Work harder, to be better

Lixian Huang

Nov 15th. 2015

Week 9 Blog

ASA 2, A03

In the article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”, Amy Chua demonstrates the differences between Chinese (or Eastern) and Western parenting methods. According to Amy Chua, Chinese parents extremely care the academic performance of their children, while the Western parents resist pressuring their children. Actually, I was brought up in a Chinese family with non-typical Chinese parents, who never forced me to study. However, I was frequently exhausted during my childhood, when I had to organize my life on my own. I have to commit my feelings of envy to those children whose parents planned almost everything for them. Such Chinese children did not need to waste their time hesitating between options, instead, simply follow their parents’ “instructions”, and they could get the best in the given conditions with the careful considerations and professional experience from the parents. In contrast, my parents seldom gave me recommendations, neither advised me playing violin at the age of three, nor suggested me to learn swimming at the age of seven. They never tried to convince me that studying advanced courses was good. In the Western countries, such parents may be considered as smart because they allow so many possibilities in their children’s life, and they respect the thoughts from the children. Nevertheless, as one of such “lucky” children of those kinds of parents, I want to yell that I PREFER TO BE CONTROLLED AT MY YOUNG AGE! I appreciate someone telling me before I do things that “THIS IS BENIFICIAL, so you should do it” and “THAT IS REALLY TERRIBLE, so you will be punished whenever you want to try”. To me, having a tiger mother is really beneficial, because if I had one, I would be able to avoid so many stupid choices I made when I was young. I would be so much better than I am now.

Question: Critics always blame tiger moms, but why don’t they listen the voice from the young generations who loves to be “TIGERED”?