Wall Street Journal article: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … 98754.html

Well, here's my response from an email thread my extended family's got going:

I found this so unbelievable I wasn't sure if maybe it was satire, in accordance with Poe's law: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law. However, I must write my own visceral response:

"Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, 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."

From the beginning, this is beyond unreasonable. None of these things are inherently bad. "Not allowing" children to get any grade less than an A, or not be the No. 1 student (in anything except gym and drama? wow. Those are some old prejudices) doesn't even make any sense. It's not a matter of allowance; it's a matter of achievement. Some of them (no being in school plays? not *complaining*? playing any instrument other than piano or violin? - if you don't understand that one, I can vouch for it: I saw a band play once whose guitarist wasn't allowed to learn guitar, so he had to go to his friend's house to learn. He was only supposed to learn violin. Which he did too.) These things are not meant to promote "hard work." They're making parents' prejudices into children's restrictions. Restricting what a child *likes* is just wrong. It is, to borrow a term: http://www.racialicious.com/2011/01/10/ … e-superior, overly hardass. You're depriving them of opportunities, no matter what you say about Asian immigrants being the first to take advantage of opportunities.

"children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning"

I will be the first to admit that I have some radical views regarding age and parenting, so some of my views may be just as hard to accept as some of Amy's. But this is my rebuttal, so. "Children on their own never want to work"? How do you know this? Two things: one, "never" is a bad word to use, and two, you don't know what's going on in someone else's head. (Clearly, you specifically don't particularly care.) Also, maybe they would want to work if they were "allowed" to work on *their* passions.

But what gets me the most about this one is the sheer faith in absolute authority, the need to "break" your children's will. Because that's exactly what that was, in that quote up there. It's also the traditional reason given for corporal punishment, as cited in a study from the early 1900s. (I don't remember the exact study, but I was using it for a research paper.) The idea that a child's will needs to be broken because the parent is right is just *wrong.* I can't think of enough synonyms for wrong.

"Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests."

This isn't virtue, it's lack of cultural understanding. Also, judging from the rest of this article, I wouldn't trust Amy's account of how she felt as a child; I'm not sure she remembers what it was like to be a child. And many abused children - yes, I said the word, even if I'm not accusing her parents of it - feel a lingering need to defend their parents after they grow up. Also, I'm wary any time a parent gets mad at their children for being "disrespectful." Assuming that they must show deference - at the cost of disagreement - is a perpetuation of the assumption that parents must be the absolute authority not because of being right or anything like that, but because they're the parents. As though adults can never be wrong where children are right. And I think the children would be right where their own feelings are concerned.

"They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently."

This is nice, and I would like it as a concept were it not for the rest of the article. But with that context, I have to respond that you really can't assume either one. Try to take your cues from your children's natural reactions - not their fearful ones - once in a while, okay?

"That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child."

This is coercion and if not emotional abuse, bordering on it. Yeah, let's just completely ignore the child's personhood for what we want, why not? </sarcasm>

"Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences."

Ah, so here we get to the crux of the matter. "Children don't choose their parents. They don't even choose to be born." This is true, even just from a factual viewpoint. Does Amy deny this? Apparently, her only concern is for the parent here.

So parents do a lot for their kids. They take care of them, love them, whatever. And generally, kids who grow up with loving parents - kids who can feel that their parents love them - love their parents back. And want to do nice things for them, make them happy. This is completely different from saying "You owe me." (And I have to point out that Amy - like a lot, probably a majority, of parents - thinks that "spying on their kids" is not only a good thing, but a form of care. I think spying is a form of utter disregard for a child's personhood, taking advantage of the position of power being a caretaker gives them, and a complete lack of respect for this child's privacy. Person's privacy, if that phrase has more automatic validity.

"Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences."

Exactly. What she's getting at here is paternalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism, which is a common trait in parents in general, not just the Chinese. And it's wrong, on some level. To believe that you know what is best for someone else implies that you know the other person better than themselves. And I'm sorry, but even parents don't know their children better than themselves. And if you admit that, then the only justification for paternalistic parenting (lol, yes) is believing that no matter what, the parent is right. And that is fundamentally wrong.

"Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

"You just don't believe in her," I accused.

"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."

"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."

"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.

"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."

So. This extract begins with "Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style." Well, at least she admits it's coercion. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be coerced. I think if someone seriously tried to coerce me to do something I really didn't want to, it might even be, yes, "legally actionable." How about you? But somehow, it's different when the person involved is a child. Then you just drill it into them.

Honestly, this example reminds me a lot of "episodes" between me and my parents. It's a better explanation of how things went than I think I could come up with myself, right now. Sure, there was a "happy" ending. Because this was my family, and I needed to wake up the next day and eat breakfast and go to school. So I have to resolve it somehow, and the conflict was made meaningless by the fact that the thing in conflict - in this case, the piano piece - had been resolved. So instead of trying to explain how I felt and why I was being "rebellious and defiant," I would hug them and go to bed.

So I won't even get into every aspect of this excerpt. But:

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

And she can - if not within her child's spirit, practically. Parents have this power - and they abuse it, like this. Children are helpless. And you wonder why they lash out?

"I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children."

Well, at least she got that. So I won't get into the racial stuff here. I linked a post up near the beginning of this that addressed that, I think.

And Mausi, you addressed the balance part in your response. So I guess I'll sign off now. Thanks for reading.