Response to Amy Chua

In Amy Chua's article, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", She expresses her experiences as a Chinese mother and the many techniques she uses to "motivate" and "sculpture" her children into perfect people. Many of her techniques include threatening to throw away her clothes, toys, threatening to starve her, and threatening to not provide Christmas and Haunika presents for 2-4 years. She repeatedly insults her children and thinks all this is alright. In comparison to Western style parenting, she thinks that western parents care too much about their children's self-esteem. They do not push their children enough is what she is saying. She concludes that all her hard work would make her hated, but in the end it is all for the children's good and therefore the children owe her everything!

I disagree with this very much. I agree more with the Western view:

She says, "My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." 

First of all, I think Amy is overly pushing their children. She is actually risking so much more by behaving this way. Her goal to produce perfect, successful children seems to be like enslaving them. They are not given freedom to actually have fun. Although her techniques did work, it may build a child that is very good academically, but maybe that is not everything. She seems to think that being good at school is everything. She has given all her faith into the school systems, that may not even make your children successful! In my opinion, there is more to loose than recieve. They are rasing children that have no freedom to have personal opinions and Amy seem to take everything little thing in her children's life as a big deal. They is no time to relax and everything has to be perfect. It is hard life if there is no room for mistakes. For example, in her children's piano experience, Amy treats her performance like a life and death situation, when it is alright to go freely.

Therefore, I think Jed is right. I think as a children, they do have responsibilities to take care of their children because the parents raised them and provided them with food and shelter. However, if the parents are really bad parents, than the children may choose that they don't owe them everything. In Amy's case, it is difficult because she did succeed in making her kids successful, but her parenting techniques does not allow any independence and fun in life. Without these things, life is not as meaningful because you can't really learn- not academically, but how to be a good person, which is way more important than succeeding accademically.