Jason Luong
Section A01
In Response to : "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" by Amy Chua
After reading "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", I can see how Amy Chua's article can definitely brings about heavy debate from initial responses. However, after taking the tame to dissect each individual piece of her story, I came to understand that she is not selecting and highlighting one style of parenting over another nor is she using cultural differences as means for ethnic superiority However, the method she coined as "Chinese-style", reminds me of the authoritative and authoritarian methods of parenting that I have read about in Dianes S. Hayashino and Sapna Batra Chopra's "Parenting and Raising Families". The authoritative method is reminiscent of what Chua described as the Western type of parenting; parents of this method are responsive to their child(ren)'s needs and provide comfort at their failings. However, Chua's "Chinese-style" parenting is of the authoritarian type of parenting. In this sense, children must openly bare the full responsibility of their success and failings. Many readers initially believe this method that Chua had used on her child reflects a negative aspect of this method: that she does not care for her daughter's well-being. However, that, as Chua also mentioned, is not the case. The summarize all that I have said so far: each parenting method comes with their own faults and short-comings. But one thought I have had in regards to this topic is where the child's reasoning and voice is during these debates of parenting. While Chua's daughter later wrote back in defense for her mother, this is but a few responses most have ever seen. My question here is why a child, in either and any method of parenting, lacks the ability to speak out when the potential is there?
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