At 24 pages, this thread is too long for me to expect anyone to recall what I have written specifically!
However, because the discussion is so long, I wanted to point out that I object strenuously but specifically to Amy Chua’s child-rearing practices as she portrayed them in her book. By extension I object to those same child-rearing practices, if used by any other family.
There are a fair number of Asian families in our area, and I don’t believe any of the parents are anywhere nearly as extreme as Chua. The students are not much different (if at all) from other hard-working students in the same classes.
I think the media focus on this issue is very largely a product of Chua’s book and the publicity for it. I don’t believe I had heard the term “tiger parent” before that either (like one or several of the other posters on this thread).
I agree with Hunt’s final paragraph. My family are Christian, but did not have lamb for Easter. Too much chocolate was consumed in our house yesterday, though!
However, it does appear to be the case that observations of one or a few members of a smaller minority group can have a larger influence on the observer’s impression of the minority group than observations of one or a few members of a larger group or a majority group.
Where I live, there are enough Asian people around that no one would think that Amy Chua is representative. But postings in this thread indicate that some people may be letting a few tiger parents define their view of an entire race or ethnicity.
Who? I repeat that the only person who said that all Asian parents are tiger parents was an Asian teenager. Another poster said that all the Asian families they knew had these characteristics–which, if true, can only be extrapolated so far.
Are there postings in this thread that suggest that some people think that tiger parenting doesn’t exist at all?
^ The “all” argument is a strawman: overly simplistic, tedious, puerile even. No serious person, aware of statistics, ever posits that “all” samples are perfectly correlated. This goes not just for social behavior but for absolutely anything in nature that can be measured. Even though no one single sample can be claimed to adhere precisely to a particular characteristic, clear trends often are discernible in a sample set. Why is this so hard to acknowledge? As I mentioned in #351, this is the whole premise behind “diversity.”
I should have added that the observation of social trends is the basis for the field of sociology. I highly doubt that any researcher publishing results in a sociology journal feels compelled to add that “not all” of the people (respondents) were in perfect correlation with the observed social trend. Variability exists, but so do clear behavioral patterns within many ethnic/cultural groups.
I just retired from a career in which I traveled to many other countries and did a) ethnographic work for clients and b) led workshops to embed the learning into local and/or global teams.
As part of this, I did have to learn / observe / respect cultural nuances. And not just “cute” things - like the etiquette of Japanese business cards - but real, observable truths about a culture.
I could take the countries I’ve been to and say - these cultures value punctuality highly and our meetings will start and end precisely on time (good morning, Gernany!) while other cultures routinely start meetings whenever and are loosey-goosed about time. Some cultures desire getting-to-know-you-small-talk while others want to get down to business immediately. Some cultures value uniformity and there is one “right way” to do things; others don’t. Some see children as sort of communal property to be commented on; others wouldn’t dream of correcting another child’s bad behavior in public. Some have very strict, formal and hierarchical workplaces where you dare not critique your boss’ ideas; other cultures are more “flat” and may the best idea win. Some have a culture in which “I’ll think about it” means “I’ll seriously consider it with an open mind” and in others it’s a polite way of saying “sorry, not doing it.” Some are effusive with praise and others are highly critical. Some cultures are highly attuned to physical beauty in even the smallest aspects of everyday life and others aren’t. Some cultures react easily and naturally to exercises where they have to use their imagination and others struggle.
My people and I needed to observe and tailor everything we did against these differences - because what works in Brazil doesn’t work in Japan, and so forth. This is International Business 101.
It’s not “racist” or “stereotyping” to observe these cultural truths.
I don’t think your business would succeed if you defined cultural differences in the terms of bad parenting or bad meeting practices. That is, differences have positive values that work for their culture. Saying a culture is prone to starting on time or starting whenever is not the same as saying the X are obsessed with time or the Y are lazy and rude.
The judgement is the problem, right? In this thread, the judgement isn’t always explicit, and yet it inherent in the privileging of imagined US child rearing practices. There is an interpretive lens in many of these posts that attacks involved parenting while assuming that the poster’s pattern is best. Sometimes the posts are blatant, sometimes subtler, but the judgment of another culture is repeatedly present. This is complex in that there are so many layers of assumed values on the part of posters. Further the judgements are written in ways that demean and insult. The trains run on time can be a sort of insult, after all. The implications are that bad things are happening to make trains timely and that a looser system is better. That is, we (US) are better. I must say that Loosey goosey even is a disrespectful judgement for an ethnographer.
The quality of judgement is the problem with writing that the Chinese abuse their children, even when framing it in some sort of slant or subtle way. The myopia of America is again visible. Not only is it not true, but it serves to ignore all the positive cultural aspects of being involved with children, loving children, investing in children. The judgement is based on something as shallow as seeing a family at dinner, not any real experience of the culture. It is really sad to see how quick to judgement some of us are.
I never stood for a moment on a crowded Chinese bus if I had a baby or toddler with me. Now I could generalize out from this . . .
“I don’t think your business would succeed if you defined cultural differences in the terms of bad parenting or bad meeting practices. That is, differences have positive values that work for their culture. Saying a culture is prone to starting on time or starting whenever is not the same as saying the X are obsessed with time or the Y are lazy and rude.”
I have to be AWARE of these differences so I don’t make cultural mistakes, but yeah, I’m ok with making (personal) judgments about which ones are “better” versus not. I freely admit I personally prefer the everyone-is-prepared-so-let’s-start-and-end-on-time culture of say, Germany, to the show-up-whenever-and-maybe-not-get-it-all-done ethos of Brazil, just to pick on two countries I routinely worked in. I freely admit I prefer the your-word-is-your-bond-and-I’ll-pay-you-on-time approach in Japan to the it’s-18-months-after-the-project-is-complete-but-I’m-still-not-going-to-bother-to-pay-you-just-try-and-collect approach in China. I am not obligated to value all cultural differences equally.
“I never stood for a moment on a crowded Chinese bus if I had a baby or toddler with me. Now I could generalize out from this . . .”
So feel free to generalize from it. (I happen to agree with you - the Chinese are far more conscientious, for lack of a better term, in such a situation versus Americans, who won’t necessarily give a mother of a baby / toddler a seat.) What is stopping you? That indeed might be a cultural value of Chinese people, and one worth admiring.
You’ll forgive me if I’m getting a little whiplash here.
So, are there (generally speaking, all caveats understood) cultural differences between mainstream Chinese parenting and mainstream American parenting – the objection is to ascribing superiority to one vs the other?
Or is it that there are no differences whatsoever in those cultures and how they approach parenting (specifically as it relates to education) - and if you were to take a poll about the importance of education, how many hours children should study, what they should study, etc. the numbers would be virtually identical?
As an Asian kid, I had a generally pretty loose childhood/parenting experience. However, that is only relative to the Tiger Mom style. There werestill the workbooks at a young age, the mandatory piano lessons (hated, but now I wish I’d continued), the emphasis on excelling in school. And I can say from experience, that even though my childhood was by no means bad, the parenting style is brutal on the kids. Not in my case, but it can easily rob a kid of the time when all children want is to run about and play. As you progress in to middle and high school, the emphasis on success siphons away so much time, individuality, and to some extent, personality.
Geez all this talk about Asian Tiger Parents makes me look back at my own upbringing where one the few golden rules pertaining to education I had growing up was that I must eventually obtain a degree, though how I utilized said degree was left to my judgment. My parents even eventually supported my enlistment into the Army during the tail end of the Great Recession when I pointed out to them that the benefits I could receive from the Post 9/11 GI Bill would nearly cover the entire spectrum of my college expenses, everything from tuition to rent and that I would graduate with zero debt. Note: They were supportive of my brothers’ decision to join the Navy for the same reason.
After graduating they even supported my decision to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a Police Officer despite it not being considered a “traditional” career path among ethnic Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, Tiger Parents do exist but they’re a small minority that’s part of the same bubble that the CC community in general belongs to.
PG, you are using ethnography in a very odd way. I have ever heard an educated ethnographer write or say that it is okay to make judgements, and I have taught ethnography at research universities. It is seen as a descriptive method. Sensitive to the 19th century characterization of other people as primitives, contemporary ethnographers see to provide “thick descriptions” (Geertz).
to clarify - I was doing ethnographic research for my clients, and then leading workshops to share findings with local clients and help them brainstorm how to address. I’m talking meta here. I needed to use my knowledge / observation of the culture to get the deepest and fullest response from people. For example - if I did an exercise to bring a brand to life, I could just explain the exercise in Italy and I’d be inundated with rich examples, metaphors, analogies, etc. If I did so in Japan, people would look at one another and be hesitant to offer different opinions because they wanted to know what the “right” answer was. So I’d have to use different methods /means to accomplish what I wanted and work harder to create a “safe space” (sorry) and explicitly help them understand it was ok if their opinion was different from the person sitting next to them. It wasn’t my job to (publicly) pass judgment but of course when you’re leading groups for days straight you form opinions on where it’s easy and where it’s hard.
Likewise, you’re darn right I’d (secretly) get frustrated that Brazilians would completely go off task and socialize (though of course no skin off my back if they don’t accomplish what they had hired me for - at one point it became herding cats). Contrast that to Germans who, well, they’re Gernan, always prepared, and ready to work to completion.
My ethnographic conclusions about consumers were specific to the client’s products / categories, but included things like wildly different role of the baby/child in the household, wildly different attitudes to what constitutes beauty (light/dark, natural/made up, etc) and the deeper meaning of natural/organic.
I don’t think it’s a secret that there is a black underclass in the US where, generally speaking, education is not valued as much. Whether that is a “natural” cultural thing or a response to feeling trapped in cruddy schools or feeling that sports is a surer bet out, I don’t know.
We’ve had students on here from (white) Appalachia explain that a cultural norm in their communities is “not to get too big for one’s britches” which means - if daddy and granddaddy were coal miners that should be good enough for you too and thus going to an elite school is uppity vs something to strive for. Do we doubt that is a cultural norm?
Is it more of a cultural norm in the south to ask what church someone goes to than in the north? Gosh, CC is full of all kinds of discussions of how cultural norms differ between different colleges, and within the Greek system.
Not all cultural differences are neutral. I’m aware that academia loves to teach otherwise, but as a woman who believes in equality for women, I can’t agree that it’s OK for a culture or religion to keep women (half of the human population of an area) from being educated. I also don’t believe it’s acceptable to apply different moral standards to women than to men, eg. the woman dies if caught in adultery but the man is excused. I think that the genital mutilation of women is barbaric. And I certainly don’t believe it’s OK to enslave or kill those who don’t believe in the same god as you do.
I am an old academic, and I have never heard an academic say that all cultural differences are neutral. Rather what I hear is that (1) you need to research what claims you make about the ethics/values of other cultures and (2) you need to think complexly about it. I am shocked by the assumptions people make based on anecdote. I mean, really, PG pretends to do ethnography in countries from Brazil to Japan; I wonder how many of those languages she speaks.
Example: Many cultures mutilate girls and boys. In the US we have ridiculous rates of unnecessary surgeries on children (under 18) including rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, breast reduction, and circumcision. Sometimes these surgeries have deadly results. There is the noted case of the Canadian boy who lost most of his penis and so was raised as a girl unsuccessfully (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). Until recently, any child born a hermaphrodite was surgically corrected at birth to conform to a sex, not necessarily the one closest to the child’s genes, never with the child’s permission. There are cultures who see hermaphrodites as blessed by the gods, but unless I know more, I wouldn’t say that was better (though it probably is better to embrace difference than to despise it). To make a claim about a culture’s religious system, I would need to do serious study and consider who it helps and harms.
I actually think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does a good job of laying out appropriate cultural aspirations, but the USA does a lousy job on health care and education. Our failures at human rights keep me sensitive to the problems in other cultures, without feeling that I can smugly judge others who may lack a free press but provide universal dental care.
My stereotype of academics is that they believe there are way more questions than answers to those questions. Most I know believe in fewer and fewer “truths” as they age. My social group is 90% old academics.
