Introduction
Most parents think that the end justifies the means in parenting. However, there are several factors you need to consider before choosing a strategy how to raise your children. You should consider factors, such as emotional affections and the relationships that you and your child will develop towards one another. Also, it is important to see if the strategy will help you achieve the results that you would like to cultivate in your child.
Traditional Methods of Education
Chua has a very controversial way of raising her daughter Lulu. She prefers the old traditional Chinese methods to the western ways of raising children. There are usually several factors that are considered when raising a child following the codes of conduct in the Chinese tradition. To begin with, Chinese parents usually bring up their children in a more strict and academically successful environment. Chinese parents are usually more demanding than Western ones. This is evidenced in the book where the readers find out that the mother does not allow the thought of failing to preoccupy her daughter to cross her mind. She makes her believe that failing to do something is a thing that is not accepted in her family (Chua).
Compared with the western tradition, Lulu has a very big advantage over her Western counterparts. First, her parents emphasize her putting efforts into her daily life and work about her education. Second, Lulu is usually supported by her peers when she works hard at school. This factor can motivate a child to increase his or her efforts in education. According to Chinese tradition, effort and its fruits are the main ingredients to success. Chua states that her parents are very strict and loving at the same time. Such an attitude provides readers with a view of how Chinese parents raise their children (Chua).
Chua uses the same strict strategy for bringing her child up. To ensure that her kid works hard at school, Chua chooses extracurricular activities for her. The book demonstrates that she does not fully realize her child’s talent, but this should be the thing her daughter should identify on her own to develop it further. According to the example from the text, Chua forces her seven-year-old daughter to master a new piece to play the piano. In her book, Chua admits threatening her daughter with no food provision and Christmas presents. The threats go on and on for some time. However, Chua’s daughter still plays that piano piece wrong year after year. This causes her mother to cancel her birthday parties for years and years to come. Chua states that she denied her daughter birthday gifts for up to five years while she still kept playing it wrong. She insinuates that her child is purposefully working herself into a frenzy, and that is the reason why she cannot master that piece.
Chua does not think beyond her views and reasoning. In the first case, she does not realize the importance of letting her child select her extracurricular activity. As a result, the readers see that after two years of music studying, the piano is not the thing for her child. However, the ignorant mother is still hard on her child calling her lazy, cowardly, pathetic, and self-indulgent. This is the major reason why her daughter cannot progress in the first place. By abusing and threatening her, it is obvious that the girl may develop a fear of her mother and her presence or even worse, thought of her mother being around her.
Mother-daughter relations between Chua and Lulu
The concepts of the mother-daughter relationship as brought out in the book are quite evident. On the one hand, readers realize that there is no understanding between Chua and her daughter, Lulu. This lack of understanding is brought out when Lulu’s mother, Chua, does not know what her child’s talents are. She chooses a piano lesson for her and insists that she should not get a grade less than an A in that particular subject. If there were an understanding between the mother and the daughter, then Lulu would not experience difficulties with her piano lessons. Apart from that, Chua withdraws her daughters from the classes. The concept of lack of understanding between the mother and daughter is also evident when Chua makes Lulu work all night. As a university professor, the readers expect Chua to have a little bit of knowledge on how to bring up and teach children. The readers also expect her to allow her child to have some playtime. Lulu should also have enough time to sleep to restore her powers for her brain to function appropriately (Kane).
The mother-daughter relationship between Chua and Lulu can also be described as the one, which lacks affection. Lack of affection is seen when the professor throws out her child at the age of three at night. She states that she cannot allow her daughter to stay in the house if she does not listen to her. This is one of the worse things, which a mother, who truly loves her daughter, can do to her child if she has affection towards her. The ultimate price Chua pays for not caring for her daughter, as expected of her, is a phobia that Lulu develops. Thus, a poor child is afraid of everything related to her mother. This is a trait that makes her constantly record unpleasant grades in some subjects at school. The act of throwing away her pets also shows that Chua has no respect for her daughter.
Their relationship can also be described as the one with understanding-in-disguise. This is evidenced when Lulu succumbs to the pressure and humiliations from her mother and masters the piece that has been disturbing her for years. What follows after that incident is what shows that there is still some understanding between the daughter and the mother. Lulu plays the piece repeatedly and is so much intrigued with it that she creeps into her mother’s bedroom that night, and they hug and snuggle. The effect of putting pressure on the child shows that some results can be achieved if there is persistence and effort put into what one is doing. This clearly shows that Chua understands her child has the talent to play the piano, but she has never explored it very well (Holden).
Differences in bringing up the child in the West as compared with the Chinese way
In the West, one is brought up regarding his/her abilities and talents, whereas in the East, one is raised according to his/her parent’s desires. This can be evidenced from the text by comparing Ms. Elizabeth and Chua. Miss Elizabeth Gilbert stresses the need to pray, eat, and love. This is the first step to bringing a well-behaved and acceptable child in society up (Russell). Chua, on the other hand, emphasizes the need to force a child to obtain what is required and expected from him/her. Constant pressure on the child can yield what one has not even imagined. However, this is usually time-dependent and can take a short or long period depending on the child’s abilities (Yang).
In the West, children are raised in an authoritative family. In the Chinese tradition, children’s upbringing is done in an authoritarian way. Authoritative parenting is what yields much emotion and affection towards the parent. It is caused because of the parents bending the rules of conduct and not being strict with their children. Authoritarian parenting is based on both affection and strict and stern rules applied to a child. It is also characterized by placing emphasis and stress on children and their need to constantly work hard to achieve what they require in their life. Chua tells the readers that any American parent would draw her child out of the lesson as soon as the child showed insignificant or no progress in that field. She further writes that she emulates the way her parents raised her and wants to apply the same method to her children.
Parents in the West have a more understanding way of talking to their children as compared with the Chinese ones. This implies that parents in the West talk to a child softly trying to understand the meaning and causes of every action of their kids. However, according to Chinese parenting, any means possible are used to ensure that a child does what is expected. They can scold, quarrel, shout, and even go to the extent of hitting a child if they find it necessary to do so to achieve their aim. In the text, Elizabeth tells her son to love and pray. This is after talking to him and knowing what the matter is. On the other hand, when Sofia does not perform well or does something wrong, she is scolded, and her mother shouts getting her voice off trying to make her do things right.
Traditional Chinese parenting has an advantage over the Western though the last is more contemporary: Chinese parents emphasize effort more than the self-discovered innate talent (Yang). Some experiments show that children learn better when they believe that their efforts will not be wasted than when they are motivated by an innate intelligence, the importance of which is stressed to them. Other experiments reveal that Western parents usually assume that the child fails because he/she lacks innate talent.
Western parents usually think they are too strict if they are hard on the child, thus, they usually do not imitate the Chinese mothers. For instance, a Westerner will consider that the parents are strict if they insist on their children to practice playing their school instruments for thirty minutes every day. Despite the constant differences and talks about cultural practice stereotypes, some studies show differences that may be quantifiable, while comparing the Westerners and Chinese based on the parenting practices. It is claimed that approximately 70% of Western mothers said that stressing academic excellence is not beneficial for their children. Some insisted that parents must foster the belief that acquiring knowledge is fun. Surprisingly enough, none of the interviewed Chinese mothers shared the same opinion.
The larger majority of these Chinese mothers said that they believed in their children being the best students. They also added that academic achievement only reflects successful parenting. If children do not succeed in their studies, it is a serious problem, and the parents are the ones responsible for that. It shows they are not doing their job of molding the child or they are assimilated into the Western culture, meaning they are the second generation of Chinese parents.
Another set of studies indicates that Chinese parents, as compared with the Western, spend approximately ten hours of their day drilling their children on their academic activities. This means that Western children seem to be involved more in games as compared to concentrating on academics.
Most people tend to think that the Chinese mother is the analog of the Western parent. But the truth is quite different from that because Chinese mother believes that schoolwork comes first, an A-minus is a poor performance, and a child should be ahead of the others in math lessons. They also believe that praising a child in public is a serious mistake that can lead them to record poor results in their next set of exams. The child should never disagree with a teacher or coach; such an action will lead the parent to side with the teacher in deciding the fate of the child.
Conclusion
Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother brings out the major differences between Western and Chinese parenting. While several parenting books published monthly or released at a specified interval cause similar controversy as the one shown in this book, mothers still threaten their children that they will be adopted by Chua if they do not follow what they are told.
The author has made a stir in the parenting methods by supporting the opposite of what parents are told to do in parenting. She admits that she is shocked by the way Western parents handle their tasks in bringing their children up. She also says that not all the sets of child upbringing practices are successful as she stresses them to be. She states that one of her daughters was resistant to the way she brought her up. The same methods were, however, successful with the eldest daughter, Sofia.
Generally, no culture is better than the other in the way of the children’s upbringing. However, parents from both cultures should assimilate the traits of each other regarding the method they bring up their children. For instance, Western parents should follow the Chinese way of always emphasizing the need to put the effort into one’s academic work. The Chinese parents should also assimilate the need of talking to their children and letting them play a role in their life. For instance, allowing the children to choose what they think is the best for their careers or life. If parents from both cultures take into account and apply these methods, then their children will be brought up in a family where they have higher chances of performing well both academically and in their extracurricular activities.
Works Cited
Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011. Print.
Holden, George. Parenting: A Dynamic Perspective. Pittsburgh: SAGE, 2009. Print.
Kane, Melissa. Contemporary Issues in Parenting. New York, NY: Nova Publishers, 2005. Print.
Russell, Stephen. Asian American Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Relationships. New York, NY: Springer, 2010. Print.
Yang, Gene. American Born Chinese. London. Marco Book Company, 2011. Print.