Hyper Chinese Parenting

LOT's of people commenting on the dragon-lady Amy Chua and her spooky glimpse into the hyper-parented Chinese-American household. I have to take the article at face value although some commenters say her entire memoir softens the whole picture.  I don't have time between bedtimes to read it.  At the time of writing, the WSJ article has 5100 comments.

My take:

Western parents seem to be adopting strategies similar to the Chinese approach more and more.  I've been following http://www.freerangekids.com/ for some time where many examples of the "Hover Lest Our Children Fail Us" attitude are shown frequently.  Even The Simpsons picked up on this with a line from a hyper-parent "You can't let children ...(do things themselves)..., you have to hover over their shoulders and force them to succeed."
More and more pressure is hoisted on kids, although, the western flavour includes academic and athletic excellence.  Just look at the one-on-one sports training for kids as young as 4 geared toward the "anything to get them to the bigs" attitude.  I was skating on a pond (really a big puddle) with my son when a father came with his two boys to let them play hockey.  After a half-hour or so, he jumped out of his SUV to yell at them for being "lazy".  Huh? I thought this was just fun pond hockey.  You're going to ruin the sport for them. Let them enjoy some skating time without a coach breathing down their necks.
 
Chinese parents do seem to take things to the next level, and as Half Sigma says they will, "no doubt produce workers who are good value creators, and their corporate employers will love them, and they will be paid far less money than the value they create."  By turning her children into piano playing/math problem solving machines, eschewing social activities and refusing to let their children any choice, Chua is producing highly-proficient drones.  I'm not anti-achievement, but, the drive has to come from the children.  Chua thinks that she owns her children.  She is also steeling their own achievements by molding them into what she imagines them to be.  One day, they may wake up and realize that they were only performing for their parents and the emptiness will begin to grow. 
 
Read the passage about the piano practice.  Her daughter was exhasperated about a difficult piece so Chua dragged her back to the piano bench.
 
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.


Eventually, she got it and was elated.  Wonderful, right?  To me, it sounds empty.  To me, it sounds like Chua was the one afraid of raising a daughter who is a loser (something I'll cover on my new blog 911OnSpeedDial).  If the daughter had been allowed to go to her lesson without perfecting the piece, her teacher would have helped her.  Then, maybe after more practice, she could have mastered it on her own, in time for the recital.  Her accomplishment, or failure, would have been hers and not be overshadowed by her mother but either way, she would have learned to work it out herself. Chua is the one playing the instruments through her children and missing the point of teaching piano in the first place.  It's not to create prodigies.  It's to create a learning experience.

What western cultures realize and have ingrained, is, that to force children to excel and make their life-choices for them, is taking a big risk.  Your child could rebel and you lose your relationship.  Your child could internalize the pressure and crack if they don't achieve a high enough level of success (whatever that is).  Without making choices at a young age, they'll grow older and not have enough life experience to cope in the real world.  To most western parents, the rewards aren't worth these risks.  Still, we find plenty or western children who find their own motivation to push for excellence.  Some were pushed by parents, but most get a thrill out of competition and push themselves.

All cultures have a wide range of parenting styles, but, Chinese definitely have a higher percentage of the high-pressue style that Hua describes and take it to another level. As I've learned from Chinese friends, it is the norm in China.  There, it is probably easier since the schools are geared toward this mentality and most other students are in the same situation.  In North America, it is more difficult due to the exposure to our culture.  This also makes the risks far greater if a child rebels and goes rogue.  With less social skills, they have less ability to navigate the pitfalls such as drugs and sex.

While there are certainly things we learn from Chua's parenting; that kids can be resilient and achieve great things, the warnings are abundant and clear.  The point of raising kids is not to compete for the highest achievement in school or music.  The most important thing is to raise kids who are happy, independant and strong.  With that to build from, they'll seek success for themselves.  It just may not be in medicine or asto-physics.

Do Not Pay Attention to the Side Show, the Destructive Dynamic Remains

Posted in error to 911OnSpeedDial on: Tuesday, January 11, 2011


Besides the pain and suffering of the victims and their families, the worst thing about mass shootings, is the distraction away from real issues on account of one attention-seeking mad man. Bullets hail for a few seconds changing lives forever. However, we must remember that what was happening in Arizona before the shooting has not stopped just because the media has fogotten about it in the rush to find out what was making Jared Lee Loughner tick.



Let's not forget the unique dynamic along the southern border of Arizona. Guns flow south to help the drug lords supply the drug demand in the north. The solution is so simple. I am always astounded by the state of denial and cognitive disonance in the minds of gun supporters. They stand for freedom to own a gun, but deny freedom to control what substances others put in their bodies and blame the ensuing violence on the inferiority and moral failings of the other group.

Feminism and the Erosion of Women's Sports

It was once thought that feminism wanted to advance women in sport.  However, it seems that some would rather advance men in women's sports.  Feministing.com predictably adores this ruling.
What will their take be when the top 10 golfers on the LPGA tour are men?  Do they really believe that the only difference between a man and a woman is appearance?  The most disconcerting thing in this whole story is the complacency with which the women on the tour accept it.  This threatens to undo everything women have worked for but the players have to stoicly tow the PC party line?  Unbelievable.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd believe that feminism is trying to abolish sport altogether and using this farce to undermine women's sport so they can attack the whole of sport as a "sexist" activity.  However, it just seems to me that they are too blind and ignorant to realize what they are doing.

Onestdv, The Breastfeeding Consultant.

So Onestdv is out chasing yet another conspiracy.  This time he says that infant formula is part of the plot to undermine the family.

Infant formula is simply another example of a technology enabling the women's movement, not the other way around. Before infant formula, mothers who couldn't breastfeed had to find willing mothers to lend their milk or pay for a wet nurse. Big business, as always, filled the gap and continues to gather huge profits (egad).



The point One fails to mention is that in the heydays of science (50's -60's), the prevailing notion was that science had surpassed nature and that there was no way that nature could provide the kind of nutrient-filled food that the powers of science had cooked up. Then, we discovered that the mother's immunity was passed to the child. Of course, this small, but important difference was blown way out of proportion. Suddenly, the pendulum swung and baby formula was painted as an evil corporate plot and everyone said that nothing MEN invented could be as nourishing as a woman's all-natural milk. The science-whore was used to link breastfeeding to higher IQ and link formula to obesity. I suspect it’s more a function of income level since lower income people are less likely to breastfeed.


Women are now shamed for letting a single drop of formula touch their child's digestive system. Go to a maternity ward and witness the bleeding and cracked nipples and weeping mothers ashamed that they can’t get it right refusing to believe that they should taint their babies with that poison.

ONE has it backwards. The breastfeeding craze is perpetuated by the leftist Gaaia worshipping feminists. Like other religions that cause suffering, it is propogated by the piety of other sufferers (usually women). The same way that Muslim women don the veil to tell other women that god hates them; mothers pass guilt trips for even thinking about using formula along with a whole host of other overblown fears and parenting misteps.

In regard to the US government funding:  It appears as though even the WIC is moving toward milk banks as an alternative to formula.  This move would suggest that the government is moving away from the somewhat counterproductive practice of funding formula for anyone on the plan.

The War on Drugs in Rio - The Temporary Solution

I saw this from Marginal Revolution (hat tip). 
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/rios_drug_war.html

I referenced it in my post on ONESTDV.

It's what I call a temporary solution.  I guess in Rio, they want to lock up all the gangsters before the Olympics so they moved into the favellas military style.  How long before the gangster that were removed are replaced by younger, more ruthless thugs?

In a place as notoriously corrupt as Rio, I wonder how many of those bricks of pot and cocaine are going to end up back on the street within a week.