Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior?

"Why Chinese mothers are superior"

Essay by Peter Klit 3.y

How should you raise your children? By giving them space and letting them adapt and develop themselves in their world and by that giving them the possibility of controlling their own evolvement, or should you suppress them, and force them into things they don't even want to do just so that they can achieve great success later on in life? These are the contrasts that Amy Chua is discussing in this article about Tigermoms. Tigermoms is a term for an Asian mom who's pushing her kids to the limit, for example, making them practice piano or violin almost 3 hours a day, and a everything beneath an A+ in tests, is unacceptable.

The writer of this article "Why Chinese mothers are superior" is Amy Chua, a Chinese professor who's teaching at Yale Law School in USA. She has two daughters, called Sophia and Louisa. She has a lot of ideas and opinions of this subject, which she shows and discusses in this article. She was influenced by her own mother her in an early age, and that's probably also why she has all these rules and different methods of pushing her children to achieve the highest goals. In the beginning of the article, she's explaining some basic rules or activities, which her kids aren't allowed to. For example: "have a playdate, watch TV or play computer games and get any grade less than an A". A normal kid in the w estern world would find all these restrictions horrible and non-humanly . These are the things that many kids deal with every single day all over the world, and especially in Asia.

Amy Chua believes that it's the parent's job to put pressure on the children and push them to their limits, to make sure that they will be the best of the best. She thinks that the kids are supposed to be forever grateful and forever in depth to their parents. So the kids need to give 110% every day in their education and overall learning. But this method leaves out a lot of opportunities for the kids. They will be socially handicapped, they will have no idea of how to act in the society, and even though they get straight A's, they will still have a hard time interacting with people on their jobs. Because of lacking experience communicating and cooperating with people around them.

In this article we're exposed to two basic different parenting cultures and the norms that follows with them. On the left side we have the "normal" w estern family and on the right side we have the Asian parenting culture also known as "Tigermoms". Amy Chua is a very strict and dedicated Tigermom and she also keep her children in a short leash. The two different methods of raising children, has some very good elements in each of them. The difference lies in the motivation and the amount of time spent on the children's academic activities. "Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their