultimately unhealthy kids. ”

My wife’s and my own experience with our 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son is between the extremes, for now. We encourage academic achievement (and I chafe at the current pedagogical practice of not correcting our first-grader’s spelling), but we’re hardly taskmasters for perfection. And when our son, who has showed early promise at tennis, got tired of formal lessons, we let him drop them rather than, say, call him lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Ms. Chua will be taking readers’ questions Thursday on the Review section’s new blog, Ideas Market. Have your say here first, readers: What do you make of the rigorous methods of the “Chinese mother”? Have you tried such extraordinary strictness with your own children, or do your concerns run more toward those of “Race to Nowhere”?