Chinese Mothers--and Then Us.

Amy Chua's article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" has garnered a LOT of attention, most of it negative. The article was, I imagine, part of the build-up to her book which was released this week. I think she really missed the mark with her tone--what she may have imagined as "tongue-n-cheek" simply came off to me as bitchy and cruel. Chua seems not to just delight in winning the battles against her daughters, but to enjoy the battles themselves. I also don't believe her assertion that once someone perfects something, they will enjoy it. I suspect there are hundreds of people who were browbeaten into music lessons or sports activities by their parents who would say that the negativity surrounding those experiences was enough to put them off of that activity forever. There would also be those who had achieved that high level, yet find no joy or pleasure in their achievement.

Some of the strongest voices came from Chinese who said that Chua did not represent any Chinese mother they had ever known. Those who had been raised across cultures (Chinese-American or Canadian) did, however, acknowledge that their parents did push them differently than their non-Chinese peers.

And therein, is an important point. As Americans, we need to be careful to crow about the superiority of our educational system. While there are many things that we do very well, we certainly have a whole lot of shortcomings, many of which are becoming more and more obvious as the years go by. Education is also a product of culture--we value certain attributes, so our systems and parenting reinforce that. We want our children to be independent, individuals, unique. We want them to feel good about themselves, to be well-rounded, to have a lot of experiences. Happiness and a sense of satisfaction are important. We have thousands of parenting books the tell us how important all these things are, and yet often make us feel like we aren't living up to some standard.

To look at the Chinese--or any other culture--and impose those values on another group, is quite ethnocentric. In Tanzania, for example, independence is not valued and there's trouble in a home or a village if someone reaches for their own personal achievement and doesn't consider how they need to help their family. The Chinese "way" is more about conformity. Hard work is valued more than free time. Tutors are hired to make sure kids do things very well, rather than letting them dabble and find things they like. I've heard it said that the Chinese feel they have to be competative--after all, there are so many other Chinese to compete with for those university spots and jobs. "Face" is also very important, which may lead to families competing to look as successful as someone else (we don't call it that in the US--we call it "keeping up with the Joneses). I have students who are excelling at music or drawing or swimming and they soundly dislike those activities, but they are the ones their parents have chosen. Parent-pleasing is strong here--most of us really don't want our kids to do something just to make us happy. In return, parents don't expect their children to do many chores, or work at jobs, or have many responsibilities other than school work--we expect our kids to do all of those things.

I thought Chua's tone was, for lack of a better word, bitchy--at the same time, I thought that many comments were unfair for expecting a Chinese mother to raise her children differently than her culture dictated. The fact that she is living in America and is a Yale professor would make her decisions more difficult because her children would be surrounded by a very different parenting style, but would not mean that her values and beliefs would fit in with a traditional or mainstream American approach to childrearing. So many of my very Western acting and sounding Chinese students go home every night to very traditional homes--I have a 3rd grader who has only eaten peanut butter once in his life--so people live their lives on different levels in public and in private.

To be fair to Ms. Chua, I read her rebuttal here in which she talks about her own parents, her childhood, and that this book was born out of an awareness of her development as a mother. I thought those comments put her in a much kinder light, and I was able to better understand her feelings. I would love to hear what her daughters have to say about their family--would they acknowledge the difficulties, explain what they hated, and still say they loved their mother and had great times with her and felt close to her? I hope they do--it would be a good ending for an uncomfortable story.