An unfortunately over-effective means of prosecuting one’s case to the public is to present it in an “either-or” manner. Amy Chua has championed her authoritarian parenting style, Tiger-Mothering, by claiming the sole alternative is a permissive parenting style she calls “Western Parenting” – which she indeed successfully argues against. Two weeks after Chua’s essay was published, Dr. Wednesday Martin of Psychology Today debunked Chua’s “either-or” argument with solid research that favored authoritative parenting over both authoritarian parenting and permissive parenting. What is the difference between authoritative and authoritarian parenting? It is a warm relationship. An authoritative parent holds his or her children to high standards, but would never do something cold or crass like tear up a hand-made birthday card no matter how poorly the birthday card was crafted.
While children reared in authoritarian households often display many impressive competencies as adults, the most obviously missing competencies are verbal and social confidence. Chua asks us to look at the “stereotypical” Chinese child or adult raised by a tiger mother. She expects us to be impressed with the stereotype. Instead, most of us cringe. The most obvious missing element is relationship skills. As I look at my adult peers in the professional world, I see no shortage of “smart” people. But what is woefully lacking is true leadership skills. Leadership is the most challenging of all relationship skills.
Chua forbids play-dates, summer camp and acting in school plays. She doesn’t necessarily explain why each is forbidden. School plays seem to be forbidden because there is no way to quantify success and Ms. Chua is only interested in success that can be quantified. She has no means to measure the value of the verbal confidence that is built participating in a school play. In the cases of play-dates and summer camp, her problem seems to be a less-than-authoritarian training atmosphere.
In our home, we put large amounts of effort into ensuring Chloe and Philip develop healthy relationships—not merely so they can have fun—but so they can develop those ever so important relationship skills. Amelia and I invest a large amount of time talking to Philip and Chloe about their peers and their peers’ parents and how individual and group interactions play out in both individual situations as well as overall. From time to time a peer has dysfunctional relationship skills. Occasionally, the dysfunction is biological. But normally the dysfunction can be traced to the parents who are too authoritarian, too permissive or simply dysfunctional themselves. This makes for important teaching moments as we review the stories Chloe and Philip bring home. Alternatively, we sometimes encounter a child with a biological handicap whose parents invest heavily and patiently to help the child manage his or her handicap, and the results are often very impressive. These situations become converse teaching moments in which Chloe and Philip can learn about the power of overcoming one’s own weaknesses.
Admittedly, Chua’s authoritarian approach to social development is in many ways superior to what permissive parents do. Permissive parents merely let everything happen. They do not steer their kids toward emotionally healthy peers and away from the emotionally unhealthy ones. Under Chua’s roof, her kids learn to interact with adults, whereas under a permissive parenting model, kids mainly socialize with other kids. Permissive parents wonder why their kids shun their parents and other adults in favor of their peers at progressively earlier ages. I am not merely speaking about a teenager’s natural need to establish his or her personal life independently from the family of origin. The age old complaint “what is wrong with kids these days?” can be directly attributed to permissiveness in the social realm.
Still, I see Chua and her Tiger-Mothering model as lazy. Chua merely shuts the door on meaningful peer interaction. An authoritative parent manages the interactions and provides very meaningful direction whereas an authoritarian Tiger-Mother, simply forbids interactions that have the potential to promote permissiveness.
With Chloe, for example, we’ve had to teach her to accept the fact that not all her peers or peers’ families will operate according to the values we are teaching her. It can be frustrating for Chloe at times, but I believe it is going a long way toward Chloe being able to operate as a successful adult. She needs to develop the skill of managing which peers she can trust and which peers she cannot trust. And she is discovering that the trustworthiness of a peer does not always correlate with how much fun the peer is. The children of authoritarian parents and permissive parents normally don’t learn this important lesson until much later in life.
With all that said, Chloe’s experience navigating the awkward world of tween girl relationships relative to others deserves its own post without the necessity to rebut Amy Chua’s arguments in the process. In the meantime, I trust four posts in responding to Ms. Chua’s alluring arguments have been sufficient to get any reader thinking intelligently without succumbing to any kind of either-or trap. With that, I am pleased to move onward to new topics.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Prom: A Guy Needs to Ask with Style
October 4, 2005 is a day that probably almost nobody remembers as special. But its impact on high school prom season is starting to hold out against the test of time. On that day MTV first aired the Our Last Prom episode of their popular series, Laguna Beach. During the first half of the episode, one after another the high school girls from Laguna Beach enjoyed the surprise of being asked to prom in unique and creative ways. In theory it should have been another fun episode for fans to watch. But instead it had a cascading effect. According to Unhooked author, Laura Sessions Stepp, high school girls suddenly had raised expectations about how they would be asked to prom. By the 2006 prom season some six months later, high school boys in upscale, middle class and even economically depressed communities were either going the extra mile or they were being rebuffed.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Interested but Certainly Not Ready
Chloe is now almost twelve years old and she is decidedly interested in boys. At any given time, Ryan, Wren, David or Brett is the object of Chloe’s interest. It makes me think back to when I was still a tween and my heart was set on a younger tween in my neighborhood named Shelli. Shelli was quite the little firecracker. She looked like a miniature version of then-starlet Suzanne Summers. She was extremely athletic and outgoing. She wore her shoulder-length blond hair down, in a pony tail or in pinky tails, always keeping it varied. At times, Chloe reminds me of Shelli.
It was the autumn of my seventh grade year. I was playing football for the first time and wasn’t particularly good at the game yet. A few of us like my friend Ken were good. Most of us like me were playing for the first time at the age of either twelve or thirteen. As a group we were particularly poor at maintaining hold of the ball. Nearly every time one of us got tackled, the player in question would lose control of the ball. For anyone not familiar with the game of football, that is called a fumble and it means the other team can get control of the ball and even run with it. Coach Carmichael was getting frustrated or at least he was acting that way.
“None of you knows how to hold a football! Here’s how you hold a football! You hold it like it’s a boob!”
I wasn’t sure I had heard Coach Carmichael’s last word correctly. Ken who had certainly heard the coach correctly but also knew most of us were unsure spoke up, “Say that just one more time, coach.”
“I said you need to hold a football like it’s a boob. Hold it like you would hold a girl’s tit.” He held the football with one point buried into the thin gap between his right arm and his chest and the other point in the index finger of his right hand so that his palm and most of his fingers were beneath the football and his thumb clasped down from the top. He explained what he was doing detail, always referring back to his original analogy.
All of us were mesmerized. The idea that there was a “correct” technique associated with handling a girl’s breast so that she would enjoy the experience and that one could likewise handle a girl’s breast in a way she wouldn’t like was news to me at least. From that day onward, nobody wanted to fumble the football when tackled because it meant that the boy who fumbled didn’t know how to handle a girl’s breast. As a result our team hardly ever fumbled. When somebody did fumble, a crowd of teammates would take it upon themselves to repeat Coach Carmichael’s imparted wisdom in every detail.
The fact that tween boys take a sudden and intense interest in girls’ breasts is no secret. The fact that tween boys and girls like Chloe take a sudden interest in one another is no secret either. The mystery is why. As a parent, I am baffled as to why God, nature or evolution arranged things so that in the process of growing up, very intense interest emerges long before one is even close to ready. Back at my school years and years ago, there was an entire middle school football team of boys including me each of whom was not only confident he could maintain hold of a football when tackled by a varsity player, he was also confident he was ready to satisfy a tween or even a teen girl with the correct fondling technique. Or at least we all acted that way around one another. But only a few weeks later the little firecracker, Shelli, put my confidence to the test.
We never went on a date. We didn’t get ice cream or go to a movie. After school, we rode bikes in the large parking lots of our condominium association. We played kickball, dodgeball and foursquare. On hot days we swam in the pool. There were three tween boys and three tween girls including me and the little firecracker living in our neighborhood. On the first Saturday in November, I found myself alone with Shelli. I don’t remember what we said but we agreed to kiss. It was a quick peck. She also wanted to check me out and agreed to let me check her out in exchange. A week later I found myself alone with her again. In the week since we had seen one another, she had a made a decision. “I want to go to second base together,” she said firmly. She had the exact location picked out in the woods far behind our buildings. I walked alongside her and repeated all of Coach Carmichael’s words to myself in my head. But when the little firecracker lifted up her shirt to get what she had asked for there was nothing that resembled the dimensions of a football. In all likelihood my chest had more mass. Shelli leaned against a fallen tree and wanted me to approach her from the front rather than behind as Coach Carmichael has instructed. I decided to approach from the side with my right hand.
The whole interaction was extremely awkward. I mumbled some words of affection and attraction. The little firecracker had gone silent. We had trouble making eye contact once we were finished. Nothing intimate ever happened between us after that day. Instead we had trouble speaking with one another. When the larger crowd of tweens would gather, I would try to hang close to her but she would act like she didn’t see me. At other times we reversed roles and I was the coy one while she hopelessly sought some kind of validation I was too afraid to give. A few months later Shelli moved to a different neighborhood. We would see one another from time to time in the years that followed but never gathered the courage to talk. It wasn’t until thirty years later when we connected on Facebook that we were able to discuss what happened, admit to our regrets but also admit that we were both long since over the matter and that our discussion was the final act of closure. The only thing I don’t regret was that Shelli was my first kiss.
Parents including me put a lot of energy into protecting their kids from the kind of interaction that happened between me and Shelli for the simple and explicit reason that tweens are not ready to be intimate. The majority of parents have rules. Some parents have particularly strict rules. For the strict parents, the solution is to keep the boys and girls away from one another for as long as possible. Technically, Amelia and I have rules too. But while most parents merely forbid, Amelia and I want to give Chloe appropriate and satisfying outlets for those feelings that somehow have come long before she is ready for a serious and intimate relationship. It is why we take her to dances and even reward her for mustering the courage to ask a handsome boy to dance.
If I could go back to either of those days with Shelli long ago, instead of doing what I did, I wish I could ask her if we could spend more time kissing and talking. I wish we could have agreed to talk on the telephone together and maybe even go for walks holding hands. Things certainly would have been different. But I did not have the social confidence to say or do those things. And perhaps that is the difference between my generation and Coach Carmichael’s generation. His generation championed the sexual revolution. In contrast, my generation is championing healthy relationship skills. We’ll see how we do.
It was the autumn of my seventh grade year. I was playing football for the first time and wasn’t particularly good at the game yet. A few of us like my friend Ken were good. Most of us like me were playing for the first time at the age of either twelve or thirteen. As a group we were particularly poor at maintaining hold of the ball. Nearly every time one of us got tackled, the player in question would lose control of the ball. For anyone not familiar with the game of football, that is called a fumble and it means the other team can get control of the ball and even run with it. Coach Carmichael was getting frustrated or at least he was acting that way.
“None of you knows how to hold a football! Here’s how you hold a football! You hold it like it’s a boob!”
I wasn’t sure I had heard Coach Carmichael’s last word correctly. Ken who had certainly heard the coach correctly but also knew most of us were unsure spoke up, “Say that just one more time, coach.”
“I said you need to hold a football like it’s a boob. Hold it like you would hold a girl’s tit.” He held the football with one point buried into the thin gap between his right arm and his chest and the other point in the index finger of his right hand so that his palm and most of his fingers were beneath the football and his thumb clasped down from the top. He explained what he was doing detail, always referring back to his original analogy.
All of us were mesmerized. The idea that there was a “correct” technique associated with handling a girl’s breast so that she would enjoy the experience and that one could likewise handle a girl’s breast in a way she wouldn’t like was news to me at least. From that day onward, nobody wanted to fumble the football when tackled because it meant that the boy who fumbled didn’t know how to handle a girl’s breast. As a result our team hardly ever fumbled. When somebody did fumble, a crowd of teammates would take it upon themselves to repeat Coach Carmichael’s imparted wisdom in every detail.
The fact that tween boys take a sudden and intense interest in girls’ breasts is no secret. The fact that tween boys and girls like Chloe take a sudden interest in one another is no secret either. The mystery is why. As a parent, I am baffled as to why God, nature or evolution arranged things so that in the process of growing up, very intense interest emerges long before one is even close to ready. Back at my school years and years ago, there was an entire middle school football team of boys including me each of whom was not only confident he could maintain hold of a football when tackled by a varsity player, he was also confident he was ready to satisfy a tween or even a teen girl with the correct fondling technique. Or at least we all acted that way around one another. But only a few weeks later the little firecracker, Shelli, put my confidence to the test.
We never went on a date. We didn’t get ice cream or go to a movie. After school, we rode bikes in the large parking lots of our condominium association. We played kickball, dodgeball and foursquare. On hot days we swam in the pool. There were three tween boys and three tween girls including me and the little firecracker living in our neighborhood. On the first Saturday in November, I found myself alone with Shelli. I don’t remember what we said but we agreed to kiss. It was a quick peck. She also wanted to check me out and agreed to let me check her out in exchange. A week later I found myself alone with her again. In the week since we had seen one another, she had a made a decision. “I want to go to second base together,” she said firmly. She had the exact location picked out in the woods far behind our buildings. I walked alongside her and repeated all of Coach Carmichael’s words to myself in my head. But when the little firecracker lifted up her shirt to get what she had asked for there was nothing that resembled the dimensions of a football. In all likelihood my chest had more mass. Shelli leaned against a fallen tree and wanted me to approach her from the front rather than behind as Coach Carmichael has instructed. I decided to approach from the side with my right hand.
The whole interaction was extremely awkward. I mumbled some words of affection and attraction. The little firecracker had gone silent. We had trouble making eye contact once we were finished. Nothing intimate ever happened between us after that day. Instead we had trouble speaking with one another. When the larger crowd of tweens would gather, I would try to hang close to her but she would act like she didn’t see me. At other times we reversed roles and I was the coy one while she hopelessly sought some kind of validation I was too afraid to give. A few months later Shelli moved to a different neighborhood. We would see one another from time to time in the years that followed but never gathered the courage to talk. It wasn’t until thirty years later when we connected on Facebook that we were able to discuss what happened, admit to our regrets but also admit that we were both long since over the matter and that our discussion was the final act of closure. The only thing I don’t regret was that Shelli was my first kiss.
Parents including me put a lot of energy into protecting their kids from the kind of interaction that happened between me and Shelli for the simple and explicit reason that tweens are not ready to be intimate. The majority of parents have rules. Some parents have particularly strict rules. For the strict parents, the solution is to keep the boys and girls away from one another for as long as possible. Technically, Amelia and I have rules too. But while most parents merely forbid, Amelia and I want to give Chloe appropriate and satisfying outlets for those feelings that somehow have come long before she is ready for a serious and intimate relationship. It is why we take her to dances and even reward her for mustering the courage to ask a handsome boy to dance.
If I could go back to either of those days with Shelli long ago, instead of doing what I did, I wish I could ask her if we could spend more time kissing and talking. I wish we could have agreed to talk on the telephone together and maybe even go for walks holding hands. Things certainly would have been different. But I did not have the social confidence to say or do those things. And perhaps that is the difference between my generation and Coach Carmichael’s generation. His generation championed the sexual revolution. In contrast, my generation is championing healthy relationship skills. We’ll see how we do.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Toxic Allure of Tiger-Mothering (Part 3) Gender and Co-Parenting
It has now been two and half months since the Wall Street Journal published Amy Chua’s essay, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior. While there are many aspects of Chua’s parenting philosophy which deserve solid rebuttal, this post is solely focused on Chua’s gender bias. Her bias emerges immediately in the very title of her essay. It is not Chinese parents who are superior but Chinese mothers.
This is a charged subject for a number of reasons. To begin with, in nearly every two parent household, the division of parenting duties is never equal. And while I do not have any data in front of me, if one were to somehow measure parenting activity as divided between fathers and mothers, I have no doubt mothers (even working mothers) put in more hours of parenting activity than fathers. Second, not every child is raised by his or her father and mother. There are plenty of blended families, single-parent families, same-gender-parent families and other non-traditional families. Chloe has one friend from her basketball team for example who is being raised by her aunt and her grandfather. Advocates for womens’ rights, LGBT rights as well as those who advocate traditional family values would be quick contribute an opinion on this subject that could easily be inflammatory. So at risk of being inflammatory, myself, I am going to tackle this charged subject.
First, while gender differences are real, I believe those differences should never be artificially amplified. In contrast, I believe reasonable (but not ridiculous) efforts should be made to promote gender equality. As Amelia and I have been raising our eldest, Philip, and we have set rules and privileges for him, an important part in our decision-making process has been whether we would be willing to apply the same rules and privileges to Chloe when she reaches the same age. Whenever the answer was no, Amelia and I would normally continue deliberating until we came up with a plan in which the answer to that question was yes. In contrast, Chua’s rules state “Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school” rather than “Chinese kids cannot date until after high school.” The idea that the rules for girls should be stricter than the rules for boys (or vice versa) is both unfair and counter-productive even though for example high school girls may face greater threats on average than high school boys.
Second, I believe the healthiest family model in which a child can be raised is a single household that contains the child’s biological mother and father with any siblings from the same mother and father. That does not mean that I think the alternatives, even vastly different alternatives such as same-gender-parent households, are wrong. Instead I believe that parents who raise a child under a different model need to find ways to compensate. And my observation is most such parents not only compensate but do a good job compensating. Proactive single mothers and “two mom” families, for example, make extra effort to connect their sons and daughters with responsible, emotionally-healthy adult men. And the converse is true for single fathers and “two dad” families.
Finally, I believe values of both parents and the perspective of both genders should all play a material role in the parental decision-making process. For single parents and same-gender parents, getting at least one trusted adult advisor of the opposite gender is part of a responsible compensation plan, regardless of the child’s gender. While one parent (usually the mother) may put significantly more hours into parenting than the other, those same two parents need to collaborate more equally on the decision-making process of how to raise their child. In contrast, Chua feels completely comfortable and justified shutting out the man who is both her husband and her daughters’ father from both parenting activity and decision-making. Instead, Chua rolls her eyes and belittles her husband’s concerns when he voices them.
Chua accuses “western” parents of being lazy. But which takes more time, effort and thought: Making all the decisions oneself or genuinely involving another person? It is a rhetorical question, of course. The lazy parents are the ones who leave all the parental decision-making to just one parent. The lazy mother is the one who simply shuts her ears to her husband’s concerns rather than considering and even soliciting another perspective. The lazy mother (or father) does not want to take the time to work out a plan that brings out the best of all perspectives. If something is missing in a child’s life, responsible parents compensate while lazy parents merely follow their impulses. When dealing with the differences between teenage boys and teenage girls, lazy parents cannot be bothered with the effort it takes to promote gender equality. All this is to say good proactive parenting takes a lot of thought, reflection, work and most importantly interaction. Each child is unique enough that an inflexible set of rules like the ones Chua advocates can never be what is best; they can only be the easiest.
As I read Chua’s essay, I realize it is not merely the children of tiger-mothering who suffer and miss out. I feel very sorry for Chua’s husband and I also feel sorry for Amy Chua. While it has been a lot of work, the process of co-parenting with Amelia has been one of the most joyful parts of our relationship and it is something Chua and her husband will never know.
This is a charged subject for a number of reasons. To begin with, in nearly every two parent household, the division of parenting duties is never equal. And while I do not have any data in front of me, if one were to somehow measure parenting activity as divided between fathers and mothers, I have no doubt mothers (even working mothers) put in more hours of parenting activity than fathers. Second, not every child is raised by his or her father and mother. There are plenty of blended families, single-parent families, same-gender-parent families and other non-traditional families. Chloe has one friend from her basketball team for example who is being raised by her aunt and her grandfather. Advocates for womens’ rights, LGBT rights as well as those who advocate traditional family values would be quick contribute an opinion on this subject that could easily be inflammatory. So at risk of being inflammatory, myself, I am going to tackle this charged subject.
First, while gender differences are real, I believe those differences should never be artificially amplified. In contrast, I believe reasonable (but not ridiculous) efforts should be made to promote gender equality. As Amelia and I have been raising our eldest, Philip, and we have set rules and privileges for him, an important part in our decision-making process has been whether we would be willing to apply the same rules and privileges to Chloe when she reaches the same age. Whenever the answer was no, Amelia and I would normally continue deliberating until we came up with a plan in which the answer to that question was yes. In contrast, Chua’s rules state “Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school” rather than “Chinese kids cannot date until after high school.” The idea that the rules for girls should be stricter than the rules for boys (or vice versa) is both unfair and counter-productive even though for example high school girls may face greater threats on average than high school boys.
Second, I believe the healthiest family model in which a child can be raised is a single household that contains the child’s biological mother and father with any siblings from the same mother and father. That does not mean that I think the alternatives, even vastly different alternatives such as same-gender-parent households, are wrong. Instead I believe that parents who raise a child under a different model need to find ways to compensate. And my observation is most such parents not only compensate but do a good job compensating. Proactive single mothers and “two mom” families, for example, make extra effort to connect their sons and daughters with responsible, emotionally-healthy adult men. And the converse is true for single fathers and “two dad” families.
Finally, I believe values of both parents and the perspective of both genders should all play a material role in the parental decision-making process. For single parents and same-gender parents, getting at least one trusted adult advisor of the opposite gender is part of a responsible compensation plan, regardless of the child’s gender. While one parent (usually the mother) may put significantly more hours into parenting than the other, those same two parents need to collaborate more equally on the decision-making process of how to raise their child. In contrast, Chua feels completely comfortable and justified shutting out the man who is both her husband and her daughters’ father from both parenting activity and decision-making. Instead, Chua rolls her eyes and belittles her husband’s concerns when he voices them.
Chua accuses “western” parents of being lazy. But which takes more time, effort and thought: Making all the decisions oneself or genuinely involving another person? It is a rhetorical question, of course. The lazy parents are the ones who leave all the parental decision-making to just one parent. The lazy mother is the one who simply shuts her ears to her husband’s concerns rather than considering and even soliciting another perspective. The lazy mother (or father) does not want to take the time to work out a plan that brings out the best of all perspectives. If something is missing in a child’s life, responsible parents compensate while lazy parents merely follow their impulses. When dealing with the differences between teenage boys and teenage girls, lazy parents cannot be bothered with the effort it takes to promote gender equality. All this is to say good proactive parenting takes a lot of thought, reflection, work and most importantly interaction. Each child is unique enough that an inflexible set of rules like the ones Chua advocates can never be what is best; they can only be the easiest.
As I read Chua’s essay, I realize it is not merely the children of tiger-mothering who suffer and miss out. I feel very sorry for Chua’s husband and I also feel sorry for Amy Chua. While it has been a lot of work, the process of co-parenting with Amelia has been one of the most joyful parts of our relationship and it is something Chua and her husband will never know.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Tame Teen Culture of Grinding and Social Networking
On March 4th the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report that showed (with two interesting exceptions) a significant drop in teen sex between two studies for which the data was only five years apart. I’ve copied the CDC’s figures for teenagers ages 15 – 17 into the tables below. In a way, the numbers communicate more than anything I or anyone else could write in comment.
Heterosexual
Sex: Ages 15 – 17
|
Boys
2002
|
Boys
2006-8
|
Boys’
Drop
|
Girls
2002
|
Girls
2006-8
|
Girls’
Drop
|
Vaginal Sex
|
36.3%
|
31.8%
|
4.5%
|
38.7%
|
33.0%
|
5.7%
|
Any Oral Sex
|
44.0%
|
35.0%
|
9.0%
|
42.0%
|
30.2%
|
11.8%
|
Gave Oral Sex
|
30.4%
|
22.5%
|
7.9%
|
28.2%
|
25.1%
|
3.1%
|
Received Oral Sex
|
38.0%
|
33.4%
|
4.6%
|
40.3%
|
26.8%
|
13.5%
|
Anal Sex
|
8.1%
|
6.2%
|
1.9%
|
5.6%
|
7.0%
|
------
|
No Heterosexual Contact
|
46.8%
|
53.2%
|
7.4%
|
50.2%
|
60.3%
|
10.1%
|
Additional Sexual
Data: Ages 15 - 17
|
Boys
2002
|
Boys
2006-8
|
Boys’
Drop
|
Girls 2002
|
Girls
2006-8
|
Girls’
Drop
|
Homosexual Sex
|
3.9%
|
1.7%
|
2.2%
|
8.4%
|
10.3%
|
------
|
No Sexual Contact
|
46.1%
|
52.6%
|
6.5%
|
48.6%
|
58.2%
|
9.6%
|
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Toxic Allure of Tiger-Mothering (Part 2) Motivation
In her January 8th, Wall Street Journal essay, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, Amy Chua presents an all-too-familiar problem every parent faces. Kids left on their own lack the self-motivation to do anything beyond what comes naturally or with hardly any effort. The solution she claims is Tiger-Mothering, her version of how conventional Chinese mothers raise their children.
There are many aspects to Tiger-Mothering which Chua packs into her essay. Her memoir provides even more detail but also discloses how she does not always hold to her own ideal. Nonetheless, the Chua essay has generated a significant amount of debate. How much should parents permit their children to follow their natural impulses? How much pressure should responsible parents put on their children to overcome their inertia? And more importantly, what tactics should responsible parents use to ensure their children do not fall victim to their own lazy nature?
Chua accuses those she describes as conventional Western parents as being “lazy” whenever they do not push past their children’s resistance. While parents who never push their children are lazy, Chua and those who follow her Tiger-Mothering principles are also lazy. By creating a zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy, Chua and others like her bypass an uncountable number of interactions with their children that take time, thought and effort at the expense of their kids’ emotionally healthy development. In the most simple terms, an extremist position like the one Chua advocates takes very little thought and only occasional time and effort.
Additionally, Chua applies little to no moral or ethical compass when it comes to pursuing her narrow objectives. She threatens to take back gifts and cancel celebrations. She denies her daughters bathroom breaks and advocates any use of fear, shame, guilt or manipulation. She never appeals to her kids’ own sense of values. She simply stands upon her own totalitarian parental authority. Perhaps the only thing Chua does not do to achieve her ends is give her daughters physical beatings.
My own position is not the opposite, but relies heavily upon my own moral and ethical compass. So to begin with, fear, shame, guilt and manipulation are toxic. Leveraging these toxic drivers is a counterfeit producer of desired behavior because the desired behavior is either short-lived or soon joined by a different set of undesired behaviors that are the fallout of physical, emotional and psychological abuse. And this kind of abuse is generational. Adult children of such abuse are inclined to inflict the same kind of abuse on their own children, and justify that abuse to themselves and those around them by the subset of outcomes that are desirable.
But I do not advocate the opposite extreme. While I do not behave in a manipulative manner or manufacture fear, shame or guilt, I do not completely shelter my children from normal life situations in which these kinds of feelings could in theory come into play. A very emotionally healthy person can feel these emotions, especially guilt, when they violate their own moral or ethical compass. And while my kids are still living under my roof, I put a lot of effort into ensuring they build their own moral and ethical compass and have the tools to continue doing so long after they leave my home.
A key part of the equation is goals. Successful, emotionally healthy adults set challenging goals for themselves. Left on their own, kids won’t set challenging goals for themselves. But to merely set goals for them is a fallacy of Tiger-Mothering. This is where negotiation comes into play. Chua insists her kids play either the piano or the violin. In fact, it looks like she chose the piano for one and the violin for another. Either way with so few choices, Chua’s girls did not get to set or even negotiate their own goals. They had to either pick or have one chosen for them. The correct thing is to drill down into the actual objective. Perhaps Chua wanted her each of her girls to excel in something artistic that required physical action with concentration. If so, nearly any musical instrument except perhaps the kazoo would suffice. Certainly, it would be more than two. Once an instrument was selected the exact goals with that instrument in question could also be negotiated. These are the kinds of interactions lazy parents bypass.
In our family, sports was one such subject of negotiation. We wanted both Philip and Chloe to be physically active, to gain physical confidence and develop some team skills. When Philip got sick of baseball, we required him to find something else and we helped him find lacrosse. When Chloe got sick of soccer, we required her to continue with basketball and to find a replacement for soccer which turned out to be volleyball.
But once a goal is selected, kids will still resist whenever the going gets difficult. It is here where Chua is willing to use whatever means necessary to ensure her kids’ inertia gains no foothold. But is there another way that is better? I believe the answer lies in consequences. Consequences play a large role in how I have dealt with both goals and behavior. Because kids are naturally sheltered from nearly all of life’s consequences until they are adults, parents need to create consequences that are more immediate. The consequences must be situation-appropriate, be clearly stated in advance if at all possible, and most importantly the consequences must actually be carried out.
I am amazed at how many parents threaten huge consequences they would never deliver upon and for such a small infractions. Chua told her daughter that she would have “no birthday parties for … four years” if she did not learn how to play a piano piece called The Little White Donkey “perfect” by the next day. In my home, I deliver on all my threats and as a result I rarely need to deliver. I can only achieve this by making threats on which I would actually deliver. At one point before Philip was even ten years old he was fascinated by my grandfather’s fraternity paddle from the 1930s. As such when a particularly egregious behavior manifested I told Philip that if he ever did that again, he would get one firm slap on his bare buttocks with the fraternity paddle, and ensured he agreed in advance that it was an appropriate punishment. It turned out to be the biggest threat I have ever had to carry out. When the behavior repeated itself, I looked at him in astonishment. But I had meant what I said. I asked him if he wanted the punishment immediately and he did. It hurt. Philip cried and I held him and told him it was over. And it was over: On both sides. Philip never manifested that behavior ever again.
Working with your kids to set their own goals and to set consequences for failures and wrong behavior takes work and requires several adjustments as they age. It requires delivering on all threats when necessary and making sure every threat is something a responsible parent would actually deliver upon. It has taken a lot of work and we are still not done. Sometimes, I can see the appeal of the zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy. But I’ve learned there is a better way and in this last stretch of parenting, I plan to stick to it.
There are many aspects to Tiger-Mothering which Chua packs into her essay. Her memoir provides even more detail but also discloses how she does not always hold to her own ideal. Nonetheless, the Chua essay has generated a significant amount of debate. How much should parents permit their children to follow their natural impulses? How much pressure should responsible parents put on their children to overcome their inertia? And more importantly, what tactics should responsible parents use to ensure their children do not fall victim to their own lazy nature?
Chua accuses those she describes as conventional Western parents as being “lazy” whenever they do not push past their children’s resistance. While parents who never push their children are lazy, Chua and those who follow her Tiger-Mothering principles are also lazy. By creating a zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy, Chua and others like her bypass an uncountable number of interactions with their children that take time, thought and effort at the expense of their kids’ emotionally healthy development. In the most simple terms, an extremist position like the one Chua advocates takes very little thought and only occasional time and effort.
Additionally, Chua applies little to no moral or ethical compass when it comes to pursuing her narrow objectives. She threatens to take back gifts and cancel celebrations. She denies her daughters bathroom breaks and advocates any use of fear, shame, guilt or manipulation. She never appeals to her kids’ own sense of values. She simply stands upon her own totalitarian parental authority. Perhaps the only thing Chua does not do to achieve her ends is give her daughters physical beatings.
My own position is not the opposite, but relies heavily upon my own moral and ethical compass. So to begin with, fear, shame, guilt and manipulation are toxic. Leveraging these toxic drivers is a counterfeit producer of desired behavior because the desired behavior is either short-lived or soon joined by a different set of undesired behaviors that are the fallout of physical, emotional and psychological abuse. And this kind of abuse is generational. Adult children of such abuse are inclined to inflict the same kind of abuse on their own children, and justify that abuse to themselves and those around them by the subset of outcomes that are desirable.
But I do not advocate the opposite extreme. While I do not behave in a manipulative manner or manufacture fear, shame or guilt, I do not completely shelter my children from normal life situations in which these kinds of feelings could in theory come into play. A very emotionally healthy person can feel these emotions, especially guilt, when they violate their own moral or ethical compass. And while my kids are still living under my roof, I put a lot of effort into ensuring they build their own moral and ethical compass and have the tools to continue doing so long after they leave my home.
A key part of the equation is goals. Successful, emotionally healthy adults set challenging goals for themselves. Left on their own, kids won’t set challenging goals for themselves. But to merely set goals for them is a fallacy of Tiger-Mothering. This is where negotiation comes into play. Chua insists her kids play either the piano or the violin. In fact, it looks like she chose the piano for one and the violin for another. Either way with so few choices, Chua’s girls did not get to set or even negotiate their own goals. They had to either pick or have one chosen for them. The correct thing is to drill down into the actual objective. Perhaps Chua wanted her each of her girls to excel in something artistic that required physical action with concentration. If so, nearly any musical instrument except perhaps the kazoo would suffice. Certainly, it would be more than two. Once an instrument was selected the exact goals with that instrument in question could also be negotiated. These are the kinds of interactions lazy parents bypass.
In our family, sports was one such subject of negotiation. We wanted both Philip and Chloe to be physically active, to gain physical confidence and develop some team skills. When Philip got sick of baseball, we required him to find something else and we helped him find lacrosse. When Chloe got sick of soccer, we required her to continue with basketball and to find a replacement for soccer which turned out to be volleyball.
But once a goal is selected, kids will still resist whenever the going gets difficult. It is here where Chua is willing to use whatever means necessary to ensure her kids’ inertia gains no foothold. But is there another way that is better? I believe the answer lies in consequences. Consequences play a large role in how I have dealt with both goals and behavior. Because kids are naturally sheltered from nearly all of life’s consequences until they are adults, parents need to create consequences that are more immediate. The consequences must be situation-appropriate, be clearly stated in advance if at all possible, and most importantly the consequences must actually be carried out.
I am amazed at how many parents threaten huge consequences they would never deliver upon and for such a small infractions. Chua told her daughter that she would have “no birthday parties for … four years” if she did not learn how to play a piano piece called The Little White Donkey “perfect” by the next day. In my home, I deliver on all my threats and as a result I rarely need to deliver. I can only achieve this by making threats on which I would actually deliver. At one point before Philip was even ten years old he was fascinated by my grandfather’s fraternity paddle from the 1930s. As such when a particularly egregious behavior manifested I told Philip that if he ever did that again, he would get one firm slap on his bare buttocks with the fraternity paddle, and ensured he agreed in advance that it was an appropriate punishment. It turned out to be the biggest threat I have ever had to carry out. When the behavior repeated itself, I looked at him in astonishment. But I had meant what I said. I asked him if he wanted the punishment immediately and he did. It hurt. Philip cried and I held him and told him it was over. And it was over: On both sides. Philip never manifested that behavior ever again.
Working with your kids to set their own goals and to set consequences for failures and wrong behavior takes work and requires several adjustments as they age. It requires delivering on all threats when necessary and making sure every threat is something a responsible parent would actually deliver upon. It has taken a lot of work and we are still not done. Sometimes, I can see the appeal of the zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy. But I’ve learned there is a better way and in this last stretch of parenting, I plan to stick to it.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Popular Teens: How Do They Gain and Maintain Their Status?
Now that my formal education is long since over, works published in academic journals do not normally catch my attention. The February 2011 issue of the American Sociological Review proved a very interesting exception. In it Professors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee of UC Davis empirically verified something we generally know about popular teenagers but also discovered some things we do not generally know.
Is anyone surprised to learn that popular teenagers are mean toward other teenagers? If we have somehow forgotten our own teen years, the entertainment industry is there to remind us with movies like Mean Girls, American Pie, The Clique and Odd Girl Out as well as television series like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, and Degrassi.
Faris and Felmlee use the word Aggression to describe three types of behaviors that increase among teens as they become progressively popular: physical aggression, direct verbal aggression and indirect verbal aggression (spreading gossip). These findings stand in sharp contrast to psychological research that attributes aggressive behavior to teens who are social outsiders, not social insiders. And then there is one finding that shatters the stereotype completely. Their research shows teens at the zenith of popularity (roughly the top 2%) are not mean or aggressive at all. If we think back hard to our own teen years, perhaps many of us can remember these kinder, gentler highly popular teens and anecdotally confirm what has only been recently documented empirically. I certainly can.
While I have not conducted any kind of study that would qualify as viable research, I believe my anecdotal observations can explain some of these findings, fill in some gaps, and paint a more complete picture. Most importantly, since being more popular in and of itself is desirable and as long as a teen does not attain his or her increased popularity through acts of cruelty or leverage his or her popularity for destructive ends, its pursuit should be encouraged.
While I agree that popular teens behave aggressively toward other teenagers according to the pattern Faris and Felmlee outline, it is not the first thing I have noticed about their social behavior. Instead what is most noticeable is how much effort they put into validating other teenagers. As teenagers become more popular, acts of validation become almost an obsession. They want to pair themselves off with nearly everyone in photographs. They post all kinds of warm, friendly messages to others on social networking sites like Facebook and Formspring. And regarding the school sports teams, they are the ones who provide constant praise to the high performers and constant encouragement to the under performers as both teammates and fans on the sidelines. When Philip’s birthday rolled around, the first two people to wish him “happy birthday” on Facebook were Noah (the most popular guy is his class) and Erica (the most popular girl in his class). Their posts both appeared before seven in the morning and were followed by scores of other birthday notes, most of which were from other very popular students. On the other side of the spectrum, when a man in the community died in a motorcycle accident, it was the popular kids like Noah who led the charge in showering his son (a junior at Hermes High School) with words and acts of love, kindness and support and who actively urged others to do likewise.
There are many factors that play into the equation to determine teenage popularity and obviously these differ between boys and girls. These include extroversion, mature youthful features, stature, muscular development, humor, friendliness, personal grooming, intelligence (but not actual academic performance), confidence, speaking skills, financial resources, athletic prowess, social ambition, and (perhaps not last) an adeptness at using aggressive behavior shrewdly.
Here in my mind is the difference between the aggressiveness popular teens exhibit and the aggressiveness marginal teens exhibit, and why Faris and Felmlee’s findings differ so radically from the findings of most psychological research. Put yourself in the shoes of an average teenager and ask yourself who’s aggression would make you feel more victimized: the crazy kid with no friends or the starting quarterback with a beautiful adoring girlfriend? A small public cutting remark from the quarterback would have far more impact than a tirade from the crazy kid.
In my observation, popular teens tend to use aggression with deliberate ends in mind more than they exhibit impulsive acts of aggression, though I have certainly observed the latter quite often. These deliberate ends include testing, self-defense, assertiveness, maintaining the social hierarchy, and (admittedly) entertainment. Here is one example of this kind of deliberateness that I observed from the bleachers. The Hermes lacrosse team was taking a water break. Philip had just finished drinking and was putting his gloves back on. A short distance from Philip, Conrad was holding one of those water bottles that let him squirt water into his mouth without needing to remove his helmet. After drinking up, Conrad aimed a quick squirt of water at Philip. Philip looked up, saw Conrad’s beaming confident smile, and gave Conrad a warm smile and quick laugh in response. Then Conrad squirted Philip a second time. Philip stared back at Conrad with an annoyed look of disapproval while Conrad continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat, and then squirted Philip a third time. Without hesitation, Philip used his lacrosse stick to knock the water bottle out of Conrad’s hand and deliver a few punishing jabs before Conrad got hold of his own stick and was able to successfully parry Philip’s stick-thrusts. Conrad made one attempt to jab Philip back and his attempt was likewise deflected before both smiled and halted their altercation.
It was a very telling exchange. Both Conrad and Philip are popular. Conrad is perhaps half a notch above Philip in the social hierarchy. Conrad’s initial actions served multiple purposes. They were a test, a way to maintain his social position relative to Philip’s and a means of entertainment. Philip’s initial self-restraint and subsequent aggression first validated Conrad and then asserted Philip’s own social position. By the end of the exchange both Conrad and Philip looked impressive to all observers and perhaps their joint status within the overall social order had increased.
Teenagers have varying social ambitions and varying means to achieve their social ambitions. While some things (like height) are completely out of their control, other things (like behavior) are very much within their control to the degree that their maturity can override their impulsiveness. The best steps a parent can take to help their children enjoy the social aspects of their teen years are encouraging their teens to be friendly and validating of others while simultaneously teaching their teens to be shrewdly assertive. Both will normally take effort because most teens are socially cautious by nature. But the effort will be well worth it.
Is anyone surprised to learn that popular teenagers are mean toward other teenagers? If we have somehow forgotten our own teen years, the entertainment industry is there to remind us with movies like Mean Girls, American Pie, The Clique and Odd Girl Out as well as television series like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, and Degrassi.
Faris and Felmlee use the word Aggression to describe three types of behaviors that increase among teens as they become progressively popular: physical aggression, direct verbal aggression and indirect verbal aggression (spreading gossip). These findings stand in sharp contrast to psychological research that attributes aggressive behavior to teens who are social outsiders, not social insiders. And then there is one finding that shatters the stereotype completely. Their research shows teens at the zenith of popularity (roughly the top 2%) are not mean or aggressive at all. If we think back hard to our own teen years, perhaps many of us can remember these kinder, gentler highly popular teens and anecdotally confirm what has only been recently documented empirically. I certainly can.
While I have not conducted any kind of study that would qualify as viable research, I believe my anecdotal observations can explain some of these findings, fill in some gaps, and paint a more complete picture. Most importantly, since being more popular in and of itself is desirable and as long as a teen does not attain his or her increased popularity through acts of cruelty or leverage his or her popularity for destructive ends, its pursuit should be encouraged.
While I agree that popular teens behave aggressively toward other teenagers according to the pattern Faris and Felmlee outline, it is not the first thing I have noticed about their social behavior. Instead what is most noticeable is how much effort they put into validating other teenagers. As teenagers become more popular, acts of validation become almost an obsession. They want to pair themselves off with nearly everyone in photographs. They post all kinds of warm, friendly messages to others on social networking sites like Facebook and Formspring. And regarding the school sports teams, they are the ones who provide constant praise to the high performers and constant encouragement to the under performers as both teammates and fans on the sidelines. When Philip’s birthday rolled around, the first two people to wish him “happy birthday” on Facebook were Noah (the most popular guy is his class) and Erica (the most popular girl in his class). Their posts both appeared before seven in the morning and were followed by scores of other birthday notes, most of which were from other very popular students. On the other side of the spectrum, when a man in the community died in a motorcycle accident, it was the popular kids like Noah who led the charge in showering his son (a junior at Hermes High School) with words and acts of love, kindness and support and who actively urged others to do likewise.
There are many factors that play into the equation to determine teenage popularity and obviously these differ between boys and girls. These include extroversion, mature youthful features, stature, muscular development, humor, friendliness, personal grooming, intelligence (but not actual academic performance), confidence, speaking skills, financial resources, athletic prowess, social ambition, and (perhaps not last) an adeptness at using aggressive behavior shrewdly.
Here in my mind is the difference between the aggressiveness popular teens exhibit and the aggressiveness marginal teens exhibit, and why Faris and Felmlee’s findings differ so radically from the findings of most psychological research. Put yourself in the shoes of an average teenager and ask yourself who’s aggression would make you feel more victimized: the crazy kid with no friends or the starting quarterback with a beautiful adoring girlfriend? A small public cutting remark from the quarterback would have far more impact than a tirade from the crazy kid.
In my observation, popular teens tend to use aggression with deliberate ends in mind more than they exhibit impulsive acts of aggression, though I have certainly observed the latter quite often. These deliberate ends include testing, self-defense, assertiveness, maintaining the social hierarchy, and (admittedly) entertainment. Here is one example of this kind of deliberateness that I observed from the bleachers. The Hermes lacrosse team was taking a water break. Philip had just finished drinking and was putting his gloves back on. A short distance from Philip, Conrad was holding one of those water bottles that let him squirt water into his mouth without needing to remove his helmet. After drinking up, Conrad aimed a quick squirt of water at Philip. Philip looked up, saw Conrad’s beaming confident smile, and gave Conrad a warm smile and quick laugh in response. Then Conrad squirted Philip a second time. Philip stared back at Conrad with an annoyed look of disapproval while Conrad continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat, and then squirted Philip a third time. Without hesitation, Philip used his lacrosse stick to knock the water bottle out of Conrad’s hand and deliver a few punishing jabs before Conrad got hold of his own stick and was able to successfully parry Philip’s stick-thrusts. Conrad made one attempt to jab Philip back and his attempt was likewise deflected before both smiled and halted their altercation.
It was a very telling exchange. Both Conrad and Philip are popular. Conrad is perhaps half a notch above Philip in the social hierarchy. Conrad’s initial actions served multiple purposes. They were a test, a way to maintain his social position relative to Philip’s and a means of entertainment. Philip’s initial self-restraint and subsequent aggression first validated Conrad and then asserted Philip’s own social position. By the end of the exchange both Conrad and Philip looked impressive to all observers and perhaps their joint status within the overall social order had increased.
Teenagers have varying social ambitions and varying means to achieve their social ambitions. While some things (like height) are completely out of their control, other things (like behavior) are very much within their control to the degree that their maturity can override their impulsiveness. The best steps a parent can take to help their children enjoy the social aspects of their teen years are encouraging their teens to be friendly and validating of others while simultaneously teaching their teens to be shrewdly assertive. Both will normally take effort because most teens are socially cautious by nature. But the effort will be well worth it.
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