Soft, Indulgent Western Moms
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Family on Monday, January 10, 2011 9:00 AM
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“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” is the provocative title of Amy Chua’s essay accounting for the stereotype of the successful Asian student.
I found it a fascinating window into a culture I know little about—and she’s also quite amusing on the culture clash of parenting styles.
For example, I absolutely share the Western horror of insulting a child she describes in this incident.
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 [her daughter], 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.
Ugh! How could a mother say that? At the same time, I share her evident bemusement at the overwrought response of one of the guests at that party:
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.
How awkward to trip a cultural trigger without realizing it.
I’m guessing (say if I’m mistaken in comments) that any of us would be put off, to say the least, not only by such harsh language, but also by the anecdote she tells later about how she got one of her daughters to master a tricky piece on the piano for a recital.
The word “cruel” comes to mind. And yet the author says that most Chinese moms find our gentler Western approach neglectful and unloving:
Many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly.
The author says the two cultures are mutually misunderstanding each other. Both love their kids, but she notes three major differences in assumption and approach.
The first is this:
Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
She proves this contention with an amusing caricature of what happens in an American home if a child gets a poor grade: medical evaluation for the child or full-bore attack on the curriculum of the school or methods of the teacher. Compare with what happens in a Chinese home in the same circumstance:
If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough. That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
Some other differences you can read for yourself, but suggest to me she doesn’t understand Americans well—but it’s interesting to see how we look from the outside.
In the end, this is how she summarizes the difference in approach:
Western parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.
There are close to 2000 comments on the article, most of them shocked and horrified, and a few from fellow Chinese trying to explain that the woman’s not a monster, she’s a product of the cultural assumption that people need music, art and discipline to be happy.
On the theory that it’s healthy to confront and challenge our assumptions from time to time, I wonder what your response is after reading the article?
I don’t think a Christian has anything to learn from the “hurl abuse” method of discipline. Insults aren’t open to us as holy behavior. I also don’t think hovering over a child for hours to get her to do several hours of piano practice is even possible for parents of more than two children.
But do we have anything to learn from the assumption that kids are pretty resilient and that to be happy they must master certain skills?
Click over and read the whole article. Then come back here and tell me what say you.
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