"Chinese" Mothers

Yesterday, I saw this opinion piece titled, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior".  I was horrified.  Amy Chua's description of Asian parenting tactics are definitely not unheard of, but the way she boasted about how she pushed her daughter to unbelievable limits just so that she could learn how to play "The Little White Donkey" amazes me.  This kind of stuff is usually what I heard from fellow classmates at Chinese school when we played a game of "Who's got it worst?" and as far as I recall, Asian parents don't exactly boast about their coercion tactics at dinner parties (though they definitely do share).

But I must admit, after the initial shock of the essay, Amy Chua has some good points.  Particularly, she makes a point how Western parents feel that children are not indebted to them but Chinese parents do.  Till reading that, I thought everyone feels indebted to their parents!  Also, though I hate to admit it, I feel she's sort of right when she says:

Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

Now I got it worse than the average white kid, but I didn't get it nearly as bad as a typical Asian kid.  My father always took it easy on me (I think it's cause I'm the youngest one and male) and though my mother did push me pretty hard when I was in 1st and 2nd grade, the pressure waned off (family troubles).  Still, I can sympathize with Chua's point because there were times when I pushed myself academically farther than I thought I could go, and when I achieved success, it was the most gratifying feeling ever.

In college, to get my math degree, I took two courses with schedules that conflicted each other.  I was a sophomore then and it was my first math class (Linear Algebra) since spring of my high school senior year, so my math was very rusty.  The math professor was both a blessing and a curse; he didn't take attendance nor cared if you showed up for class, which helped when I skipped class to go to the other course, but he also didn't check problem sets, went through the material extremely fast, and weighted the three tests 25%, 25%, and 50% of our grade.  To be brutally honest, he was a bad teacher.  At the end of each lecture I had pages full of notes with exactly what he wrote on the board, but he never covered basics like matrix multiplication so I had no idea what was going on (don't worry, since then I've learned how to multiply matrices).  To make things worse / to save money, I never bought the textbook either.

I was determined to get straight A's that semester though, so I spent a ton of time at the library to study off the one copy of the textbook on file.  Eventually, the material turned into a piece of cake and I remember flying through four or five chapters the night before my final. I'm proud to say on all three tests I scored a few standard deviations above the average, earning myself an A (ok, I'll confess -- the average was around 60 each time).  In the other conflicting course, I got an A- (messed up on the final); I was so happy to get my grades that semester.

I suppose Asian parents and Western parents are not too dissimilar.  I mean, I believe every parent wants to see their kid do their best, but I feel that Chinese parents maybe have higher expectations.  I know if I ever have kids that I'll have high expectations for them because I know a B isn't that hard to get and if you're really motivated, you can probably get the A.

The way to exact that motivation though, is where things get dicey and where Western and Eastern thoughts diverge.  Most Asian parents use the stick, hanger, pots & pans, etc, along with what Chua mentions, verbal degradation to motivate their children.  I think this is where a lot of first generation Asian-Americans will differ.  For example, Chua, who was raised in the US, seems to have shed the practice of spanking her children in favor of just verbal degradation (what a softie!) and from my experience, most first generation Asian Americans don't believe they will spank their children but will still have extremely high expectations for them.  Verbal degradation may not sound much better, but if I think about what I would say to myself when I was a child, I'd probably throw out terms like "lazy" too.

Anyways, this article really hit home for me.  I give Chua credit for her overall message, but I must say, she's also a bit crazy and I hate how she put off all these ridiculous stereotypes such as, "If a Chinese child gets a B — which would never happen — there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion."  I suppose you do what you gotta do to promote a book. Oh and below is my favorite depiction of Chinese mothers :-D.