It is rather a misnomer that creativity is an American characteristic. There are a lot of creative people in Asia and in America of Asian origin and they were also probably brought up in the "Asian" way. So many researchers in the tech industry are Asian and there are a zillion Asians with patents to their credit. A lot of them are not even born and brought up in USA, but immigrants into USA. Even google has a Russian Jew co founder. And the drive for perfection among Jews is very well known. Two of the founders of youtube are Asian(Steve Chen and Jawed Karim). One of the founders of Sun Microsystems is Asian(Vinod Khosla). Being a dropout is not a prerequisite for creativity. The founder of Sycamore and I2 are Asians probably brought up in a pretty much Asian way. The issue is that Asia is a competitive society with no social security and hence the cost of failure is high(probably death by starvation). Hence, the drive is to equip oneself to a reasonable skill level as a backup against any entrepreneurial failures. This is because in Asian societies, being a cashier at a supermarket would pretty much make a person lose face completely among relatives and Asian peers.

"What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it."

I don't know about that. I enjoy golf, primarily because I am not good at it. My average golf score is pretty close to my bowling average.

I think if I actually started doing well at golf, it would eventually drive me nuts. The moment I started caring how well I hit my next shot was the moment it stopped being fun, because frustration and aggravation immediately set in. It was no longer relaxing.

-Jut

This is because in Asian societies, being a cashier at a supermarket would pretty much make a person lose face completely among relatives and Asian peers.

And it is exactly this mindset that creates myriad problems and over-inflated senses of entitlement! There is NOTHING wrong with doing an honest day's work, no matter what it is. Not for nothing, but we need cashiers and waitpersons and janitors and others who pick up after those who refuse to pick up after themseleves. What we don't need is people fostering this mindset that you have to be a millionaire/enterpreneur/inventor rich person or else you have to die. That doesn't help these kids with their self-esteem much, if all anybody ever tells them is they have to be better than everyone else.

My older daughter has been playing the piano since she was 5 years old. She plays beautifully, but I don't make her practice 5 hours a day - what a way to defeat the purpose. She plays what she wants, when she wants, after she practices the pieces her teacher assigns her. She also writes her own music. It shouldn't be a chore and something she dreads, and it isn't. If it was, she would have quit long ago, and I would have let her. Forcing someone to do something the don't like is a great way to build up resentment. Why don't people get this?

"This is because in Asian societies, being a cashier at a supermarket would pretty much make a person lose face completely among relatives and Asian peers."

But why is this a disgrace? Are only financial, academic and career successes valued by these families? Are these the only measurements with which to judge another person's worth?

I think it's great to excel in school and career if that's what truly floats your yacht. I think it's equally great to not excel, if you are happier doing something less time consuming because you have more free time to pursue lots of other interests like cooking, seeing friends, reading, swimming, whatever you want. It's fine not to have gobs of money *if you don't need it to sustain the rest of your lifestyle*.

I personally value independence, introspection (people who are self-aware, willing to acknowledge faults and to work on them) and kindness more than I value a person's uni degree and take-home pay. How much a person earns means little to me; what matters is that they're able to sustain their lifestyle with what they bring in...so they're not expectantly relying upon others to supplement their min wage income.

It seems that Chua is saying that this Tiger Mother genre of child rearing believes that maxing out on career and earning potential is the only way to be a Good Person (TM) and you will shame her, personally, by veering off this path. In fact I am sure of this - since she describes how children owe everything to their parents and children in these Tiger families would never even think to ask to join a play and ask for rides to practice. How DARE a child ask to do something that interests them!

Her husband is either has no self-esteem, is a masochist or lobotomized.

I allow him the free time to just play around with it, nonetheless. I let him create.

"I allow"; "I let." Seems pretty controlling herself.

"I allow"; "I let." Seems pretty controlling herself.

I think she's just responding to Chua. And as a parent, you do have say over your kid's time, etc.

the key issue is simple.

do you wish to guide you child, discover what strengths are inside them, and help them on their way to adulthood.

or do you wish to make them become the image of what you wish them to be?

it's kind of like sculpting something. a lot of sculpters will say that they are simply finding the sculpture within the block of material. but you can't always cut against the grain, or your marble cracks and breaks.

It's not that parents don't know many things to help their children, it's a matter of the mindset they use...

is your child a beautiful person waiting to be released from a chunk of marble... or are they a clay to be sculpted into the image that you have decided?

IMHO, it is astonishingly arrogant to think that I know exactly what my child should be, and how they should live, and what their lives shall be like. My job is to ge them ready to figure out what their own lives mean to themselves.

@Swiss: Definitely. It's unbelievable how many parents view their children as possessions and not independent individuals who may want to pursue their own hobbies or studies of interest. Chua would probably mock my usage of the term "independent individuals" b/c, after all, we mustn't view them as anything but pawns, born and raised to care for us in our old age. It's such a god complex! "I MADE YOU BECAUSE I AM FULL OF MYSELF, NOW YOU MUST BOW AT MY ALTER!" Get overrr yourself Amy Chua.

It is a great lesson to instill hard work and pride in success. However, it's also okay to teach your children to fail with dignity and how to learn from those mistakes. I completely disagree with her model that failure is not an option. Of course it is; it's statically guaranteed that you will not reach perfection 100% of the time. Therefore I argue that we need to know how to adjust to those situations and how to deal with the feelings. Suppressing them and thinking you're a bad person for not being A++++ all the time HAS to be what's behind those suicide rates.

Telling your child they're garbage can't be the best way to get your child motivated to do well.

I can't get over this. She is insane.

Why are you so obsessed with what this random mom does with her kid? Who cares about her opinion?

And as a parent, you do have say over your kid's time, etc.

True, but that doesn't mean you should always be exercising that say.

I don't get involved in my kids' playtime unless they ask me to.

I think it is wrong for my any asian parents to stifled their child creativity or interest due to their insensitiviies or selfish demands or ignorance. I agree that snobbish asians tend to look down on menial low paid jobs. They even have higher regard for doctors than for nurses! I was brought up in the asian way, where as a daughter, I was conveniently ignored most times or pushed away rudely, if and whenever I don't suit their agenda or have no wish to go their direction. They would look up to any asian who had make lots of money in the western world but looked down an me who have no interest to make lots of money in the western world. I think asians have too much defect in their upbringing and that is why they tend to be more abusive.

Regarding what Chua said in the WSJ:

"Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do":

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin

(snip)

I'm almost 100% sure that Dr. John Rosemond will ONLY approve of 5 and 6.

(He's almost sure to be forced to write about it. As I remember his saying, and Miss Manners would likely agree, you don't "make" kids over a certain age practice instruments, you simply tell them they'll have to quit if they don't, since both JR and MM are somewhat libertarian regarding child-rearing.)

Besides, as he's pointed out repeatedly, schoolteachers would far rather have well-behaved, eager-to-please students than unhappy or disrespectful students of any age, straight-A or not.

However, Chua said on the radio (and I do think this makes sense), you can't just tell kids to "follow their passions" in their spare time these days, because for MANY kids, that means playing 10 hours of video games without stopping, on weekends. If parents want their kids to prefer useful, intelligent hobbies to useless, anti-intellectual ones (something the Tightwad Gazette emphasized), they'll HAVE to put them through the motions. Over and over. Plus, as Rosemond likes to say, you're not really a family if the kids have more than one or two extracurricular activities per semester - you're a chauffeur with kids. (Besides, how would the kids ever get their share of the chores done, with so much else to do?) Family time should be more important than that.

But at least, Chua serves as a reminder to parents where the happy medium might - or should - be. I.e., not as lax as some parents want to believe.

"And it is exactly this mindset that creates myriad problems and over-inflated senses of entitlement"

A sense of entitlement is when a person wants something without working for it. The Asian stereotype that is being discussed here is that of people slogging their ass off to get what is demanded of them and not expecting things to come and fall on their laps for free.

"Are only financial, academic and career successes valued by these families?" - These are the must have and cannot be compromised. Anything above these will get lavish praise. And this is true of American society as well, especially its expectations from its men. How many American women and their families will consider marrying a guy just because he is good at heart, but unemployed, unsuccessful and cannot feed himself? Zilch. And until society gets over this double standard of its expectations from men and women, there is really no comparison of the parameters for measurement of success across different societies.

It is depressing living in an asian society where money is their god and nothing else matter or is more important. It seems they only care for potentially successful kids or highly successful adults. That is when the problem starts in their unstable asian society when they create too many uncaring selfish brats due to bad parenting. They can't expect their kids to care for them during their old age when they were guilty of inappropriately or had brutally punished their child who they deem was underperforming or not to their liking. Asian parents had been known to unscrupulously pushed their children inappropriately or used their asian children as a stepping stone to go to the west or so that they and their asian children can opportunistically exploit the western world. Many asian parents were abusively critical of the west and yet they want what is the best the the west can offer. I think asians in general are just shameless.
Just imagins what those asians of various religion would do to disadvantaged people when they have the upper hand in the western world when they are already well known bullies in asia or had been known to flex their extreme abusiveness to certain disadvantaged poor soul in asia.

"Her husband is either has no self-esteem, is a masochist or lobotomized" - All men in America are lobotomized by the radical feminist laws and the misandric family courts, media and police which leave men open to abuse at the hands of women and encourage abuse of men. While women in America are protected and given free lunches by law and the right to torture men, a man has no option but to hope that he ends up with a merciful partner. As again, women in America have all the choices in life while men have no choices at all. Women in America have all the rights in life(including the right to file false cases and to murder and to extort) while men only have responsibilities. Expecting a man to take responsibility for the kids upbringing while he has no facilities and rights to do so reeks completely of misandry.

And it is even worst when their highly or moderately or mediocrely successful asian children turned into adults and don't change their typical asian extremely exploitve uncaring attitude/behaviour. They only care about their own good and easy life in the west or their own wealthy life in asia. They don't care about anything else. Their asian life had definitely improved as a result of various western intervention and western innovation. But when they bragged it as asian success, it is certainly very misleading.

"They can't expect their kids to care for them during their old age when they were guilty of inappropriately or had brutally punished their child who they deem was underperforming or not to their liking" - The facts contradict this inference. Till date, it is in Asian societies that maximum parents are taken care of by their children in their old age and they even stay in the same house as their grandhchildren. And it is in the west where there are maximum parents staying alone and not taken care of by their children. The percentage of Asian parents who are abandoned by their kids in their old age is hardly 5% while in the west, the vast majority of aged parents are living on their own.

"Asian parents had been known to unscrupulously pushed their children inappropriately or used their asian children as a stepping stone to go to the west" - it is hispanics who indulge in the practice of anchor babies to the largest extent. And they as well as muslims from various parts of the world who are settled in America are also abusively critical of America. This abusive criticism is in all migrant communities and not just Asians.

"Just imagins what those asians of various religion would do to disadvantaged people when they have the upper hand in the western world" - The fact is Asians are the disadvantaged people and that is why they slog their ass off. It is Hispanics and Afro americans and white women who get everything on a platter by means of diversity quotas which relegate merit to the backseat. And almost each and every law for financial assistance in college consciously excludes Asians and whites. So currently the upper hand is pretty much held by women, Afro americans and Hispanics and they are pretty much flexing their muscle and abusing white males and asians

Who say that asian children are caring toward their elderly is either lying or ignorant of the harsh unpleasant reality. Powerless elderly in asian societies were quite often neglected or ignored by even their beloved sons whom they gave preferential treatment. That is a sad reality in many aging asian society. Just take a look at those extremely badly run nursing home and elderly care home in some part of asia and you would get a general idea. Western nursing home and elderly care home generally,
(no matter how shabbily run), still offer a better of standard of living for the elderly. I have noted that most elderly asian were badly neglected even if they from a rich background or could afford better care.

" How many American women and their families will consider marrying a guy just because he is good at heart, but unemployed, unsuccessful and cannot feed himself? Zilch. And until society gets over this double standard of its expectations from men and women, there is really no comparison of the parameters for measurement of success across different societies."

Uh, this is a biological double standard, not a societal one. Name ANY culture where women are lining up to marry the unemployed guys--I doubt you can. You could just as easily say "how many American men will consider marrying a woman just because she is good at heart, but overweight with a pot belly and a unibrow?" Unless you think society needs to get over that double standard too then you have no grounds to complain about the first one.

Redrajesh is either a troll or an angry celibate loner holed up in cabin somewhere waiting to blow. Either way, no point wasting valuable argument on him.

Hi Amy - hope you're reading this.

I predicted Dr. Rosemond would have to write about Tiger Mothers - and yes, he did.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/18/2591127/living-with-children.html

Excerpts:

Over the years, I have been called every name in the book, all related to my admittedly traditional parenting philosophy. Draconian is a favorite slur. I am confident that these epithets are tossed by folks who have turned their children into golden calves, so I have no problem with harsh or evil or "parenting Hitler" or any of the rest.

But my reputation may be in store for rehabilitation........

.......I conclude that future Chinese orchestras will be bereft of horn and percussion sections. I also ponder the competitive chaos that must result if several children of CTMs wind up in the same classroom.......

.......Ms. Chua describes her parenting style as if she is being totally unselfish, but I suggest that she is all about her.

This CTM stuff is more about Ms. Chua's ego than it is her kids' success.

She lives through her children. She even freely admits that she and her American husband do not agree on how to raise the kids, but when he objects, she simply argues him into submission. The Chinese Tiger Mother is also a Tiger Wife......

.......I think character is more important than material success. Ms. Chua believes character is forged in the struggle for material success. We agree on nothing.

In any case, I am indebted to Ms. Chua for inadvertently improving my public image. I am now a Western Parenting Wuss and proud of it.

Can't these kids learn without mommy holding their hand? When do they become adults?