Amy Chua's Article 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior'

964 Words2 Pages

There is no manual for being the perfect parent, so parents have to go through a series of successes and fails in order to find what is best for their family. Nevertheless every parent believes that their way of parenting is the best and the way others should raise their children. In her article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”, Amy Chua explains why children raised by Chinese mother are more successful than children raised by western parents. She believes that Chinese parents raise more successful children because of strict rules when it comes to education and social interactions. Unlike most western parents who do not want education to completely take over their child’s life. Chua’s own children have a set of strict rules, including no …show more content…

While I believe that children are strong than people think, I disagree with Chua’s opinion that you can use abusive language with children and it will not affect them negatively in their later years. Chua bases this opinion on the fact that when she was a child her father called her “garbage” and it did not affect her negatively. But not all children have the same strength; some will let the insults slide off their shoulders while others will take it badly. This is a massive generalization; Chua is bases her life experiences and applying that to the rest of the population. During a dinner party Chua mentioned calling her youngest daughter “garbage”. A guest called Marcy broke down into tears after hearing the insult, so was so upset that she had to leave the dinner party. I interpret this as trigger to a traumatic childhood moment in Marcy’s life that she held onto into her adult years. This disproves Chua’s claim that harsh words won’t affect children in a negative …show more content…

Chua believes that practice makes perfect and that when a child masters something that they did not like at first they will then enjoy it. While Chua’s statement may hold a bit of truth in it I believe that the child’s happiness comes from not having to practice the piece anymore and finally relax. She bases her claim on the moment her daughter lulu mastered a piano piece, a piece that Chua had forced Lulu to practice for hours, taking pieces of her doll house to the salvation army every day she didn’t master the piece and threatening her with no birthdays or Christmas for years. When Lulu finally mastered the piece she smiled up to her mother and began to play the piece perfectly. While Chua may have seen this as Lulu enjoying the piece she had finally mastered I see it as a little girl who was finally happy that her mother was praising and being nice instead of constant yelling and

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