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!

[differentnameforthis]

Agree Math, but she isn't superior, is she! She just looks like an overbearing mother driving her kids to be 'better than westerners'.

She abhors westerners! She called her daughter savage, barbarian, boring...that to her face! That doesn't make her superior. Not sure what it makes her, but it is so far from superior.

[mathanxiety]

What sort of person would think a reader wouldn't be aghast at this? Or is she so dismissive of lax western parenting that she can shake her head sadly at anyone who thinks this was a horrible way to treat a child?

[ToxicKitten]

at the card episode!!

[Xenia]

it's as if they have no knowledge of child psychiology. Weird culture and they are quite weird. Look at the stuff the Japanese get up to.

[differentnameforthis]

She thinks her way is the right way & anyone [read westerners] not doing it her way are probably raising 'savage, savage, barbarian, boring' children. If the comments on her daughter's behaviour is anything to go by!

So she probably doesn't even care what anyone thinks, so ingrained is her theory that she is 'right'!

[mathanxiety]

It's hard to imagine someone without even an ounce of self doubt though. But then she doesn't seem to encounter much effective questioning of her approach from her H (who comes off as a mega-wimp unable to intervene on behalf of his own DDs in all of this) and seems to have blown off her own parents too, out-Chinesing them like one of Mao's Cultural Revolutionary zealots.

She does admit that this kind of 'parenting' cannot be done openly outside of China, but apparently not because of its potential to damage the child and warp the relationship between parent and child, but only because western ideas dominate in the west, not surprisingly, and you will have opprobrium heaped upon you (she doesn't admit why) and you will become a pariah if it's revealed. That she goes ahead anyway and reveals it through her book and in the subsequent articles shows that she really doesn't get the arguments against this kind of treatment of children. 'If it comes out that you push your kids against their will, or want them to do better than other kids, other parents will heap opprobrium on you, and your children will pay the price. As a result, immigrant parents learn to conceal things. No one wants to be a pariah.'
She's saying there's a tendency to gang up on the immigrant (which she's really not as she grew up in the US but heyho) and seems to suggest there's a concerted effort to keep everyone on the same level (out of envy?) and deny that some can excel if pushed. She's still the heroine of her narrative.

It's perfectly possible to make your children focus on academics and other positive pursuits without the abuse she visited upon her children. While the percentage of Asian Americans in third level education in the US is high, most university students still come from the caucasian community where Chinese parenting is not practiced (although children are expected to perform at a very high level in mc and upper mc America and parents make a lot of sacrifices and put a lot of effort in with their children). Not every white student in a top US university is there because daddy bought a place for them, not by a long shot.

[Curiousmama]

So this is true? Not a novel?

[Curiousmama]

differentnameforthis please tell me the card story isn't true that's abuse.

[CheerfulYank]

The card story is awful. That poor little girl!

I definitely believe in raising your children to work hard, but this is above and beyond ridiculous. That woman is a psychotic bitch, and I never use that word lightly.

[differentnameforthis]

curiousmama, it's true

[differentnameforthis]

and seems to suggest there's a concerted effort to keep everyone on the same level (out of envy?)

I think she does it because she wants to keep it 'normalised'. The more [Chinese] parents who follow her follow her way of 'raising children', the more 'normal' it feels!

[Xenia]

I'm glad she feels free to write the book. It's good people see the different parenting methods around and what some Chinese parents do and if they do it and aren't ashamed of it and it works (no type of child does as well in English schools by race as Chinese) then by all means write about it openly but it either produces total rebellion and backfires or sometimes a rather compliant child / adult who might be a bit dull and some wil have psychological scars adn visit on their own children the "abuse" visited on them.

[ZZZenAgain]

holy cow the carrd scene

that has just lost me, I don't get it. I kind of follow the reasoning of "I want to get my dd performing in Carnegie Hall preferably before she is15, so I will push her to the limits to practice an instrument." It ain'tmy world but I sort of see what the plan is.

The card though.... dearie me. "I reject this". It isn ot good enough. One thing is this traditional Chinese parenting if that is what she is doing - virtuous circle etc etc and another thing is just being downright cruel and nasty to a little girl

[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.

[HattiFattner]

the phrase that stood out to me:

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

Yep. Yo reap what you sow

[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.

[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?"

[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

[Curiousmama]

oh no was hoping it was a novel?

[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.

[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?"

[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.

[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...

[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.

[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.