Are you a Chinese Mother?
A book was recently brought to my attention over at the 2Peas Forum. They were discussing the book and article about the book called “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” by Amy Chua .
An essay that came from the book may be read at the Wall Street Journal website called Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior It made for interesting reading and part way through you begin to realize that you should be reading between the lines and maybe even a little bit between the letters – there is more there than an example of extreme parenting. Someone else felt bound to respond to this book and to the implied criticism of Western parenting with an article called Why American Mothers are Superior
This whole thing resonates with me as I see the premise is that Western parenting is too caught up in the worry of damaging their children and about protecting them from failure and from feelings of low self esteem. While, according to Amy Chua, Chinese parents will tell their they are stupid, ignorant and lazy in order to motivate them. She does stress that the term ‘Chinese Mother’ is not necessarily limited to mothers who are of Chinese origin but that it is a parenting style. I believe she is taking the position that children are strong and resilient and can take what parents dish out. Though, she also states that it takes a lot of love, attention and commitment to be a Chinese Mother. That to me is the key, any parenting style needs to come from a strong love and commitment to do the best for your children.
When my girls were little, I used to stress to my inlaws that we were not supposed to be worried about raising children to love us, but to raise them to be happy, self confident and responsible adults. It would be nice if they learned to love us along the way, but our entire parenting strategies should not be built around the desire to have our children love us. Of course, having my children love me was very important to me, but I did not want to abrogate my responsibility to them in order to get them to love me. I was seeing it all around me at the time. Just as now I see all around me worries about the self esteem and sensibilities of children getting in the way of raising strong, self reliant adults. ( I also see that the word NO does not seem to be in their vocabulary and they do not know how to command respect and obedience -but that is another whole topic – LOL)
It seems to me that parents now days worry so much about their child’s self esteem that they do not let them develop strength of character or the ability to handle failure. We are wrapping our children up in cotton wool so to speak and not letting real life harden them to the point that they are unable to handle real life when that support is withdrawn. We end up with bullies who are used to getting their own way and victims who do not know how to deal with the bullies before the situation escalates.
I remember being so irritated with my husband as he would not applaud at dance recitals when the performance was poor. He said that the dancers needed honest feedback so as to know they should practice and do better next time. It is the same when raising children.Give your child honest feedback when they come home with the C in math instead of the A that you know they are capable of earning. Don’t be afraid to let your child know that you have high expectations of them. Perhaps that might cause them to live up to those expectations! But also you should be willing to put in the time and effort to help your child in these areas. If there is difficulty in grasping the concepts being covered by the teacher, then spend time at home working with your children on it.
So to answer my own question, yes I am a Chinese Mother – well almost. I would not call my child stupid or ignorant. Though I would not have a problem calling a child lazy if that was the truth. But, I would be sure that the child would be told why I thought him lazy and how I expected that situation to change. That makes be fall somewhere in between Chinese parenting and Western I guess.