Update on Dragon Mother story

[Lamorna]

Unfortunately I can't give a link to the Sunday Times story today because you have to subscribe. However I thought it would be interesting to put three things, for those of you who thought there was nothing wrong with Amy Chua's pushy parenting.

1. In China the child is extension of self.
   
2. Her own parents, her mother in particular thought she was wrong. She said that things are different now and Lulu couldn't be forced, she had a different personality.
   
3. Things came to a head in an outdoor cafe in Moscow. Lulu had increasingly been making scenes in public (an absolute taboo for Chinese families) and she refused to try caviar. It became a battle of wills ending with Lulu saying that she hated the violin, hated her life, hated her mother and hated her family and that she was going to take a glass and smash it. Her mother dared her so she smashed it and said that she would smash more if she didn't leave her alone. Chua was the one to run off in tears and then go back and agree to change. Lulu took up tennis and once her mother realised she was very good she tried to take control again but had to back off, now she does interfere but surreptitiously.
   

It is agreed that Lulu is a wonderful pupil, polite and with a great work ethic, her mother moulded her this way but I wonder whether it was worth it!

[Janni]

Lulu didn't understand and sympathise with her mother's aims. She kicked and screamed to be heard. Most children want to feel they have a good mother, so it's not surprising that they don't condemn her.

[Summerbird73]

Crikey thats me told

I stand by my comments.

[lalalonglegs]

I don't think she's getting paid to brag - she's being paid for writing a very interesting and thought-provoking book and articles about it. I think it's also highly questionable to say that her children don't respect her: it's nonsense to say that because one of her children had a row with her, then they have no respect for her unless you are going to apply the same standards to "Western" parenting and say that any child who answers back to his or her liberal parents fundamentally lacks respect for them as well. Chua's children may have found her methods extreme but they do seem to understand and sympathise with her aims and, perhaps disappointingly for those of us who don't approve of her behaviour, they also seem to have justified it to a large extent.

[Summerbird73]

I read the NY Times link on this last night which made me and now this. The card story is equally but good for Lulu for standing up to her.

What gets me is that this woman is writing books, newspaper articles et al and basically getting paid for bragging about abusing and humiliating her children.

God it is like the reverse psychology of those novels that adults write about their abusive childhoods.

I also agree that she is so goddamn patronising about 'western parents' I know how to raise my child to respect me and others - it seems that (despite Lulu's bravery in answering back) she cannot raise her children to respect her

Very sad and infuriating..

[Litchick]

Well I'm a firm beleiver in leading from the front.

I don't ask my children to do things I don't do myself.

So I work hard at my job...which is easy for them to see, there being a physical product, and I explain how much application it takes and that it's not all fun.
They see DH playing his instruments.
They see us both reading.
We don't use FB.

Once your children are aware there is no hypocracy involved it becomes much easier, I think.

Although, of course you still have to nudge and nag and check they've done what they're meant to do from time to time.

[Xenia]

Very true and presumably immigrants come to a country like the US or UK or even China because they prefer it to their own or else why are they there? Although there's nothing wrong with working hard where you move to. I am sure people usually do - you tend to move abroad to get a better life in terms of material prosperity for many people (unless you're moving to lie on a beach in Goa for the next 30 years intending hardly to move a muscle).

I agree with LC over academic schools though - lots of parents whose children can't get in as they aren't clever enough suggest those schools are pressured when they aren't. They try to ensure the children some of whom have dragon parents or even simply internal issues do too much.

What is always worthy of debate is what are the best means to ensure children do go to school, do do their home work, do do their music practice et given most children don't jump to those things with enthusiasm. Some parents will say well we beat them with belts until they are so scared they do it.Others will say I didn't get any exams at school and did find so I won't even make them go to school if they don't want to and most of us are somewhere in the middle with often both parents having different views.

[cory]

Agree with Xenia that this may not be indicative of "Chinese culture" as such, but partly to do with some very rapid changes in recent Chinese history which the Chinese are still adjusting to. Plus the natural stresses on an second generation immigrant mother.

In any case, it does seem to be very much about how you define success. As an immigrant mother myself I define success partly as teaching my children to integrate into the society they happen to be in, with a view to making a useful contribution to that society; I would rank this as highly as any personal success on their part, in fact I would think of it as personal success. This woman seems to have very scant respect for the society she finds herself in- it's all me, me, me or rather my family, my family, my family.

The husband sounds wet. And why does he put up with her speaking so derisively of American teenagers in front of the children: they are half American? No way dh would let me get away with speaking like this about the British in front of my half-British children. It is as if that part of their heritage counts for nothing.

[Litchick]

Yes chinese children do perform well academically and are under represented in the juvenile offenders stats (will try to dig out a link).

So as a group the Chinese in the UK are doing something right.

Now I'm not advocating Dragon Mom's technique, but I do think many western families have gone too far the other way.

Tell anyone that your children do elite sports and you get a catbum face together with mutterings about your DC being exhausted.
Ditto attending academic schools. Immediately someone will jump in wittering about pressure as if all children spontaneously combust if they don't spend every free second having fun.

The other day there was a thread about after school activities and many posters were very admonishing of parents whose children did anything in the evenings except chill out.

[Xenia]

Yes, chinese children of all groups get the best exam results in the UK, better than any other including English. Often the mothers don't work out here so they are "100% child pusher". Of course not everyone is the same.

We have both worked full time and come home to help 3 children under 10 through homework and two different music instrument practice. Parents do that all the time but you don't have to be quite so nasty about it and as you say she seems to lose her temper far too much.

I'm not sure it's a Chinese moral ethic to get As though. I am sure their original philosophy was not quite that. Perhaps they just lost their way via communism and then consumerism, some not all. Generalisations are awful but it was she who made it "Dragon or Chinese Mother".

[ZZZenAgain]

I just know too few (as in no) Chinese families personally to judge how typical this is and I do know immigrant families from other backgrounds where the dc are expected to work very hard and do very well academically. And they do. However, what Chua describes is losing control over herself.

I admit freely that if I was working full-time as a Yale professor, presumably also writing various things for publication beyond that work, coming home and having to force my 2 children to do 3 hours of music practice each (and get it all right in the end), stay up all night hanging over them exhortating until they get there. Plus overseeing homework, revising for tests and I don't know what else that woman does, I would be worn out . I would crack, never mind the kids.

She starts screaming and yelling and insulting because her patience runs out and she is just at the end of her energy I think, rather than evil. It sounds to me like someone wound up so far as it goes. She said, didn't she, western parenting is lazy parenting (or I think she did) because so few of us are prepared to do that. Even if I could keep my temper and be patient right through, I honestly couldn't face doing that, I really couldn't. Maybe for a week but year after year?

Maybe a parent who is doing this kind of "Chinese parenting" without the screaming, insults, threats just putting that firm pressure on and doing hour after hour, day in , day out making sure their dc succeed on top of their full-time job is the superior parent in the end. I really don't know. I just haven't the energy for it.

Her dds do mention laughing with her about things and so on, there is another side to her. I think the root of her problem is she puts so much pressure on herself to engineer her dds' success that she just cracks under it. If you grow up only ever permitted to get As in everything, I don't think you can let go and be all relaxed as a parent, it is another sphere where you have to get straight As measured by the attainment of your dc.

Do many of these dc going through this kind of upbringing wind up unemployed, leave school without qualifications, go to prison etc I wonder? I always think of Chinese people as being very repectable, hard-working, law-abiding ditizens. If they are happy inside, I don't know but my impression is maybe they do turn out better than a lot of people iwth western parenting do. Right? Wrong?

[cory]

It's the motivation that seems all wrong to me. My parents took it as a natural thing that I would want to work hard and learn as much as possible, because the world being such an exciting place why wouldn't you want to learn about it. Which seems a bit different from desperately trying to learn for fear of being thought worthless if you fall slightly short of somebody else's performance.

I want my children to try hard for the joy of it. Not because of my screeching abilities. Though I agree with Xenia that sometimes it does take a little bit of pushing to get them started.

[Xenia]

What is fascinating is that there genuinely are huge numbers of parents out there like that all over the planet. If there were one it is not quite so bad. I have come across a lot and a lot oare children of parents who have moved countries and want them to do well.I remember being glad my boys had passed some test or other and one boy didn't dare go home. He's got B not A (mine had got C) so his parents were going to be very cross. He spent every break revising too.

There is a line to draw though for ever parent. Left totally alone most children wouldn't do a stroke and wouldn't get out of bed even to go to school so every hour most of us are having to decide where to draw that line, what to do we force, what do we let go.

[Curiousmama]

Janni I wouldn't even say borders it is

[Janni]

I've been feeling quite upset about this story today. I think some of what Amy Chua did to her daughters borders on child abuse and I cannot accept that the end justifies the means when it involves dominating and humiliating young children like this. Similarly to CheerfulYank, I vividly remember the hurt and humiliation when my father told me that my performance in a singing competition was awful. It just ruined singing for me.

[CheerfulYank]

I remember being 4 or 5 and my mother criticizing a drawing I had done...nothing mean, just "oh why are his arms there" or something and to this day I remember the sting. That card story makes me want to cry.

[mathanxiety]

Not everyone who is an immigrant has been faced with starvation in their home country though, and it's often those immigrants who have benefited from their home country's education system who land on their feet and launch their children to the top in the new country while it's more of a struggle for the children of working class immigrants who escaped grinding poverty at home. My fellow immigrant friends in the US whose children did very well had parents who were very bright and well qualified - for example my Russian friends were nuclear scientist and a professor of Russian literature back in Russia and their DDs did spectacularly well. No great surprise there. Just one example of quite a few.

In my own family my mum's generation was the first of her family ever to go to school beyond age 14, and most of my aunts and uncles graduated from university (some with postgrad degrees) despite growing up in a home characterised by kindness and loving encouragement , plus lots and lots of hard farm work by all. You don't have to sacrifice love for the sake of educational excellence. Unless you have a cruel streak, and you have decided to allow free rein to it in the name of giving your children a better life...

[Xenia]

I was thinking about her as I was there with 3 music practices of the children earlier after one got home late from a school club and the other did his homework.

I live in a borough whichi s 18% hindu and very very mixed with all tyhpes of children in the private schools. only 2 children i ncluding mine in my daughter's class had 4 English b orn grandparents - in other words many masny of the children in these very competitive schools have children of parents or grandparents from abroad and they work very very hard. I get local taxis and the drivers who are quite bright and first generation want their children to be professionals. So that's part of it. Another part is if you have hardly been able to eat that can make you think stuff like hurting a child's feelings is a ridiculous concern - you want them to be able to survive and eat and buy food and if your mind set is survival then you won't be worrying about child psychology.

[lalalonglegs]

That's a good point, ninedragons. How much of it is her perception of how Chinese parents behave - having only her own parents to base this upon and various myths/stereotypes about the rest?

All the extracts and interviews that I have read over the past few days focus very much on Chua asserting that this is the way other immigrant parents behave but I wonder what her evidence is for this? Is it just when she sees a high-performing child of Chinese/Indian/Mexican/Ugandan heritage she imagines the parents must be using her methods? I'm not sure it's the sort of conversation that you could strike up at the school gate: "So when your child refused to co-perate as a three-year-old, did you lock them out of the house in sub-zero temperatures?"

[ninedragons]

Yes, having lived there for 10 years I am aware of the Chinese focus on academic work.

Her methods are fucking beserk, and like nothing I ever witnessed there, that's my point.

[Curiousmama]

oh no was hoping it was a novel?

[Xenia]

May be but there is huge after school tutoring in mainland China after school of many many childern for many hours afetr school. May be not of the poor but of children that are middle class. It rang rather true given what I have read about school systems and comepttiion for elite universities in china

[cory]

ooh the father doesn't come well out of this for sure:

"For him it was like, look, if she's willing to put in three hours with these instruments and I just get to go to the recital and you have the refreshments, why not?"

[ninedragons]

I wonder how much of her bizarre behaviour is that second-generation-immigrant cultural assertion; like being a fanatical follower of the cricket team from your parents' country, being more devout than your immigrant parents, etc etc.

She would be considered extreme to the point of crazy in either mainland China or Hong Kong, without a doubt.

[HattiFattner]

the phrase that stood out to me:

"She?s just like me, I thought: compulsively cruel."

Yep. Yo reap what you sow

[cory]

Not all Chinese immigrants are like this. My SIL is really lovely with her sons- and loves them for what they are, not for being better than everybody else. But of course Amy Chua needs to convince us that all Chinese mums are the same: otherwise she'd seem like a loony.