Ironically, last week I wrote about Race to Nowhere, a documentary that focuses on all the academic pressures, high stakes testing, and unhealthy stress that American high school students face as they try to achieve at the extremely high levels demanded by parents, schools, and society as their entry ticket to competitive colleges. The reason I say "ironically" is that during the same week, great media attention was devoted to the release of a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Yale law professor Amy Chua which essentially made the opposite argument, that American parents are overly concerned with their children’s self-esteem, that they don’t demand that their children work hard enough, and that they give in too easily. In contrasting what she calls her “Chinese mother” parenting style, Chua outlines some of the things that her daughters were never allowed to do: “attend a sleepover; have a playdate; be in a school play; complain about not being in a school play; watch TV or play computer games; choose their own extracurricular activities; get any grade less than an A; not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama; play any instrument other than the piano or violin; not play the piano or violin.” Chua makes the case that “when Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers.” While Chua has said her book is a memoir, not a child-rearing guide, and that she intended it to be “ironic and self-mocking,” countless articles have since appeared outlining, praising, and tearing apart her views. As one online piece stated, “Chua has hit a nerve precisely because it heightens our awareness of how soft and indulgent we’ve become.”
Much of Chua’s thinking was outlined in her Wall Street Journal article entitled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." She notes that while a study showed that “almost 70% of the Western mothers said that ‘stressing academic success is not good for children,’ or that ‘parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun’… roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be ‘the best’ students, that ‘academic achievement reflects successful parenting,’ and that if children did not excel at school... parents ‘were not doing their job.’” What’s more, Chua states that “what Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences… Things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.”
Chua believes there are three key differences between Chinese and Western parental attitudes. “First… Western parents... worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something… Western parents are concerned about their children’s [self-esteem and] psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility.” Second, “because of a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed… Chinese parents believe their kids owe them everything… that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.” Finally, “Chinese parents believe they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences.”
Even though much of what Chua wrote was tongue-in-cheek, her views are both quite challenging to consider and ripe for critique. Amongst the numerous counterpoints that have appeared, the response I found most interesting was by New York Times columnist David Brooks in his piece “Amy Chua is a Wimp.” Brooks believes that Chua is protecting her children “from the most intellectually demanding activities,” those that develop savvy social interaction. As he writes, “Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14 year-old girls” which involves “managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, and navigating the distinction between self and group.” Brooks points out that a central weakness of Chua’s model is that it doesn’t build the social or self-awareness competencies critical to achievement in today’s world. As he sums it up, “Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn to manage people?… Where do they learn to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others‘ minds and anticipate others‘ reactions? These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time… I wish she recognized that in some important ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library.”