"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," on Chinese-American family cu

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010702516.html

Though Chua's Jewish hu*****and grew up with parents who encouraged him to - imagine! - express himself, he nonetheless agreed to let her take the lead in rearing the children and mostly serves as the Greek chorus to Chua's crazed actions.

In Chinese parenting theory, hard work produces accomplishment, which produces confidence and yet more accomplishment. As Chua notes, this style of parenting is found among other immigrant cultures, too, and I'm sure many Washington-area readers have seen it, if they don't employ it themselves. Chua's older daughter, Sophia, a pianist, went along with, and blossomed, under this approach. The younger daughter, Lulu, whose instrument of Chua's choice was a violin, was a different story. The turning point came when, after years of practicing and performing, Lulu expressed her hatred of the violin, her mother and of being Chinese. Chua imagined a Western parents' take on Lulu's rebellion: "Why torture yourself and your child? What's the point? ... I knew as a Chinese mother I could never give in to that way of thinking." But she nevertheless allowed Lulu to abandon the violin. Given that the worst Lulu ever did was cut her own hair and throw a glass, my reaction was that Chua got off easy in a society where some pressured children cut themselves, become anorexic, refuse to go to school or worse. No one but an obsessive Chinese mother would consider her healthy, engaging and accomplished daughter deficient because the girl prefers tennis to the violin - but that's exactly the point.

Does becoming super-accomplished make up for years of stress? That's something my daughters and I will never find out.

所有跟帖： 

• 我现在倒是想读读这本书，看看笔者对二女儿最终放弃VIOLIN的说法 -AdaZheng- ♀ (0 bytes) () 01/11/2011 postreply 07:40:15