Well as a counter-anecdote, I will say that I know quite a few Asians whose parents conform to the Amy Chua style of parenting. I don’t see it as an extremity and an outlier but as a reflection of the reality of a lot of households.
It seems to me that there are some cultural norms in Asian immigrant families that, when taken to extremes, can result in Amy Chua-style parenting. But even the less extreme versions of these norms may be different from the American mainstream. For example, the idea that a kid should play either violin or piano–and no other instrument–is, in my opinion, quite common among Asian families, especially Chinese families. If this really is a cultural norm, it’s not a “stereotype.” Whether it’s good or bad depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
There is a huge difference between parents who have high standards for their children–expecting them to take their schooling and other activities seriously, to work hard at them and try their best-- and the kind of abuse described in Chua’s book. Reasonable adults can disagree about how long a child should be expected to practice a musical instrument every day. But not allowing a 6 year old child to rest, sleep, eat, use the bathroom–this is not anywhere on the spectrum of normal parenting, even what many people would call tiger parenting–it sounds more like a report coming out of Guantanamo Bay. Those marathon abusive music practices are not parenting. It is training a child like an animal entirely to satisfy the parent’s ego.
^ Those kinds of practice sessions are common place in Russian/Eastern European music and dance schools across the US. I can’t speak for other cultures but I remember my piano teacher told my parents to literally have me play the same 2 measures for three hours a day with no breaks, in addition to my regular practice routine. I was 6…
One of my Russian school mates is a competitive gymnast and her coach/Dad has her training for 6 hours a day even through injuries and school time.
Yes, 15-20 min. of practice was enough for my D. I bet it could be enough for anybody who is not inspired to be a musician. It took my D. into having Music minor at college, which was above and beyond expected in regard to her musical interest, which was just one of many and was not the most time consuming by far. Her sport practice was taking over 3 hours / day, she had only Sunday off. But. god forbid, she missed this, she cared too much about it, the major “social” of her every evening.
I believe though that all these “Asian” anecdotes are way overblown. I have seen them - very happy and hard working people in extremely pushy environment of medical school.
There are abuses in every culture. We just pay too much attention to some and not paying the same attention to nothers. The neglect, lack of any support or lack of support in academics are all other forms of abuse and I bet, it is over 50% prevailing in non-Asian families. How about that? The fact is that we hate overachievers is the main reason for looking for abuses in Asian families, while forgetting to look at all others who are not achieving at the same rate, not even close.
Where is there any indication of a “fact” that “we hate overachievers”? Don’t agree with that at all. Not at all. Please don’t speak for others, and please don’t claim it as “fact”.
@MiamiDAP, come on, we don’t “hate overachievers”. I would be delighted if there were more serious students at my kids’ school. Again, too many people on this thread are deliberately conflating parents who have high standards with parents who are abusive. My kids didn’t enjoy practicing music either. I felt that 20-30 minutes a day was not inappropriate. And they never bit a piano or stood up screaming at me in a restaurant over it.
Yes there are kids who are being trained for sports achievement who are also being abused. However, I think in many cases, those kids really have Olympic or pro sports dreams and they are being put through what is deemed necessary to succeed. It is one thing to tell a child, if you want to achieve X, you must be willing to do Y and Z. It’s another thing to tell a child, you must do Y and Z even if you don’t even care about X and I don’t care that Y and Z are making you completely miserable and I will only love you if you do Y and Z and achieve X.
Google the article from The Atlantic on “Suicide Clusters at Palo Alto High”. Take careful note of the names of the students who have killed themselves. Then come back and tell me tiger parenting is a good thing. No kid needs to stay up to 3:00 AM studying for one of five AP classes they are taking. The US has designed a system where this kind of nonsense just isn’t needed. Your creativity can create wealth and opportunity in the US. I got C’s in high school, and today I run software development teams in Silicon Valley. I probably made more last year with bonuses and RSU stock grants than any general doctor will make this year. The sooner tiger moms stop this nonsense, the happier and healthier their kids will be. What is astonishing is they can’t even reflect inward to see they were part of their kids suicides.
That idea is not limited to Asian-immigrant families. From accounts I’ve heard from parents of HS classmates, older HS alums dating back to the 1930’s, etc…that phenomenon described many other ethnic/racial groups such as various European ethnic groups, Jewish immigrants, working/lower-middle class multi-generationed Americans* who were trying to elevate their social status, and many upper/upper-middle class White families during the 30s till 60’s.
- One older HS alum from this group is eligible for membership in the DAR on one side of her family.
I don’t know about that. While most families(Mostly non-Asian) I knew of with kids who took up instruments never forced their kids to pick it up without them initially expressing strong interest* or micromanaged their practices…especially to the extent Chua recounts, 20-30 minutes of practice per day would not have been considered adequate by them or most of their music teachers or friends of mine who do teach piano and other musical instruments professionally/semi-professionally.
Those families and their music teachers/my music teacher friends were of the mind that if a child is showing so little passion for the instrument that they’re practicing only 20-30 minutes a day rather than couple of hours a day at a minimum, they’re not taking the instrument seriously enough and would give them the choice of increasing the practice time to 2 hours a day or sell off the instrument as their practice time was showing they weren’t taking it very seriously.
Some of the teachers would also go so far as to refuse providing further instruction to a student who practiced less than 2 hours/day.
That’s not to say I didn’t know parents who were as bad as Chua recounted about herself. I did…and many of them were also non-Asian. Funny enough, all it did for the vast majority of students is to cause them to develop a deep burning hatred of classical music and associated instruments. With a few HS classmates I knew who were like this, that hatred was such I wouldn’t trust them to be left alone with a classical musical instrument unless the owner doesn’t mind them being treated in the same way Pete Townsend treats some of his electric guitars…
- Most parents felt this was one prereq for them to even consider purchasing an instrument.
It is not impossible to love the overachievers and still feel sorry for the manner in which some of them were fabricated and molded into an image that fits the misguided objectives of the parents. In addition, for many the results are not worth the pain and suffering of the journey as the ultimate test, namely admissions in a very small number of colleges, has become harder to decipher for the ones who sought individual recognition. For the most parts, Tiger parenting is a failed experiment that Is hardly worthy of the praise it tries to garner, and surely not worthy of the attempt at justification by a cynical Chua.
I do not believe that it is possible to fabricate an over achiever. At the end of her book, even Chua accepts that her younger has to do things her own way. Some children are nurtured to achieve; others are neglected.
It is possible to tell a child, who wants to play, that they need to practice X hours, but you can’t make them pick up the instrument. You can’t force musicality. That comes from talent, interest, and practice. Of note, in my house, I would like my younger to put down her second instrument and focus on the one she prefers. To accomplish that, I would have to be really mean, a true tiger parent. I suspect the cost would be high to our relationship, even if it freed up her time.
^^ Perhaps it goes to the definition of an overachiever because I think that plenty of Tiger Cubs are designed, programmed, and hence fabricated…
"I do not have any respect, not even grudging respect, for a family that visits Athens and does not go to see the Parthenon, when the reason is that the mother wants the daughters to continue to practice the piano uninterruptedly (Chua’s family, and I hope no others). That is not “setting high standards.” It’s something entirely different. I have no quarrel at all with parents who expect hard work and also involvement in EC’s. I question the sense of insisting on 6 hours a day of violin practice, if the child does not want to practice 6 hours a day. (It would be fine if the child is in love with the instrument and actually wants to practice six hours a day.) "
:::::Applause:::: I couldn’t agree more with you, QuantMech.
I often wonder how much of her book is fabricated or if she’s just stretching the truth. I have only read excerpts, but growing up, my asian high school friends (all 1st generation) and I have never experienced the same type of parental abuse she documents in her book. Sure, several of us played the piano, but nobody practiced more than a hour a day. In fact, my mother would be lucky if I played 30 minutes a day. We had sleepovers, went to parties, and all survived high school fine. All went onto promising careers as doctors, engineers, accountants, etc. Maybe it was a different time, but nobody obsessed about grades. Our parents made sure we did well in school, but we didn’t get punished for an A- (or B) on a report card.
It’s pretty clear it’s not fabricated - the daughters have confirmed it was real and the husband seems to say the same thing. But whatever. She’s not worth fretting over.
It seems to me worth a little bit of fretting over, if the book is proposing this as a positive and successful parenting style. That is why I’m willing to post I disagree with Chau, though I rarely criticize how others parent their own children. She seems to be trying to enrich herself while proposing an extreme parenting model. Those who don’t come from elite, privileged backgrounds may believe she is correct and her model should be followed. I think it’s a good idea for others to say their kids achieved similar success without this sort of parenting. My kids were similarly successful with about as opposite a parenting style as possible. Like Chau’s daughters, my kids were always surrounded by very successful, high achieving adults. That was their model. They didn’t need anyone to force them to excel. They just needed support for their interests. That does take time and energy. I am not proposing being hands-off.
"I do not have any respect, not even grudging respect, for a family that visits Athens and does not go to see the Parthenon, when the reason is that the mother wants the daughters to continue to practice the piano uninterruptedly (Chua’s family, and I hope no others). That is not “setting high standards.” - Does this family ask for anybody’s respect or opinion? I do not think so. They do whatever they feel appropriate based on their own values, The society is stronger when it is inclusive of all kind of people who hold very different values. BTW, my own D. who only practice her instrument 15 - 20 min a day, did NOT hate her music practices at all, she loved music, still does and graduated with Music Minor from college, we never ever mentioned any music involvement at college at all, she did it on her own. Despite of her 15 - 20 min. practices, she always took the copies on her music pieces with her to all our fancy vacations abroad, we took her every year to all our vacations. She could not take her piano with her, but she continued her every day practice in the air, she simply read her notes and played in the air, I bet she actually heard what she was playing. Was it our idea? No, not at all, I did not know that such practice is possible. She did it on her own. She had no plans whatsoever to become a musician. She also spend about 3 hours daily on her sport practice without any aspirations at all to be in Olympics. She did it for fun along with several other activities, like lots of writing, she likes to write,…etc. She was also a straight A student. I guess, I am an abusive parent by the standards of this thread, because I let my kid to take up as much ECs as she wanted and actually let her to work hard to get those As. Looking back, I should have pushed her to watch more TV, so that others do not call me “abusive” parent, which actually never happened aside from the standards of this thread. I am trying to say what is expected on this thread, I hope I am on the right track…
@MiamiDAP I think you are on the right track, for what it’s worth!
I think the idea of doing something just because you deeply enjoy it has been almost completely buried under the college admission rat race and that’s really sad honestly.
Have you actually read Chua’s book, MiamiDAP? Her parenting practices sound nothing like yours. I favor cultural diversity. While I agree in general that the “society is stronger when it is inclusive of all kinds of people who hold very different values,” I think that there are some “different values” that are actually harmful to others, and I draw the line there.
Oh good grief, Miami. No one is talking about stopping a child who enjoys playing an instrument to stop playing it. We are talking about schlepping the whole family, including grandparents, on a trip to see some of the most amazing cultural sights in the world and instead of enjoying them with the family, insisting the kids miss them because the world will come to a crashing halt if they miss one practice session on the piano. For what stupid purpose? That’s OCD, frankly.