I'm curious about different parenting practices in different cultures. One of the first things in the article is the qualifier that she's using "Chinese mother" and "Western parents" loosely. I thought the "overachieving Asian kid" stereotype was one of the harmful ways prejudice gets perpetuated, but it's still interesting to hear how it works in at least one Chinese family.
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld's article defending her mother points out that a lot of people misunderstood her mother's sense of humour and I wonder how much of that is a cultural thing. She wrote it when she was only eighteen, which might be too soon for her to be able to judge whether she was harmed, but it's still another side to the story.
I don't know. I'm not out to be an apologist. What I do know is that reading Amy Chua's stuff for me is equal parts horror and jealousy. I was raised to be competitive, but not that competitive, and it answers why
( ... )
There's certainly a lot of being offended. Also, white U.S. mothers (like most mothers in the modern connected world, I would imagine) are always worrying whether they're doing it wrong (no matter how big we talk about whatever theory we've been following). Back in the day, you learned how to raise your kids from how you yourself were raised: now parents can find books and Websites galore flacking contradictory approaches, and all the info makes it very tough to find the one true way that most human beings seem to crave. Babbling uncontrollably is an all-too-typical reaction to feeling uncomfortable.
For that matter, white cultures aren't a monolith either, and there are some elements of what Chua did with her daughters in the usual (stereotypical) U.S. Jewish child-rearing practices, and probably in other groups as well. I think her frankness and eloquence (most reviewers have emphasized how well they think the book was written) have made her a lightning rod. People are whispering to themselves Oh God, I did that too while
( ... )
i think it's important to consider audience (Wall Street Journal) and why this in particular caught on like wildfire in the mainstream media, in terms of racial/national context.
I think there would have been a massive meltdown as the response to any person writing a child rearing book that took an extreme stance. Attachment parenting, not breastfeeding, breastfeeding til the child is a preschooler, home schooling, sending the kid to boarding school, strict discipline, no discipline - any of these is bound to enrage some other parent because all parents are basically massively insecure.
>>The dominant sentiment slants more toward guilt and squirming about their own parenting<<
Very true.
>>They sure love to refer to everyone else in broad generalized strokes<<
Sadly, also true.
Oddly enough (in terms of timeing), today someone on my f-list linked to this article - "How to land your kid in therapy," about typical U.S. liberal child-rearing - which cites Tiger Mom in more measured terms than most of the original reviews: "Chua’s book resonated so powerfully because she isn’t so different from her critics ... When the Tiger Mom looked unsparingly at her parental contradictions, perhaps she made the rest of us squirm because we were forced to examine our own."
That's not to say there wasn't a lot of ugly conflation with prejudices and blanket assumptions about Asian cultures as well.
i got asked to do this radio bit on it, and the people who were calling in were either anxious white american mum types or cantankerous white men going on about how discipline needs to be reintroduced in the home bc of how "the chinese" are getting ahead/"china rising" stuff. so this stuff catches on like wildfire bc the possibilities are endless for white anxieties/smugness.
I am *really* unhappy about the erasure of hyphenate voices from your framing of the Chua response.
Quite a lot of Asian Americans in the blogosphere banded together to decry their own version of being raised by abusive Tiger parenting. It results in a lot of very real trauma even as it allegedly makes possible the Model Minority myth.
I'm curious about different parenting practices in different cultures. One of the first things in the article is the qualifier that she's using "Chinese mother" and "Western parents" loosely. I thought the "overachieving Asian kid" stereotype was one of the harmful ways prejudice gets perpetuated, but it's still interesting to hear how it works in at least one Chinese family.
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld's article defending her mother points out that a lot of people misunderstood her mother's sense of humour and I wonder how much of that is a cultural thing. She wrote it when she was only eighteen, which might be too soon for her to be able to judge whether she was harmed, but it's still another side to the story.
I don't know. I'm not out to be an apologist. What I do know is that reading Amy Chua's stuff for me is equal parts horror and jealousy. I was raised to be competitive, but not that competitive, and it answers why ( ... )
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Is this the review that you had in mind?
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There's certainly a lot of being offended. Also, white U.S. mothers (like most mothers in the modern connected world, I would imagine) are always worrying whether they're doing it wrong (no matter how big we talk about whatever theory we've been following). Back in the day, you learned how to raise your kids from how you yourself were raised: now parents can find books and Websites galore flacking contradictory approaches, and all the info makes it very tough to find the one true way that most human beings seem to crave. Babbling uncontrollably is an all-too-typical reaction to feeling uncomfortable.
For that matter, white cultures aren't a monolith either, and there are some elements of what Chua did with her daughters in the usual (stereotypical) U.S. Jewish child-rearing practices, and probably in other groups as well. I think her frankness and eloquence (most reviewers have emphasized how well they think the book was written) have made her a lightning rod. People are whispering to themselves Oh God, I did that too while ( ... )
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(The comment has been removed)
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>>The dominant sentiment slants more toward guilt and squirming about their own parenting<<
Very true.
>>They sure love to refer to everyone else in broad generalized strokes<<
Sadly, also true.
Oddly enough (in terms of timeing), today someone on my f-list linked to this article - "How to land your kid in therapy," about typical U.S. liberal child-rearing - which cites Tiger Mom in more measured terms than most of the original reviews: "Chua’s book resonated so powerfully because she isn’t so different from her critics ... When the Tiger Mom looked unsparingly at her parental contradictions, perhaps she made the rest of us squirm because we were forced to examine our own."
That's not to say there wasn't a lot of ugly conflation with prejudices and blanket assumptions about Asian cultures as well.
Reply
Reply
Quite a lot of Asian Americans in the blogosphere banded together to decry their own version of being raised by abusive Tiger parenting. It results in a lot of very real trauma even as it allegedly makes possible the Model Minority myth.
Reply
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