Week 9 Blog: Parenting Effectiveness Depends on the Parent AND the Child

James Park
ASA2 
Section A01
11/15/2015
Week #9

In "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," Amy Chua explicitly lists the differences between her "tiger mom" parenting and Western parenting while detailing the superiority of "Chinese parenting" over the typical Western parenting. Before the reading, I remembered hearing about an article written by a Chinese mother explaining why her stereotypical "strict Asian" approach to parenting was much more successful than the typical parenting style of Westerners. Though at first it may seem harsh, Chua constantly shows her reasoning behind the way she treats her two daughters when parenting about school and extracurricular, relating it to self-esteem and reinforcement of character building. Although I do agree with what she says and "strict Asian" parenting in general, there are few aspects which I don't see eye to eye with. Growing up, I never had that type of parents, let alone parents that cared deeply about my education and academic success. Though I myself had the innate strive to do well in academia at an early age, I wished my parents had given me the extra push or strict concern over my educational future. However, I do realize that this style of parenting, though it may be in the best interest for the child, may not yield consistent results across the board. When I read Sophia Chua's article in response to all the criticism her mother had received from her parenting book, I felt that all of her opinions expressed could vary from child to child. I don't believe that such a harsh, though effective, parenting with an emphasis in educational success would forge an emotionally stable child a hundred percent of the time. Maybe Chua lucked out on two exceptional daughters who understood their mother's methodology and teachings behind her strict parenting.


Do many parents still exhibit a split in styles of parenting or has the general population come to a consensus of parenting (a mix of Western ideology to pursue passions and Chinese methodology of strict educational success)?