
Chinese Mothers - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
======
ookblah
I am chinese and grew up in a strict household when it came to academics, but
what a bunch of ego-stroking crap written in that article. I am thankful that
my mother would push me and for not letting me always take the easy way out,
but there are many times when it was overboard in an unhealthy way.

For one, it creates a limited view of what "success" is and the means to
achieve it. My parents had a big fixation on "financial stability" and pushed
that on my sister and me. That meant a lot of careers weren't even considered,
and music and any other extra-curricular activities were just to make you seem
more "rounded".

Growing up I would always be compared to other people. To my sister (she was
more the straight-A student, I was the "if this doesn't interest me who cares"
type), to other chinese friends. I think it's interesting to fast forward 10
years later and see what effect if any it had on us. The funny thing is that
we are all across the board.

The "straight-A, 1600 SAT score student that went to Harvard" that we were
always compared to? Most just ended up in successful professions like doctor
or lawyer (and I became an engineer haha). Just like their less strict,
"western" counter-parts. Nothing against hard work and success, but the way my
mom would go on about it back then it was like they were about to win the
nobel prize or something and I was gonna be a deadbeat in the streets. The
funny thing is my mom looks at it now and realizes how absurd it kind of was.

Some of my friends were not as lucky, and I had a few completely
shutdown/rebel in college because they realized they didn't want to live their
life dictated by parents or took advantage of their freedom in an unhealthy
way. I think there are some good things to take away from this, but
"superior"? Please.

Wow, I wrote a lot haha.

~~~
vamsee
I'm from a similarly "Indian" background, and I should admit reading this
article was nauseating. I know the zombie people this kind of approach makes
with no identity of their own, and it's nothing to be proud of. I have a
question - so how many of these kids with "Chinese" way of raising are leaders
in their industry? If they excelled all through their academics, does this
mean they'll excel in real life too? Will they have the same kind of linear
challenges that an academic setting offers?

~~~
ookblah
Even going from college -> work it's clear that your high school/college
achievements mean jack after some work experience. I've seen (and personally
experienced) a few people "wise up" in college/entering the workforce and
excel in their fields afterward, even if they did poorly growing up.

My opinion is that this type of upbringing tends to produce kids that excel at
what they do in their respective fields, but no guarantee that it produces a
leader. It also ends up like you described, "zombie people" where everybody
that's asian tends to be in health, law, or engineering or a "safer" industry
hahaha.

For instance, my co-founder and I having entered the startup space, note a
lack of Chinese people in this space (like founders), but a ton in general
software development roles.

------
electromagnetic
So basically "Chinese Mother" in this term means tyrannical dictator who will
drive their children to suicide/drugs/anorexia/obesity/(other reaction to
mental abuse) and those that don't will look like huge successes and all those
that did get driven to some coping mechanism are branded as been raised by
"Western Mothers".

One of my friends had, I guess what would qualify as, a "Chinese Mother" for a
father. He was a totalitarian... until he got kicked in the groin by his son
at age 13 (with his leg that was in a plaster cast at the time) and missed
three days of work (confirmed by my mother who worked with him) for "personal
reasons". Suddenly, almost overnight, he was allowed to go to sleepovers, he
joined the school play, his grades dropped because he was allowed out to see
his friends. His dad was an arrogant douche, it's not a social or racial
difference because he'd come from working class British background. It's a
personality type and it's called a raging pompous douchebag AKA King Douche.

I fail to see how orchestrating my child's life will lead to my child being a
success. It will lead to _me_ being a success _by proxy_ , which is really all
what these parents care about. They're the football/hockey/soccer/(insert
sport) parents that force their kid to every single game, to every single
practice _no matter what_ whether the child wants to be in the sport or not,
because the parent never got the chance/almost made it pro/whatever
narcissistic reason.

I've seen a lot of people with this type of overbearing psycho parent wind up
_deep_ in the drug scene because they never got their parents approval. Whilst
the kids that don't have to fight for approval in every area of their life all
seem to end up with decent lives because they learnt the necessary coping
skills.

------
zerothehero
This article is pretty disgusting... I'm surprised that the wall street
journal would print what is essentially a big troll.

~~~
dkarl
Upvoted because you're right that it is a troll, and it is sad and telling
that the WSJ stoops to this level. However, I think it is worth considering
that some of the ideas in the article have merit, and if the WSJ hadn't chosen
the most extreme and inflammatory example they could find, it might have
stimulated a very interesting argument here on HN.

I also wonder whether there is an element of anti-Chinese xenophobia here as
well as the obvious for-profit journalistic trolling.

~~~
rick_2047
_that some of the ideas in the article have merit_

pray tell which ideas?

~~~
chancho
Push your children to succeed. Don't let them give up at the first impasse,
because kids really can be lazy if you let them get away with it.

Take that sentiment and mix it with some freedom: Instead of making them play
the violin/piano and study pre-med, let them choose their goals. "Want to be
an actor? Great! But you're going to be the best actor in that play and I
won't tolerate anything less." "Guitar? Sure! ... You're not coming out of
your room until you nail Stairway."

Not all Chinese folks are as psycho as this gal. A Chinese guy I worked with
told me that he put it to his son this way: "You can do what ever you want, I
just want you to excel at whatever you do."

(on the balance, though, this essay is garbage.)

------
qiqiyan
I grew up in China. My impression was that indeed many Chinese parents are
like that, but their kids also tend to be very mediocre. Kids trained like
this lack real passion for things, as they were always forced to do this and
that.

Those Chinese that are elites, on the other hand, tend to have parents who are
easy-going, and give more room to their kids' development.

It's sad that this author is proud of what she's being doing. I'm personally
quite disgusted by this article.

~~~
Apocryphon
What happens if those kids could have emigrated to study in the U.S.?

------
ohmygodel
I love this. It's an honest and unapologetic explanation of a parenting style
that is not dominant in the US but has some real advantages. It teaches
discipline and hard work, and it gets kids to acquire useful skills. Sure, it
has its disadvantages, as noted by some commenters here. Let's not deny the
obvious, though. It's no coincidence that they author was pushed insanely hard
by her mother and ended up a professor at the top law school in the country.

~~~
chancho
Selection bias. The author is published because she ended up a professor at
the top law school in the country. Plenty of Chinese mothers raise mediocre
children, and they don't get to write opinion pieces in Murdoch rags. (Or did
you take it literally when she claimed that Chinese children don't get B's?)

But you're right that this parenting style has benefits. It strikes a chord
with me, as a parent of small children, when she says that you're not doing
them any favors by letting them give up. But parents have to find the right
balance. Maybe the author's children benefited from having both kinds of
parents, one strict and Chinese, one doting and Western---Cue shock and horror
from Chinese grandparents. I know many successful children of mixed East/West
families. Sure, that's anecdotal evidence, but so is this article.

------
nano81
I imagine that being conditioned from young to solely work hard and do what
you're told will on average not produce independent, creative, and self-
motivating people who are strong decision makers (i.e. leaders).

While I'm sure the parents have good intentions, extreme parenting is in most
cases probably not healthy or optimal, including the opposite extreme where
kids are given no structure or rules of any kind. Rules and expectations
should be established, but give some degree of freedom so that they can
discover things on their own, and yes, even make mistakes. How are they
supposed to grow if they aren't ever allowed to make their own choices and are
terrified of failure?

------
aaronbrethorst
> I told [my seven year old daughter] 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.

You might call it good parenting. I call it bat-shit crazy.

~~~
electromagnetic
When you have to belittle your child to motivate them, it truly speaks of you
as a parent.

IIRC from what I read on Carrot VS Stick methods for dog training, a combined
usage worked effectively ~95% of the time. The carrot worked effectively ~80%
of the time. The stick worked effectively ~30% of the time. No reinforcement
worked effectively ~14% of the time. (I'll have to dig through my books to
find where I read these figures)

Why do I have the strong suspicion that this woman's kids are a huge ass
exception to the psycho-parenting norm?

------
itg
>Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to
do... be in a school play; choose their own extracurricular activities; play
any instrument other than the piano or violin.

don't know how much of this is exaggeration but this is just sad and I feel
sorry for kids that have parents like that.

------
mahmud
cwan, why editorialize by changing the title to something more comfortable
than what WSJ has chosen?

"Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

When you submit racist, provocative articles (regardless of the source), you
foster a racist, provocative discussion.

------
bane
(sorry if this is going to be rather reactionary and offensive)

All day I've been getting emails and IM's from my East Asian friends about
this article. As somebody who grew up in and around kids with parents like
this I have to call hooey on it.

 _All_ of my East Asian friends were miserable, tired, sad kids. A couple
committed suicide, most had health problems, alcoholism, severe depression,
drug additions, and the rest are today broken people on the inside who can't
get through a simple phone call with their parents without breaking into
sobbing tears after hanging up. _All_ of them have spoken outwardly and quite
vocally a wish for a Western upbringing, one that fostered creativity and the
genesis of ideas - not conformance to a meaningless system of symbolic but
useless achievements that have provided nothing in particular for their lives
except the ability to get their parents to back off for a few minutes.

Where this woman makes a mistake is in assuming that outward, public success
(yes, all of them work good jobs, and have fine educations) is the most
important thing in life.

The question she has never thought to ask herself is "so what?" So what if
little Xiao Yan or Jin Ho or Akiko can perform some dastardly complex piece on
the violin on command? Congratulations, you've raised a music box. Can they
write music of the same complexity? Can they create? Or was all of that
destroyed when their soul was crushed just so they could perform that one more
Caprice?

So what if they land a decent job in some field they don't care for? None of
my dozen or so friends excel in the professional jobs. In fact, most are
mediocre, and stay quiet and keep their heads down. They stand unrecognized,
and are considered nothing more than solid, reliable employees, but nothing
particularly special. They're a dime a dozen, replaceable cogs in a corporate
machine. They don't make team lead, department head, business unit manager or
any other mark of a successful corporate career. They toil away for 20 years
in some anonymous cube, counting the minutes until quitting time everyday and
then leaving for the day with nobody to say goodbye to.

This woman, while making good points about the need to push children to
excellence (and the softness of modern Western concepts about child rearing
and the overemphasis on false-self esteem), treats her kids like a psychopath.

Reasonable statements like "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is
fun until you're good at it" are then blasted into cookoo-land by a list of
rules that are sure to turn her kids into social misfits, unfit to navigate a
complex personal or professional life and succeed in it.

This part really stood out to me: "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."

She makes the ignorant mistake of assuming test taking = knowing. I wish
Feynman was still alive to explain this to her
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ>

What she should really be asking herself is this -- how come Westerners, with
their wishy washy parents, still end up producing an incredible number of
successful people (by any measure of the word)? I mean, she has her kids
learning Violin and Piano, not a Pipa and Guzheng -- is the vast irony of that
not lost on her?

~~~
bane
Also, thought this was a great comment on MeFi about this

[http://www.metafilter.com/99339/Why-Chinese-Mothers-Are-
Supe...](http://www.metafilter.com/99339/Why-Chinese-Mothers-Are-
Superior#3456896)

(the discussion there is fascinating too btw)

------
zdw
Also known as "Why asian children have grey hair by the end of high school".
At least my asian high school valedictorian did...

I'm all for people pushing themselves to that point - I guess in asian
families, it's OK to force that on your kids to show them where their limits
truly are.

~~~
electromagnetic
Yes, but put an authority figure behind the majority (60%) of people and
they'll commit murder. Given the right manipulation virtually everyone will
commit murder (certain variations of Milgram's experiment got up to 90% in NA,
whilst the Standard test got 92% in the Netherlands - so I can't imagine what
the manipulative variations would achieve there).

I don't find becoming an SS commandant to be a particularly appealing way to
raise my children. Sure, it might get them a high paying job, but it won't get
them happiness because that's a self-fulfilling need.

I'm happy because I'm married, I have stable financials and I get to spend my
leisure time doing things that I enjoy like writing. None of which my parents
had a hand in achieving, and somehow I don't think I would enjoy them if my
parents did have a hand in it. I wouldn't be happy if my parents handed me
cash, in fact right now I'm in a huge conundrum because my parents said
they're buying me and my wife plane tickets. They had no hand in me getting
married (I would actually join a religion to simply thank a deity for this
one) aside from well wishes. And they had no hand in my enjoying to write.

------
michaelty
And then their sons discover anime...

~~~
kqr2
But that's Japanese...Also, she doesn't even let her kids watch TV or play
computer games.

~~~
electromagnetic
My parents didn't let me smoke pot or drink alcohol at 14... still happened
though.

> The more you try to grasp, the more falls through your fingers. - Lao Tzu

The more you restrict your children, the more destructively they will rebel.

------
mgh2
First off, I believe it is alright to be harsh on your children but instead of
'deadly and cold' harsh, a parent should learn how to motive the kid, instead
of punishing him/her. In psychology, it has been proven that positive
reinforcement is more effective in learning than negative reinforcement. This
very basic concept should be applied to instill motivation and curiosity in
children.

For example, when I was young, my parents gave me $1 for any exam I got higher
than a 95(A), which taught me to not only earn good grades but to appreciate
the value of money. Guess what, it is funny when you think that by giving
money as reward, the kid will want to spend it on something he/she likes. But
this had the opposite effect, I saved every penny I could (treasure hunt for
money everywhere!) until I accrued to ~$400. I had learned the value of
earning money, but not to spend it. (By the time I was about 12 yrs old, this
reinforcement was not needed anymore and my parents took it away when they
needed it the most- during a family crisis.) My reaction? Gratitude, if it was
for the good of the family, then my savings and hard work had a purpose.

This saving habit I see a lot in the Eastern culture, and not so much in the
Western culture. Asians learn to save, not to spend (money they don't have).
This way of thinking will affect their adulthood- in the form of credit cards-
which might help explain the current economic crisis...

Going back to treating your children harshly, it is alright up until a certain
age. See, because in an attempt to protect your children from bad influence,
which there is so much in this world, you have to be harsh because your
children have no idea of the dangers out there and your responsibility is to
shield your kids at any cost.

Results? There is so much horrible things in the Western culture that I will
risk everything to protect my children from getting influenced by. I like
American freedom, but when that affects our children (alcohol, drugs, sex) it
is horribly wrong. Since kids get influenced more by their peers than by
parents themselves (psyc tested), it is our responsibility to protect them,
even if it means hurting their self esteem.

MIND IT, but this is up until a point in their growth, once they reach
adulthood (college), let them free to develop their own identity. That is when
they learn self confidence, self worth, independence, and creativity. So many
things to be learned in college.

It is funny that the very idea of 'not giving up', an essential characteristic
of an entrepreneur, was drilled into Asian children from so young. Yet, how
many of those kids turn out to be Asian leaders in this world? (i.e.
entrepreneurs, managers, etc). Not many. This is the dark side of Asian
parenting.

A solution will be to be harsh to kids AS WELL as to explain the motives
behind parent punishing. You are teaching emotional intelligence to the child,
an essential ingredient for leadership success. Read "Emotional Intelligence:
Why it Matters More than IQ". The book explores how society focuses so much on
IQ and not EQ, turning them into unfunctional adults. So far, the best
education method I have seen is at Church (I am not not religious though).

As for Westerners, how many brats turn out badly because you failed to be
harsh at them? Be harsh, it is ONLY NECESSARY, but let them understand the
reasons behind your decision. Give them the trust that they will understand
what is best for them by following your rules- this teaches them empathy.

See the pattern? Raise children to be entrepreneurs so they can appreciate the
value of money, self motivation, and empathy. Teach them in school to be
entrepreneurs that create value in society- education is to blame in here-
there are business schools (money driven people) but not entrepreneurship
schools (value driven people).

In short, entrepreneurship (not business) ideals can solve most of the
problems in society.

Where to start? Entrepreneurship school(in college).

------
rick_2047
Ok in what world is what's described in the article a better mom? Forcing
there children to learn something they don't want just for a college
application or building "character" (can someone please explain the concept to
me, my father is too liberal I suppose) is exactly what a parent shouldn't do.
I am in a typical middle class Indian family, but the idea that goes around is
"Its your bloody life, make good of it". My parents usually support me through
things, even if they do not understand what I am trying to do. I may not have
made it to the IITs or NITs (the formal definition of a successful kid in
general in India) but I still love what I do and at least have a clear vision
of what exactly I want to do in my life. I am not like those uptight children
whose sole aim in life is to get a college degree to get a good job to get a
good salary.

Also what's up with using "Asian" to describe only Chinese people, India,
Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and many other other countries with a lot different
cultural background also comprise Asia.

~~~
bane
In general, Westerners don't colloquially classify rough ethnic groups by
strict continent. Asian means East Asian and South East Asian (people with
slanty eyes)

India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc. possess "Indians" or national identity
(Pakistani, etc.)

Iran, Iraq, Jordan, etc. possess "Middle-Easterners"

Other areas are usually called by national affiliation (Kyrgistan, Tajikistan,
etc.) are currently undecided and usually just called by national identity.

(I always found it unusual that folks from India wanted to be identified as
"Asian" when that's not the colloquial meaning of the classification).

Oh...and Siberians are Russian.

