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.

I am not infatuated at all. I read the responses anf gave my opinion, then I defended tha opinion, And if you'll note, I said some and a few, not all of the posters. The fact though that you think you can seperate her from her cultural background and only be accusing her as seperate entity sort of proves my point.

I stand by my opinion. Her entire book is about her parenting based on her culture. Isn't it a little arrogant for you to stste its nothing to do with her culture without even reading the book ?

Well, IMO she is using the excuse of her culture to be a bullying control freak. I did say I am sure that she is correct in saying that pushy parenting IS ingrained in Chinese culture so I'm not entirely sure how I was stating it is nothing to do with her culture? The intricacies of her parenting methods are down to HER, the individual, not her culture.

I did wonder, after reading this article, about the husband in all of this. I hope if I was yelling at the children, calling them 'garbage', making them practice whilst in tears or without eating or unable to go to the toilet, all to achieve my own goals of having very musical children, then my husband would call me on it. Why did he not say 'I think they could be in the school play' or 'why can't they have a friend over?' I think he's pretty culpable in allowing the level of control the mother had over the children.

You said you are criticsing her as a mother, and you couldn't give a crap where she come from. She comes from a family and a culture that practices that sort of parenting to a greater or lesser extent.
She didn't lick it off the grass did she?

But culture does influence massively the way you parent.

I am Italian and my parenting style IS different in so many ways - some personal/individual, some down to the way I was raised, and a lot of it cultural.

You can't split the two.

I do often wonder how it will pan out when my children are teenagers, as some of the differences will be very noticeable then.

Can we please take this article with a pinch of salt? No birthday parties/sleep overs etc...they are trying to sell newspapers.

I was brought up by pushy parents (one being Singaporean, the other a born-and-bred Londoner) and I was smacked, struck with a ruler, in tears doing extra maths, etc, etc...I will do the exact same to my kids.

As a child I wouldn't want to have extra maths teaching from my mother, but I never thought 'OMG, this is child abuse!' It was very obvious that the pushy attitude was for MY own good.

As an adult, I thank my parents immensely for doing with me as they did. Western children are lazy in comparison - the look of envy on the faces of other mothers was obvious to me even as a schoolgirl.

If I want to do it to my children, wasn't that abusive and damaging was it?

P.S. As for stemming creativity...I took read English at university and am now at law school. I wouldn't say I was damaged goods.

Well, I come from a culture where kids are NOT pushed by their parents interms of academia. I choose NOT to push my DS but choose to do it differently from my parents i.e not sit gawping at Emmerdale whilst DS struggles with reading etc. These are the choices that I am making as a mother. It's ridiculous to say that she isn't making her own choice wrt this. Most things that we do are dictated to us through what we know as our cultural norm' but we can still decide on the nuances of it. For example, my cousin is married to a Sikh lady. This is her second marriage as her parents arranged a marriage for when she was younger. However, they arranged the marriage on the proviso that if she was in any way unhappy, then she was free to leave without the pressure of bringing shame upon her family. This goes against what a lot of other Sikh faimilies do wrt arranged marriages. The individual can still make a choice. She is choosing to be exceptionally hard on her children.

Emy
Of course culture is important. But if you move out of that culture and into a different one you see that other cultures parent differently. My DH is German and there are cultural differences (rather like the Italians, the Germans insist on wrapping the children up in a thousand layers and are always incensed that my children go out to play with just a tshirt on).

It does not mean to say that you can hang on to methods that are simply abusive because of culture.

I would say that it is more acceptable to smack children in Germany than in UK. I have made the decision not to use physical violence on my children, not because of my culture but because everything I have read shows me that it is a) cruel and b) ineffective.

There seems to be the opinion that she is living vicariously through her children e.g. one poster said 'to accomplish my own goals of having musical children' [paraphrase]..

What makes you think she's doing it for her own benefit. She's a law professor at Yale! She doesn't need to make up for anything. She is doing this so her kids have the option of a better life or skill for themselves.

Yes, Spenguin, but I was brought up in an incredibly laissez-faire way, but also am very successful in conventional terms (if you rank going to Oxbridge, blah blah). The question is: a) could it be achieved by bright children without the ruler and the tears (my guess is yes by the truly bright, but not as many mediocre students would get through) and b) could it be achieved by all the Chinese students (obviously not) and what is the personal cost of this individually and as a society?

I don't doubt that she has knitted together a good tale with all the worst bits given prominence. But why would you want to do that?

"As a child I wouldn't want to have extra maths teaching from my mother, but I never thought 'OMG, this is child abuse!'"

That's because you didn't know any different. Very worrying that you are now planning physical violence on your own children In fact, you just sound awful altogether.

Well, her children didn't set the goals of learning the piano aged three for themselves, did they? Indeed, the second daughter resisted at that point, until the mother found enough bad things to hold over her til she submitted. Perhaps they will grow up grateful to her, but I think it's more likely that they grow up and write a tell-all book 'Living with the Dragon Mother' about their problematic and difficult relationship with a complete loon.

Bupcakes - er, I also said that EVEN NOW, I would still smack my children as EVEN NOW I don't consider being smacked a bad thing. Smacking me as a child worked best. I don't consider anyone who doesn't smack their children awful, so maybe you should just respect other opinions, hmm? Vindictive utterances are below the belt, but your prerogative is your prerogative.

The point you should have taken from what I said (and the bit you quoted) is that I don't have any psychological problems from being smacked, I don't think I have suffered a personal cost at all...ergo, how can it be deemed 'violence'...when it did me no harm?

Very typical Western attitude of calling smacking 'physical violence' - please, this is so nanny-state PC. It's not like I'm taking a red hot poker to anyone.

Has anyone considered that maybe this woman knows her children better than we do and there's a slight chance that she knows what's best for HER children? Perhaps she knew her youngest was just refusing to learn something for the sake of having a tantrum, but deep-down that wasn't really the case?

We're all making huge generalisations about a culture/method and, also, unfair assumptions about this woman and her family dynamic...undermining arguments on both sides.

You said your parents hit you with a ruler, Spenguin, and that you were planning on doing the same. You clearly have suffered psychological problems from being smacked; you are now a parent who will inflict pain upon your children to gain desired results. That's pretty farked.

Yes, us silly PC lentil-weaving idiots! Thinking it wrong to slap/hit children with mathematical instruments, what next? And it's deemed physical violence because that's what it is.

Just be careful what you write because smacking if it leaves a mark in the UK is a criminal offence and rightly so. But let's not make this a smacking theread. HOpefully children who are physically punlished these days have enough sense to record it on their phones and uploaad it to youtube so the awful parents who do it can be held uip to public opprobrium and we can rid the UK of it entirely.

Plenty of us had better upbringings and ended up more successful that these pushed children of course and that's because our culture is more advanced in terms of psychology. China has just been hit by Freud - craze. They are loving it. They are about 50 years beyhind us on things like that but they will catch up. It will all be fine.

Bupcakes - I plan on doing the same because I think it worked on and for me. If the kid doesn't respond to it, then fine, I'll use another method. No BFD.

Also, did I say how hard I was smacked? Did my mother make me bleed and break my fingers? Errrr, no. To me, there's no difference in what she did and placing (if you want to get technical) my child under false imprisonment on the naughty step...but that's not considered violent or abusive, is it?!

Overall Bupcakes, I don't think you know enough details about me or my psychological state to have such rigid and omnipotent opinions on me or my preferred parenting methods as you do.

Xenia - I agree. Smacking your child to the point of broken skin or actual physical abrasion is too much. Nothing wrong with a light smack though, IMO. Sometimes children just can't be reasoned with through words, so, you have to find something that does get through to them...and EVERy child is different.

If you're hitting with a ruler, you're hitting with intent or why bother using one?

I only know about you what you have told us here and that is that you got physically disciplined as a child but it has had no adverse affect on you. I'm no psychologist but the fact that you're so blase about hitting your children indicates differently. Would you tell a social worker/teacher that you'd resorted to hitting your DC with a ruler?

Smacking with a hand is also intent...but I bet most people wouldn't have as much of a problem with that, would they? So, sorry, but I can't accept the 'intent' line of argument.

I would have no shame in saying 'I smacked my child'. For me, it's no shameful thing. I have a more old school approach than you do. Perhaps you think I'm being blase because you imagine me cowering in the corner, bleeding and being traumatised, when, really, the context it would happen in was very different...as was the force exerted?

Just to set up a dichotomy - surely I would show evidence of psychological damage if I was so scared to ever smack my children? i.e. I have haunting flashbacks to it that I resolutely fear doing the same to my own kids, IYSWIM?

Those who resort to physical violence in relation to their children even a smack tend not to be the better parents. Huge numbners of us don't smack children and produce lovely well behaved well educated children. Smacking is and will die out but the thread wasn't really about that. It was about the methods a parent might use to bring on a child.

What really comes out of the orignial article was the huge sexism of it. A totally univolved daddy and despite both of them working the mother doing it all. We dont' have that in Western culture as men and women raise children together which is much better. The Jewish father here presumably got quite a bit of peace as his wife was off all the time making the children work so perhaps it suited him. The children were brougth up Jewish I think. I can't remember the line in the article they got the faith of their father and their mother's chinese parenting culture or something like that, she wrote.

You can smack very lightly with a hand. That isn't the point anyway, I don't condone any type of smacking, with or without weapons.

So if you weren't traumatised with the smacking, what were you doing? Laughing about it? Had a little cry then hugged your parent? And FWIW, I'm pretty "old school". I instil respect for elders in my DC and he has a good sense of right and wrong. And I've achieved that without ever needing to hit him.

I have smacked my DS on occasion but it has been a loss of MY control and out of extreme frustration and I have felt terrible afterwards.

I do not see how we can say to our children, "Violence is wrong, don't hit your friends/sister/brother" then reinforce that warning with a smack.

The last time I smacked my son he howled, "Hitting is baaaaad, not allowed to hit".

If a 4yo understands that, why not an adult?

Xenia - Do they HAVE to go though Freud? Can't they go straight to modern psychology instead?