I chose assignment B.
Write an Essay (900-1200 words) in which you analyze and comment on Amy Chua’s article “Why Chinese Parents Are Superior”. Part of your essay must focus on how the writer engages the reader and on possible consequences of adopting Amy Chua’s values and methods of upbringing.
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.
Amy Chua, who is a professor at the Yale Law School in the United States of America, wrote the interesting article ‘Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’. The article evolves around the many concerns that Amy Chua has with the western way of raising children. According to Amy Chua, western parents should do as she herself, and most other Chinese parents do, and raise their kids with strict rules and tough consequences if the children were to defy these rules. Amy Chua succeeded in raising two successful kids herself; in the article, she tells us how she did it.
The article was published in The Wall Street Journal on January the 8th 2011.
As stated in the article written by Amy Chua, the Chinese mother prioritises musical talent and schoolwork over sleepovers, school plays, TV, computer and playdates. Amy Chua herself never allowed her children to be in a school play, have a playdate or play any instruments other than the Piano and the Violin, watch TV, play computer, not being the best student in every class, except Gymnastics and Drama.
Throughout the entire article, Amy Chua made it very clear that she thought that all the western parents are excessively soft. Amy Chua believes that western parents focus too much on their children’s self-esteem, which in the end leads to children that are unruly and ignorant, or as A...
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...lass, but does not have any friends, have very little to no happiness in their life, is that success?
Amy Chua wants her children to be the best, be exceptionally good at everything, but what if her children really just want to live a simple and happy life.
Amy Chua should not be a host she should be a guide, Amy Chua should not control her daughter’s lives, she should allow her daughters to pick their own path.
As a parent you will have to ask yourself, what do I believe is the most important thing for my child, being great academically and being great musically and perhaps not being happy.
On the other hand, allowing my child to decide what path he/she wants to take him/herself and perhaps not end up being great academically or musically, but end up being happy.
Personally, I do not find it difficult to choose, but then again, my parents were “Western parents”.
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".
New Yorker Elizabeth Kalbert focuses on a story on America’s Top Parent. Amy Chua a writer on “The Roar of the Tiger mom,” Kalbert tells how there are two kinds of mothers. Amy Chua for instance is a Chinese woman who keeps her children from the outside world Chua, and her daughters of Chinese immigrants. Her daughters and herself practice their work every day and is a law school professor, who also includes only the best for her children. Although western mothers think they are being strict when their children were to practice their work.
It is true that every mothers and fathers strive to give their children the finest development of knowledge so that it supports them blossom in their career. Two writers who have opposing views based on the parenting techniques of children are Amy Chua, in her article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior?” and David Brooks, in his article “Amy Chua is a Wimp.” Both of them have similarities and differences in bias in their article; there are differences in their tone and the way which they utilize evidences, but both of them depend heavily on evidence to prove their points.
... to try it. Even if the parents think they know what is best for the child, it is for the child to decide what will make them happy, and successful in life. You must enjoy what you are doing to be successful in it.
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...
While these essays are similar because they focus on the native languages used in America and the struggles of being a Chinese American in America, they differ in both their attitudes toward their mothers and personal reflections of being Chinese American. An individual’s background is where one comes from and how he or she was raised. Tan is a Chinese American. She has a traditional Chinese mother who speaks “broken” English. Tan states that, “It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than ‘broken’, as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed[. . . ]”
Every parent wishes the best for his/her child. All they want is for them to be the best they possibly can be, so they can grow up and have a successful career; one in which they can live a happy and comfortable life.
With this thought in mind, Hanna Rosin wrote an article, Mother Inferior, where she made several cases of the variance between Chua’s parenting techniques and her own. She explains why she believes Chua is wrong, and that she doesn’t fit the ‘Western’ parent stereotype. Rosin states that, in Chua’s mind, she is a weak-willed, pathetic Western parent (Rosin 309). She declares that, “It’s more that I don’t have it in me. I just don’t have the demented drive to pull it off” (Rosin 310). Instead, she enjoys the time she sets aside for her children and makes sure that her children have a virtuous
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)
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.
The author, Amy Chua, portrays her opinionated argument that Chinese children are more Why Chinese Mothers are Superior Why Chinese Mothers are Superior successful because of the way they are brought up in her article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior (2011)”. This theme is important because it compares and contrasts the tactics of Chinese mothers to Western mothers to strive for their children to be successful. This paper describes the three key arguments Chau (2011) ties into Ed124 and why Chinese parents act the way they do towards their children.
Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.
The universality versus cultural specificity debate both have aspects that make sense and can be applied to childhood development. On one side, supporters of the argument for the universality of parenting suggest that certain types of parenting styles will produce the same child development outcomes in different cultures. On the other hand, the argument for cultural specificity states that different parenting practices vary from culture to culture, and that culture ultimately determines the outcomes of child development. Each culture has specific styles of parenting that instill values on children particular to that culture. Each individual has characteristics of what their parents taught them, which gives every individual their own personality. Both sides present logical information on the cultural impacts of parenting on child development outcomes.
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.
“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