The hottest commentary of the year appeared in the Wall Street Journal: Why Chinese Mothers are Superior by Amy Chua. The story has 7,200 comments and counting, and every other outlet including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and everyone else, including tens of thousands of bloggers. The author’s name yields more than one million google hits.
The thesis was simple. American moms coddle their kids and protect their self esteem; Chinese mothers, in contrast, work their kids hard, accept nothing less then excellence, and help the kid accomplish real things so that self-esteem is rooted in reality. The response was beyond belief, with mobs of angry mothers claiming that the author was essentially advocating child abuse.
I’m not entering the fray on child-raising techniques. Rather I would like to draw attention to something that seems to be lost in this debate: the institutional context that has led to the American tendency to let the kids grow like weeds.
The problem begins with public schooling itself. Teachers and parents alike tend report the widespread tendency of parents to take a strong interest in their child’s education from preschool through second grade. But after the child learns to read, more or less, and life gets busy to double income households, the job of tending to education is left to the authorities, who give off the illusion that they are taking care of all important matters.
The child is meanwhile swimming in a world of peers and the distance between this world and the world of the parents grows, and by the time the child is in middle school, there is very little connection left between the parents and the child that would allow anything like close monitoring of educational outcomes.
Child rearing becomes a waiting game and a matter of a huge checklist. Reading: check. Basic math: check. Middle school: check. High school: check. SAT prep: check. College admission: check. Then the magic age of 18 arrives and it’s off to college, a time when parents sign huge checks and the child learns that life is a blast with few responsibilities beyond repeating on tests the blather they hear from the expert standing up front.
What about the child’s individual traits, such as strengths and weakness, talents and preferences? These are private matters, not something readily accommodated by the great system of K through 12 education, which is really a type of central plan. Most parents don’t even think twice about it but it is true: this country has an approved tract for all kids and the goal of the system is to force conformity to it. If a child is faster than the plan allows, he or she has to learn to wait. If a child is slower then the plan allows, he or she had better speed up. Each year that goes by is a marker, like a production goal in a Gosplan.
You can see it in the educational codes of every state, which have a century of accumulated cruft that reflects a slight change in educational philosophy that is written into law every ten years or so. We must have open classrooms and language experience! But no child can be left behind! Values clarification! Back to basics! The old priorities are not repealed but rather become like a layer in an old growth tree, the branches of which are a gigantic bureaucracy living off the taxpayer. But who can complain since the system is “free?”
Any child who deviates from the approved path is considered to be a problem. What if a child is ready for college at the age of 13 or 14? You can count on school administrators, counselors, teachers, pastors, and other parents to all say that it would be a disaster for the child to skip a step. Is it even allowed that a child can graduate that early?
And look at the shock and horror that has greeted the success of homeschooling: people who do this are seen as short -sighted, freaky, and even unpatriotic. Certainly they are doing the child no favors in denying him or her the glorious socialization that comes with staying with the central plan. When the homeschool child performs well, and all the data indicate that they do, this is chalked up to some exogenous factor and then ignored by the central planners.
Has this system reinforced a certain pattern of negligence among parents, the sense that there is no real need to push the child in this direction or that or otherwise insist on excellence and help the child achieve it? Certainly that is the usual path that central planning takes. When we are no longer owners of a resource, and no one in particular takes responsibility for outcomes, and the things we do to affect those outcomes don’t produce substantial results anyway, why bother?
This might be the real reason for the American tendency to approve of things the child is and does. As a culture, we’ve come to trust someone else to take on the essential responsibility of molding the next generation.
The central plan has instilled a kind of parental lethargy. We let the state take over the core responsibilities from the age of 5 through 22, and then we are shocked to discover that kids leave college without a sense of work ethic, without marketable skills, and even without the ambition to succeed in the real world. So we let them become boaders in our homes, “reverts” who specialize in Wii and Facebook updates. Growing up takes longer and longer because the machinery we have in place saps individual initiative and punishes any outlying behavior.
As for the Chinese approach, it might reflect a sense that authorities can never be trusted with the essential job of training a child for life. Long enough experience with a central plan will tend to teach that lesson. Americans are just behind the learning curve in this regard.
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The American system of raising children is geared towards producing creative, innovative, artistic, individualistic citizens. Unfortunately, that’s a boom-bust approach. We get a ton of brilliant minds that go on to do great things — Steve Jobs would be a good example of this. But how many failures come out of this?
The Eastern approach is to churn out an army of engineers and hard-science professionals. You don’t get many Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs, but you don’t have a lot of potheads living in Mom’s basement either. The Eastern approach also tends to climax with a college-age burnout and end with a swan-dive out of a Japanese skyscraper…
A private approach to education would give us a proper mix of these two. We would have plenty of thinkers/innovators, and plenty of technically-sound workers.
But here’s the problem with this type of analysis you just gave. There is no one size fits all approach to every child. Children are different- there are western approaches with college-age burnouts and a razor blade down the wrist is used instead of a swan-dive out of a skyscraper- there are eastern approaches that end with potheads living in their uncle’s basement. There are are endless causes that could play into the way a person thinks and lives their life while they grow up. Parents have to judge for themselves whats right for their child- to say that there’s a western approach that will raise a person to behave a certain way guaranteed(or even 50% of the time), or an eastern approach that will raise a person to behave a certain way is lots of presumption based on heresay and personal experience.
Besides,who gets this american system? White suburbanites? Who gets the Eastern system? There are so many middlegrounds that none of these labels ring true.
Is this an eastern or western way to raise a child?-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP7VFAhoI74
I thought that was my conclusion — that a private system would give us a better mix of the two extreme approaches…
I’m 100% with the Chinese mothers on making a child earn his praises; I feel it’s an important part of learning to cope with reality. The reason for their having that approach, however, is not quite so agreeable. A few years ago I spent a good bit of time looking at Chinese history. The thing which most made a marked impression on me was that the average Chinese has always lived with somebody’s boot on his neck and simple survival has been extremely hard. Because of that one of the realities of coping has been the necessity of obedience to authority.
I pretty much wrote something similar to this way back in the early part of the comments. I basically blasted the “one size fits all” attitude and that the “Chinese approach” is just as bad as the American one because it’s just as lazy because neither approach bothers to figure out who the unique individual the child is and treats them as some part of a mathematic formula with an end-result in mind. Some kids do need to be left to figure life out on their own while others do need the constant guidance through maturity. Taking the wrong approach usually results in a screwed up adult.
This was more or less my reaction to the article. The chinese method does not necessarily produce something better, it produces something different.
Both methods presume to force preferences down the throats of kids instead of methods for getting them to WANT to do work. The American way is most definitely lazier, but the chinese way seems much more likely to produce some one who cannot actually think for themselves.
I don’t think the chinese way would produce someone who can’t think for themselves. What is that remark based on? Few adults in this world are saints- everyone is “screwed up” in some sense, parents will do the best they can but ultimately the child can be ANYTHING despite how the parent raises them.
The list of innovative technology, literature, and artwork that have come out of that region of the world over the past 2 or 3 hundred years has been just about zero. China is great at copying, which is what the Chinese method is all about, rote memorization of what someone else already figured out. Like I said back in the WSJ, her daughter may be able to play at Carnegie Hall, but she’s not remotely capable of writing a symphony and is entirely reliant on an 18th century composer to have done all the hard work for her.
Playing a musical instrument and regurgitating scientific formulae is easy. Writing the music and unlocking the mysteries of the universe are hard. And you don’t see the kids coming out of Chinese mothers doing the latter.
I agree with what you wrote.
As a friend of mine once said “Somebody’s gotta dig the ditches!”
If you called them what they really are and used the term government schools instead of the euphemism public schools the problem becomes clear.
A generation ago if a school called the parents about a problem the parents would kick the kids butt to school to find out what the problem is. They would then kick the kids butt all the way home to resolve the problem. If a school calls a parent today they’ll show up with a lawyer looking to sue when they don’t even know what’s going on.
This is about personal responsibility and that is in short supply these days. Kids never learn to be responsible for themselves.
In Asia they go to school about 40 more days per year than American kids do, to include classes on Saturday. In Asia they succeed or fail on their own, they are not given a social promotion to protect their self-esteem.
You’d think anyone daring to call themselves a libertarian would be at least a little skeptical about teaching their kid to slavishly follow the command of authority.
To say otherwise would be a contradiction greater then the old conservative chestnut,” we need to have the government take control of the private means of production over here so we can fight the communists of there.” Or perhaps “we need to forcibly educate the masses into blind conformity about the virtues of individualism.”
Thank you, this is my problem, too with this parenting approach; it’s entire focus is to excel within the system. It assumes that the system itself is working and correct.
Or it might assume that the system is the hand we are dealt- and that living a life with a stable income is superior to being a revolutionary against authority. Not that anything is wrong with the latter- but its not most people’s cup of tea
My comment is from the move American Gangster: Frank, quitting while you are ahead is not the same as quitting.” The point is that this nut mother drove her child far beyond that which the child considered reasonable. So they both lost, just the gangster did in the movie.
There are two problems with “Public Education”: 1. The more obvious, that people are forced to be together based entirely upon age and living location. The results are of course almost always negative as those who bully have a locked in audience of easy marks for bullying. 2. The second is less obvious and therefore hurts society more in my opinion than 1. It is better to work smarter than harder. The system of grades and levels and locals and ages is such that it forces those who work smarter to work with those who work harder. The results are of course problematic. Some people excel while others who have the capacity and ideas to add to society end up squandering these in a bored stupor. The same things happen to those do not want to work or can not work within the structure.
She didn’t drive her child beyond that which is considered reasonable, what are you talking about? No one lost- she’s happy and her kids are happy. The only people that lose are everyone that gets uptight about Amy Chua’s parenting methods.
As a home-schooler, I’m very grateful to be able to shield my kids from the Chinese authoritarian as well as the American egalitarian mindset. My children are good at certain things and we help them to excel while they receive the benefits of a friendly teacher:student ratio. They earn their grades and their praises. However, they don’t feel compelled to excel in order to comply with our demands. They excel because they love what they do.
I had read this article on the BBC a while back and then I read Amy Chua’s piece on the WSJ.
I felt as if I found two perfectly fitting pieces from a jumbled up jigsaw puzzle.
China rules! I constantly remind my kids (in between beatings) that I get 20% of their gross earnings when they grow up. A sure sign of complete breakdown of civilization is parents supporting grown kids. I don’t have social security, I have my kids, and ‘dey is gonna pay!
Very funny, HL! Just the same, don’t quite your Day Job!
Laughter, the best medicine?
The comments following the BBC article are a stitch! “Moral education must be imparted.” Bwaaaaahahahahaha.
There’s nothing wrong with being kind and tolerant to your children from 0 to 18, if you wish. It’s the state coddling that takes over from age 18 to 100 which really destroys them.
If there was a free economy then even the most spoiled Mama’s boys would be able to easily and quickly adapt to the Rules of How the World Works when they reach adulthood (at 13, 16, 18 or whenever you think it should begin). Humans are intelligent and adaptable, and if someone has been treated kindly by their parents then it will probably make them a better human being than if they have been kicked from pillar to post and dragged to pointless “cramming” tutors throughout their childhood. Cramming what? Math and languages that many of them will never use. But people are incredibly fast at learning new languages, math and engineering skills at almost any age, when they need them to make a living.
Instead we have a ridiculous state welfare system that pretends to take over the education of children from age 4 to age 21 or even to age 40 and beyond. Then the state pretends that it can take care of them for the rest of their lives with policies of “full employment” (money printing), “medical assistance” (money printing) and “old age security” (money printing). What difference does it make if you’ve been dragged up by harsh, demanding parents or coddled by wussie yuppies? The relentless printing of money is going to screw everybody over many times, no matter how their parents attempted to raise them. Overall however I would say that the people who have been treated with the most decency, kindness and respect will be the best citizens and the least supportive of harsh, dictatorial and destructive government policies.
From what I’ve seen of the Chinese approach, I’m not impressed. I know that they don’t trust the government to provide education, but their response is to try to cram a super-government education into their kids’ heads. Extensive private training in math, piano, violin, etc. is not leading to much of a real career for most of these kids. Sometimes I think that the point of this cramming is not any particular knowledge or skill, but a kind of Confucian power-play. Harsh education, even when it comes from the parents themselves, is playing into the hands of the State by imitating its use use of power and obedience.
The old cliche of social development was one of my last real worries about homeschooling. I have a couple of children on the Autism spectrum, so their ability to interact with peers is a particular concern. We hired a consultant to help with their therapy, and in his professional opinion “children learn from adults, not from each other”. The reason was quite simple: adults are in a position to adapt to a child’s level of development and guide him toward higher levels, while peers only demand conformity to some standard unrelated to productive society.
Now the only barrier to a good education at home is the logistics of having 3 active boys around all day…
Dear Dan,
We too have Homeschooled our entire Children’s education – sort of. Two are making straight “A”s in College while the other is a few years away. What has helped us tremendously our our “Hybrid” School were we go two days a week to a Georgia Accredited School called http://www.thekingsacademy.org/ . There the received professional instruction and testing, had a football, soccer, marching band and everything else you could ask in a High School experience. Thank God, too, because I’d be terrible teaching Trigonometry and Calculus.
You should look into this. Schools are modeling them from all over the Country after their Front Page write-up with that liberal rag, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution a few years back. They have over 800 students.
Good luck educating your children, and God bless you for doing it.
Mark Lane
Marietta, GA
I take a somewhat different view. Our kids are being tread-milled. They tax the crap out of us, the regulate with more rules than any human can ever hope to read, they put our kids 10 generations into debt, they water down our money like drunken lunatics, and then when our kids have a hard time making it they spout off, as I wrote somewhere else …
… the USA does not have an education system, but a system based off of control and conformity. Which makes perfect logical sense, because even paying for this system is based off of control and conformity. The supposed “emphasis” that so many say we should place on education is a sham, and a crime against our children. The teachers don’t teach, the schools don’t educate, and the kids don’t learn, and no amount of money or tinkering with this system will fix it, because that’s what the system was designed to do, to get people to over-compensate for the fact they are being attacked by tread-milling them. They take away our freedoms, and to compensate for that they cry out “well you need to try harder, and learn more from a young age and here we’ll print up some money and loan it to you to go to college too” It makes an abomination out of the beauty of learning and knowledge. It turns schools into sardine factory prisons and punishment zones instead of islands of understanding and enlightenment. Education in a normal world is supposed to be a social activity, not a punishment.
“The problem begins with public schooling itself.”
Uh? I thought all schools in China were owned/managed by the government…
Clearly, that’s not where the problem begins.
On the topic of “socialization,” it is important to remember that “education” bureaucrats use that term in a non-standard fashion (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization ).
“Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, politicians and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies. It may provide the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society; a society itself is formed through a plurality of shared norms, customs, values, traditions, social roles, symbols and languages. Socialization is thus ‘the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained’.”
Notice that the argument that homeschoolers are not properly “socialized” is actually an argument that they are not properly indoctrinated in the “shared” norms, customs, and ideologies that the State wishes to impose upon them. Homeschooling parents cannot rebut the “homeschoolers lack socialization” argument unless they are aware of what the educrats are actually saying.
What they mean about “socialization” in regards to home schooled kids is they aren’t crammed into school buses for a couple of hours each day, then subjected to the horrors of being locked up with several hundred fellow inmates (sorry, students) for 6 hours or so, dealing with the various cliques of schools: jocks, nerds, rich kids, mean girls, etc.
In reality, many homeschoolers DO met their peers, thru various joint activities organized by home schooling parents. I know of several scout units (packs, troops, crews) that draw exclusively from home school kids.
But I guess that’s not good enough for the educrats.
Example of government school stupidity even in my relatively small city:
What was named “General”, “Advanced”, and “Honors” when I went to school only 12 years ago is now called “Advanced”, “Honors”, and “Gifted/Talented”
So they’ve entirely eliminated the general category as all the kids are now presumably smarter than anyone from before they started doing this. It’s just bizarre what government does.
Other annoying things is that the curriculum has come to require so much that choosing your own courses in junior high/high school is extremely limited.
From reading all of these comments and the articles posted above; there’s a single underlying trend. If the parents care; be it the “Chinese” way or “American” way or whatever, their child(ren) will succeed. It’s not about if they are in a state-run educational system; or they are home schooled or somewhere in between. If the parents are involved the children have a better chance at succeeding and doing well.
“the children have a better chance at succeeding and doing well.”
It is very important to ask, “succeed at what? Do well at what?”
Taking tests? Obeying? Regurgitating memorized facts?
At the same time I loath touchy-feely “self esteem” without accomplishment.
I don’t think it’s an either-or. The issue is the individual child. No system is going to satisfy the needs of ANY two kids equally, much less two million or two hundred million.
Education is a distributed problem. The only effective answer will be found through a distributed effort, the exact opposite of either the Chinese or American Public School Systems.
Any metric is based on what society deems successful. If society deems hardwork and entrepreneurship as being successful; then people will aim for it. If they believe, being a sports star is successful, they will push for it.
The concept you seem to miss is that reinforcement is key; government can only do so much; all the money in the world cannot fix the education system with out the support of the parents of the children. That was my point, be it American or Chinese system; the end goal is determined by the parents and the child. It can be anything in the world with the right influences.
I thought the article worked well as a comparison of our societies. Here’s a bit of it:
When I read that, I thought, “No wonder China is a dictatorship.” People (kids) don’t know what they should be doing or thinking, so we need government (parents) to force them into the “right” way.
Sadly, reading JT’s post here made me remember just how much like that our own society is nowadays.
To equate government with parents is a common theme that is based on nonsensical logic. Many kids want to eat candy and play games all day- parents want to teach them that you can’t play all day because one day the parents willl be gone and won’t be able to give them all the candy and games they want. Its very simple. Its a world of scarcity where some type of work is required to eat, have clothes, and a roof over your head. Whats wrong with getting children hands-on experience with work?
I think too many people assume whats right for OTHER people’s children, and how other people’s children might turn out if they’re raised a certain way. Nobody knows the subjective experience of another- so why keep pretending like you do.
As bad as the American parenting/schooling system has been, I’d much rather have that than having to learn a song on the piano sans bathroom breaks and hanging out with friends. That is abusive.
I’m not a huge fan of Stefan Molyneux, but he had a rather good video on this the other day. I understand that parents are *custodians* of their children, but we can’t allow a double standard. It’s the same thing with the government/citizen dichotomy. They have a right to bully us, but we can’t fight back. Parents don’t have the right to bully their children. Not to say they shouldn’t be able to ground them or scold them, but the Chinese system is too authoritarian for my tastes.
You think its bullying because you can’t handle that type of situation. Some kids can deal with it and not hold any hatred for their parents or even call it “bullying”. Stefan Molyneux seems to project how he’d feel with Amy Chua’s parents- well guess what he’s not Amy’s children, he has no idea how they feel about their mother. From their words they like the way she raised them so what else matters?
Jonathan,
From the words of North Korean citizens, we hear they love their leader. Does anything else matter?
Parents had the right to bully their children but then the government banned it around 40 or so years ago.
Sparta comes to mind.
So does the fact that in every war but one, the decadent, all-volunteer army of Athenians beat the shit out of them.
And, in the end, outlasted them.
“Chinese mothers, in contrast, work their kids hard, accept nothing less then excellence (sic).”Mr. Tucker, please fix the typo. It’s “nothing less than excellence.”
I’m a 21 year old Indian, and personally, had my parents not been liberal with me and allowed me to get ‘addicted’ to the internet, computer games and whatever else I wanted to do, I wouldn’t be pushing myself and setting my own standards, doing things the way I want, while keeping in mind the scarcity of time and money.
Schooling in India is basically socialistic, egalitarian, and expects nothing short of total confirmity to bureaucracy. Same is true of most undergraduate colleges. Its not that Indians do well because they are educated the ‘right’ way, it is that they do well in spite of being educated. The only thing that stands between bright kids and learning is formal education.
Here’s a short summary of my experience: http://kashunveiled.blogspot.com/2010/10/five-year-growth-story.html
The author doesn’t seem to worry much about the kids themselves – do they have aspirations? Doesn’t matter, it’s OK for their tiger mothers to crush them and forcefully subject them to all kinds of nonsensical “practice”. Ironically, Chua’s daughters are forced to learn to play music, but will not be allowed to pursue a career in music! They will have to go a Ivy League college and major in Quantum Physics + Complicated Electronics, at least.
It’s really odd that the author doesn’t feel outraged by Amy Chua. The book may be better, but the Journal article was such a load of totalitarian nonsense I couldn’t swallow it. She personifies authoritarianism and the suppression of individual freedom in favor of goals set by some central authority, in this case the mother.
So giving subsidies to potato farmers is bad, but crushing our children’s freedoms and imposing decisions on them is good. I don’t get this article.
Way to fail at parenting, Chua. Wait, what’s that? Happy kids? Sure, even Joan Crawford’s kids pretended to love their mommy dearest.
Ever heard this one? “My kid never obeyed my commands, and now they can’t get a decent career going.” That’s ok, you never at any time had a legitimate say otherwise.
Please go to our Tiger Moms Parenting Battle Hymn blog site at http://Blog.TigerMoms.net for CDC and WHO charts.
Misrepresented Fact: White Americans Have 2x Doubled Suicide Rate Than Asians
CDC data shows that US White non-Hispanic people have more than doubled suicide rate than Asian ethnic group. It’s really embarrassing that so many of our mainstream white people are holding this misconception that Asian kids have several times higher suicide rate than others while misleading millions of others via major media like WSJ, CNN, TIME, etc., perhaps it’s just another LOSERS RUSE.
In the Tiger Mother’s white-hot parenting debate on whether “Chinese Mothers Are Superior”, a significant number of Americans have raised such a question that Chinese Tiger Moms’ tough love and extreme discipline will no doubt lead to a high suicide rate among Tiger Cubs than any other ethnic group. And during a book-author-signature session held in the DC book store Politics and Prose recently, one even raised this question to Tiger Mother Yale Professor Amy L Chua directly face-to-face. Politeness and embarrassment aside, is this the truth? No, this is a misconception held by so many fellow Americans, perhaps mainly due to their taking things for granted. In fact, all data and trends prove totally the opposite. Let’s take a look at a series of supporting comparison numbers and trendy charts either by WHO or CDC.
The data have fluctuated widely decade over decade. For example, China has halved its overall suicide rate from 1999′s 13.0% to 2008′s 6.6% level per Wikipedia within the past decade as Chinese people have been becoming more confident in their economic development over time. And per world’s happiness (utility) index poll, Chinese have been ranked #1 as world’s most satisfied people at current stage, which will definitely cut down its suicide rate sharply. However in sharp contrast, due to current huge economic downturn in the United States, especially very high unemployment rates at ~10% Americans have been facing over the past three years that have forced millions of Americans to lose their jobs and therefore move out of their past American Dream homes, thereby rendering Americans more depressed than ever before. Currently, the US overall suicide rate may be much higher than three years ago, but CDC has not released the latest data to support this obvious trend. And we can see the following WHO suicide rate by country chart: in fact, US has a much higher suicide rate than China, more than doubled in the chart based on 2008 China’s data. If factoring in the above trend, US may have a triple suicide rate at current stage than China.
Suicide rate has a strong relation with race or ethnic culture and this patent does not belong to Chinese culture. In Confucius ideology, for thousands of years Chinese people have been encouraged to live even a very humble life instead of committing a suicide in order to avoid tough reality or hardship, which will bring shame to the whole family. For example, Japan and Korea have been ranked among top suicide countries in the world because in their culture, if one has failed his mission or brought indignity to family, race, country and even to emperor, one should commit a suicide to redeem his soul while making people regard him as a real responsible MAN. In the United States, data show that European white people and Native Indians have 2~3x times more potential to commit a suicide than any other ethnic group, which is pretty stable over time. From the above CDC 2007 suicide rate chart, we can see white non-Hispanic and Native Indians have an overall suicide rate at 13~14 per 100,000 while Asians represent at ~6%, less than half of that by white non-Hispanic group. All data buttress an unbeatable conclusion that Tiger Moms’ strict parenting with tough discipline will not lead to a higher suicide rate among Asian Americans and even in mainland China.
And let’s take a look at teenager group in detail. Per Wikipedia, “Suicide rates vary for different ethnic teenager groups in the United States due to cultural differences. In 1998, suicides among European Americans accounted for 84% of all youth suicides, 61% male and 23% female. However, the suicide rate for Native Americans was 19.3 per 100,000, much higher than the overall rate (8.5 per 100,000). The suicide rate for African Americans has increased more than twofold since 1981. A national survey of high school students conducted in 1999 reported that Hispanic students are twice as likely to report an attempted suicide than Caucasian students.” This didn’t even mention Asian group, which means the suicide rate among Asians is negligible. Also, from the CDC chart above, we can see group at age 0~18, which is under tough supervision of Tiger Moms in their nests, in fact has the smallest suicide rate at an extremely negligible level around 1~2 per 100,000, which could be any reason. This chart proves that Tiger Cubs under hard work and tough discipline will not commit suicides, or no relationship of any statistic significance between these two.
Psychologically, cognitive theories also prove most American people wrong: committing suicides is mainly due to a long-term exposure to high-degree of depression, which in the teenager group mostly come from peers pressure, not from Tiger Mothers’ pushes. Although Asians may get pressure from those Tiger Mothers represented by Amy Chua, but their high achievements in academia and some other areas like arts and music through hard work de facto have been diminishing their depression level to almost zero while in stark contrast most white American kids cannot even compete with Asians almost in every subjects, including arts and music, thereby making them feel like losers all the time. In fact, no self-confidence for extended period will lead kids to develop a very brittle personality. In one word, hard work leading to success in one subject will highly motivate Asian kids to build up their self-confidence and even ambition dramatically. Typically all Tiger Mothers have a strong vision that pushes Tiger Cubs to live up to those high expectations by fully motivating/pushing their kids to the extreme, so Asians kids in fact are more resilient, better-adjusted, more confident, more proactive and more ambitious, leading to a much lower suicide rate. All these traits in fact are leadership potential: vision, ambition, confidence, competence, diligence, perseverance, etc.
It’s really embarrassing that so many of our mainstream white people are holding this misconception while misleading millions of others via major media like WSJ, CNN, TIME, etc., perhaps it’s just another LOSERS RUSE.
Tiger moms are the brave moms in China. The American moms are only kidding with their children. The Chinese moms are making their sons to work hard. It also depends on the
Home Schooling that what way the children are brought about.
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