Or is this woman dead annoying? (Dragon Mother article in Sunday Times)

[ragged]

Amy Chua article in the Sunday Times -- I can't link to the ST version, but I think this Wall St. Journal piece is good-as identical.

I'm in 3 minds about it:

1. It's just one persons's perspective
2. It's a blatent brag fest
3. It's factually wrong and perhaps even defamatory in so many ways. If 25% of humanity are ethnic "Chinese", they can't all be high achievers, can they?

Related discussion here, too.

Quite apart from the moral aspect, I would have thought that as a mother living in the West, you would have to be seriously misguided to drill your children in a way that is likely to give them very good grades at school but make university far harder for them and potentially put them at a disadvantage on the job market.

Ime Chinese students tend to have bigger problems at uni than any other group because they have not been taught to question or take initiatives; they are overrepresented in plagiarism cases.

Aoibhlinn, thanks for the reminder about the WS - such a great station and I always forget to listen to it!

Love Kahlil Gibran. Here is another of his:

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children."

I can believe that, cory, about not being able to take initiative. The Chinese and Japanese are similar because of COnfuscianism, but the Japanese have more of an emphasis on shame, so I doubt they'd plagiarise because of the shame factor- but the emphasis on shame and honour makes me uncomfortable because I'd prefer people not to commit an action because it's objectively wrong IYSWIM- (not shame, but remorse and conscience)

There's a place for collective concern in most cultures. It's why society works. On a micro level it's even why I think it's better people live with a good few others and their children so that there is more of a witness to home life as it were, a check and balance.

The interesting bit is where fathers and mothers draw their lines in terms of how they persuade or force children to get out of bed, go to school, do homework and the like.

in Japan they instill shame. So it's shameful to disobey your parents. It smacks of emotional manipulation to me, instilling the shame factor into a child, but it bloody works- the most non-confrontational way of getting a child to do something that I've ever come accross Embarassment is another as in "Aren't you embarassed at your behaviour; look at those people watching you"
But it doesn't get to the root of the issue, just covers it up

On a different level, it seems to be a little hubristic to write a book about the success of your parenting methods when your children are 15 and 13.

When the child is in their 30s is maybe the time to start drawing conclusions about outcomes, but the early teens is still very much a work in progress. What if they bomb their A-levels, or drop out of university, or decide they don't in fact want to be a partner in a Magic Circle law firm?

Very early days to make comment on the success of anything, I think, particularly with a child-rearing method that is so calculated to delay/deny independence and originality. At some point they will start leading independent lives, and the more they've been controlled at an early stage, the more likely they are at some point to react against it, particularly if they're surrounded by American individualistic culture rather than Chinese social norms. I think the same about some of my teenage children's friends who at age 16 are still not allowed to go to sleepovers or to Starbucks -- I want to say to the parents, "You do realise that in 2 years' time they can buy a round-the-world plane ticket and push off for a year without you, don't you think you need to give them a little bit of practice before letting them loose on the world?"

Polly I haven't yet read the book, but my understanding is that it is about her journey as a Mother, through this extreme period and out of the other side where she has to give up her methods because they are no longer successful with her youngest.

the book sounds fascinating, one way or another

The press are bound to have printed the sensationalist bits and that sells books. if she changed her methods that doesn't mean they didn't work. What works with children under 12 won't work with many teenagers. I think she's been extreme but I can see that methods do change having brought children up some now into their mid 20s.

It reads a bit like the UK mind set circa 11. I think my uncle was sent to boarding school at 4 because he was jealous of his younger brother and made to write with his right hand (he was left handed). NOw we wouldn't do that today in the West because of our understanding of human psychology. It seems as if they haven't reached that level of understanding yet in that culture. If you're into survival, having enough to eat and the like the question of someone's feelings or long term emotional hurt are neither here nor there so you can understanding some cultures not having the time to fuss about internal stuff if life is a day to day struggle to get enough food. then as that changes you can start to think about what is going on inside the head of the child and I don't know if the chinese new keenness on Freud shows they are moving to that stage (and of course anyone Chinese could strike me down and say they were and are more advanced than us but just having a different cultural perspective).