Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?

By AMY CHUA

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
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 My take on this article:

This is a very debatable article. And I mean both pro and con. It is well worth reading.

1. I agree the kid glove treatment of self-esteem in the U.S. has gone a bit far in some families. I think the whole obsession with Freud and that kind of psychology was luckily avoided by the Chinese.
2. This was written by a Yale law prof who is obsessed with achievement. Does she speak for all Chinese parents?
3. Until Mao came along with his Western/Confucian ideas, very few Chinese had any spare time for music or school. They were trying to escape the predations of the British and then the Japanese and their own ruling class. Most people as they rise from utter poverty are very, very achievement oriented.
4. What happens to Chinese kids who never become #1 in their class? How do they and their parents adjust?
5. To me, there'a a chicken and egg question about the adaptation of our children to our society. From the 20's we became more and more of a service and marketing economy. So our kids majored in negotiating with other people, not having performing or scientific skills. I don't know which came first, the new economy or the new psychology (or the crush on Freud). Obviously, Americans are more concerned about what others think of them than what they think of themselves. New achieving people like the Chinese in America are often more concerned with what they think of themselves than how they appear to other people. There was a famous book of the fifties called The Lonely Crowd, which described the change in America from "inner directed" people to "other-directed" people.
6. Which leads me to say that in fact American parents aren't really so concerned to the "self-esteem" of their children that they give lip-service to as they are to how well their children get along with others. (Big generalization.)
This article is good because it really draws an exaggerated polarity. I expect her book will sell well. And I think her children will be well-adjusted, but a bit snooty regarding other directed Americans.

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