As a proactive parent, I pay attention to the ideas about parenting that garner a large following. Today, the descriptive phrase attracting both praise and vilification is Tiger-Mothering. It started this past January 8th when the Wall Street Journal published Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior by Amy Chua. The essay was excerpted from Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that was released just three days later and has been ranked in the top five in the non-fiction category by the New York Times for four consecutive weeks now.
I read Chua’s essay with fascination and awe. So many individual lines jumped out at me and inside I would respond with a resounding “Yes!” because her words resonated, especially when she challenged the Western parental tendency to accept mediocrity. I was eager to keep reading to see if I could learn anything I would want to apply and was very curious to understand why her strange-sounding parental rules like not permitting her daughters to ever be in a school play might have some merit.
Early in our parenting days, Amelia and I had found a gold mine of parenting wisdom reading about the parenting practices of another great ancient culture: The Jews*. Perhaps Chinese culture also offered values and practices Amelia and I would want to embrace. Philip’s first semester grades had been a disappointment and perhaps behaving more like Chinese parents was just what Amelia and I needed to reverse the situation.
While I understand that Chua’s complete memoir disclosed Chua questioning her conventional practices from time to time and even easing the pressure on her younger daughter, the essay—which is what everyone has read—yielded no ground. So despite Chua’s noble effort to defend the model she mostly embraces, I am disappointed to report that I found nothing of any true value in Chua’s essay. Instead what I found was what I would describe as counterfeit wisdom. It is counterfeit because it seems so very right unless examined critically. Chua’s so-called wisdom is like the most dangerous lies: the lies that contain a significant amount of truth. Each time a resounding “Yes!” bubbled up inside me when reading Chua’s essay, my passionate agreement was evoked because she was describing a real problem. And her general descriptions of her solution looked very promising. Consider the following paragraph from her essay.
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. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Standing alone, the above paragraph earns mostly high marks and nearly all parents would do well to heed Chua’s general counsel. The problem exists with what Chua actual means when she uses words like fortitude, properly, tenacious, excellence, excel and confidence. By the end of her essay, the reader knows what Chua actually means and many readers may wonder if Chua’s solution is the most guaranteed way to rise above mediocrity. Some might conclude that it would be better to accept mediocrity. Others might embrace Chua’s recommendations. And there are those already practicing what Chua advocates who will feel validated by her essay and redouble their efforts.
While I have many friends I like and professional colleagues I respect whose upbringing probably closely matches what Chua advocates and who are likewise either practicing or planning to practice these same techniques with their own children, I still can only conclude these practices are wrong. I am not going on the offensive to defend the mediocrity-enabling practices Chua sees as her lone alternative. Instead, I want to present superior solutions to the problems she correctly identifies. So let me begin as Chua herself began.
Chua began her essay by stating “A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.” While I neither like nor advocate the use of stereotypes, they can be useful in making a point. Chua wants her kids to be successful kids because she believes that successful kids become successful adults. So what is the stereotypical Chinese-parented adult? Is this adult stereotype the model of successful adulthood? Compare that stereotype to the stereotypical Jewish-parented adult. Without hesitation, I would say the latter is far more successful. With a world population that is roughly one percent of world’s Chinese, Jewish-parented adults emerge with greater frequency as leaders across a broad spectrum of professions than Chinese-parented adults.
If one is going to embrace the parenting practices of a distinct culture, Jewish parents run circles around Chinese parents. Ironically, Chua’s husband is Jewish and both have grown up to be successful professionals. The stereotypical Jewish parent is also strict with the goal of raising a successful adult, but it is a very different kind of strictness. Somehow in Chua’s household, two highly intelligent parents selected the conventional Chinese parenting over the conventional Jewish parenting. Clearly, the allure of Tiger-Mothering is high and its supporting arguments are ancient, deep-rooted and like all forms of abuse have great but subtle power.
I am neither Jewish, nor have I embraced all that I have learned about Jewish parenting practices, and I am certainly not trying to raise either Philip or Chloe to resemble a stereotypical Jewish-parented adult. That said, I have embraced many Jewish parenting practices and combined them with other successful parenting practices, common sense and a willingness to do things differently than all the other parents around me.
Unfortunately, a one thousand word rebuttal to Chua’s essay is insufficient, and I value excellence in parenting too much to tolerate such insufficiency. As such, this is the first in a series of rebuttals targeting Chua’s specifics. Beginning with the topic of Motivation, I will clearly state the problem, critique Chua’s proposed solution and propose a healthy effective alternative that any parent willing to put in the effort can implement. Stay tuned.
*The book in question was The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People by Steven Silbiger.
No comments:
Post a Comment