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Difference Chinese American parenting style
Chinese parenting and western parenting
Chinese parenting and western parenting
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As Amy Chua (2011) points out, there are three differences in the mindsets of Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. The author starts the article with several stories to demonstrate these glaring differences: Chinese parents believe their kids are "the best;" Chinese parents force their children to practice a subject until they master and enjoy it; and Chinese parents call their offsprings "garbage" and "fat" to make them improve. However, according to Chua, the Chinese parenting method, strange to Westerners, has created successful sons and daughters. To begin with, while Western parents ' primary concern is their children 's self-esteem, Chinese parents plainly assume their children are strong. These opposite mindsets lead to different behaviors. For instance, when a child 's grades are low, Western parents will challenge the educational system. In contrast, Chinese parents will make …show more content…
Consequently, Chinese parents have the expectations that their children obey their rules and make them proud with achievements. In addition, Chinese parents disregard their children’s preference and decide what is best for the children. This idea might seems unacceptable and cruel to Westerners, but it is how Chinese parents care for their children. Chua illustrates the idea with an “The Little White Donkey” piano practice session with her daughter, after which all the child’s frustrations and the mother’s patience were paid off. The seven-year-old’s performance at a recital was greatly admired by other parents. Lastly, the author argues that Chinese parents’ high level of expectation results in utterly differing parenting method. While Western parents’ role in their children’s lives is primarily a supporting one, Chinese parents intensely drill their children in preparation the
Like the name of this article suggests, the writer's main purpose is to persuade the audience to make them believe that Chinese mothers are indeed superior. To support her argument she uses different methods to appeal to her audience's favor: she uses statistics of researches about Chinese mothers and Western mothers opinions, opinions that are mostly about how parents should or should not do when they are raising their children. She also uses passages of her life as a Chinese mother to support her argument. Also, she points out a few characteristics of western parents that are completely opposite to how a Chinese mother raises their children, which made her argument stronger. Nevertheless, there were some fallacies in her logic. One of her main fallacies is what we call "Hasty Generalization".
Amy Chua utilizes evidence to verify that Western parenting practice is wrong and not as effective as Chinese parenting practice. In her article, Chua comments, “Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners, “Hey fatty-lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue” (Chua 54). She also gives her observation as evidence to convince Westerners treat their kid wrongly. She adds her observation in her article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” “I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her “beautiful and incredibly competent.” She later told me that made her feel like garbage” (Chua 54). Brooks, in opposite, does not fight against to prove Chinese parenting techniques are completely wrong. However, he just want to give evidence so that Chua and Chinese, in common, understand Western parenting practices are good in some ways. In Brooks’ article, he clears, “So I’m not against the way Chua pushes her daughters” (Brooks 59). Furthermore, David Brooks writes in his article “I wish she recognized that in some important ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library” (Brooks
Firstly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. “If you want a place in this world ... do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in a family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth. Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are 118 little boys in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing (Baldwin 40). The parents from Chinese family had a preference for boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were tryin...
Chinese parenting is competent at times but there are other times where it is more suitable to follow other forms of parenting such as the Western style.These findings have important consequences for the broader domain of parent-child relationships. Whether it is Chinese parenting or Western parenting the relationship between family members is crucial. According to Amy Chua, Chinese parenting is more effective in helping the child attain a better future through the parents’ interests, while Western parenting style reflects mainly the interests of the child.
One type of effect the Chinese mothers’ expectations has in their relationship with their “Americanized” daughter is negative since the mothers are unable to achieve anything. An-Mei Hsu expects her daughter to listen and obey as the young ones do in Chinese culture, but instead receives a rebellious and stubborn daughter, “‘You only have to listen to me.’ And I cried, ‘But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too.’ More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen’” (186-187). Instead of the circumstances improving, the mother is never able to achieve anything; her forcing and pushing her daughter to the Chinese culture goes to a waste. They are both similar in this sense because both are stubborn; the daughter learns to be stubborn through American culture and wants to keep herself the way she is, whereas the mother wants to remove this teaching from American culture and does not give u...
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
Lindo Jong provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best”(Tan 289).
She started working at seventeen years old to support her family. In her situation, the necessity of supporting her family is very significant in her life. In Chinese tradition, parents do not expect anything from their sons and daughters, but the sense of respect towards the hard work that Chinese parents do for their kids is a must for successful men and women to support their parents with their free-will. These people are grateful that their parents gave them existence—creating opportunities for searching for ethical values that will help them succeed.
Amy Chua (2011) names off three reasons that support her argument in why Chinese children are more successful. First, she mentions that Westerners worry too much on how their child will accept failure, whereas Chinese parents assume only strength in their child and nothing less. For example, if a Western child comes home with a B on a test, some parents will praise the child on their success and some may be upset, while a Chinese parent would convince their child they are “worthless” and “a disgrace.” The Western parents hope to spare their children’s feelings and to be careful not to make their child feel insecure or inadequate, while Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe their children can get them (Chua, 2011). Secondly, Chinese parents believe their chil...
In 2011, Yale Law School professor, Amy Chua, took the world by storm with her work: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her writing was displayed through television, radio, and news, giving it the fame it now possesses. Chua’s popularity is not all positive, though; in this essay she discusses her point of view on parenting styles and how she brought up her kids. This struck controversy because she believes in what she calls a “Chinese mother’s” way of raising children, which involves a very strict and controlling approach to parenting. While she effectively brings up some legitimate points, Chua’s overall view of raising children strikes me as excessive and extreme.
Parenting in today’s society is extremely competitive. Raising children has become the new sport interest to the parents, and the success that the kids achieve in life is the gold medal. You see the articles in magazines, the websites online, and the ads on TV that promote the newest and greatest parenting methods used by mothers and father everywhere. The differences we see in parenting can differ from family to family, but the biggest contrast is between the different ethnicities of the world. How a Western mother raises her child may be completely different than that of a Chinese mother. These differences are the ones that are observed by author Amy Chua, as well as mothers who have read her works of literature.
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
Chinese parents override their children's desires and preferences at a young age to steer them clear of any distractions. Chua begins her writing piece with a list of activities that she would not allow her children to do. From activities such as attending a sleepover to achieve grades lower than an A, Chua’s children were pushed to do everything a certain way. It might seem restraining to the child but “ Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children… They would give up anything for their children,”(Chua 64). They are essentially limiting their children's choices to give them a predestination to success while still giving them the freedom to express themselves. Western parents are the complete opposite. They allow their children to pursue whatever they please even if it were wrong. This is how American women are drawn to self-hating behaviors caused by pressures of Guyland. Kimmel states “There are plenty of girls who avoid the more dire pitfalls of females of female adolescence in America today–from eating disorders to self-mutilation, reckless promiscuity to binge drinking. Yet man do not. And while there are several reasons that might explain the kind of self-hating behaviors described above, none is more relevant to our conversation than the pressures exerted by the culture of Guyland,”(244). Harlot sexual tendencies, alcohol abuse, and degrading sorority pledging are all examples of the vices women are drawn to due to the loose parenting of westerners. Western parenting does not push their children into the right direction like Chinese parenting, revealing them to the dark aspects of Guyland where women risk their authenticity and
The study conducted by Li, Costanzo and Putallaz examined the relationship between parenting styles, socialization goals and social-emotional adjustment amid Chinese and European American young adults. The article states that European American parents emphasize self-development goals in their children more so than Chinese parents as Western culture is more individualistic than collectivistic (Li, Costanzo & Putall...
“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” is an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, a Yale Law professor. In this excerpt the author explains why Chinese children tend to be more successful in life and expresses her dislike towards Western parenting. The first idea Chua explains is a list of activities her daughters are allowed to do and not do in order to focus solely on academic progress. Second, the author demonstrates the contrast in mindset between Chinese mothers and Western mothers by explaining how Chinese mothers feel differently than Western mothers in regards to academic success and learning. Furthermore, she describes how Chinese mothers can demand things from their children. Finally, they can also say