If You Don't Excercise Some Level Of Oppression...

...don't expect your children to strive to be over achievers and we don't have to look to those families where the children set the standards. 

Barbara Kay: Implications of the ‘Chinese mother’ school of oppression
Is the parenting style of Chinese mothers really superior to those in the west?

I attended a public high school in Toronto whose population was virtually all Jewish. The scholastic achievements of the school vis à vis other Ontario high schools were so remarkable (about 90% of our high school population went on to university at a time when about 15% of the general population did) that a sociologist wrote a book about it (Crestwood Heights, a gauzily disguised version of the real name, Forest Hill).
What explains the disparity? Culture. When my older sister, a top student would come home and tell our parents she got 95% on a test, my father wouldn’t say, “Oh, my brilliant child, how fabulous you are,” he would say, “What did Lorrie Capp and Syd Goldenberg get?” They were the recognized geniuses of her class. Naturally they had gotten 97% and 98%. My parents were proud of her, but she got the message: They would be even prouder if she beat Lorrie and Syd. Read More »

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’ fuels parenting controversy


Wed Jan 12 2011

Ultrastrict parenting is why Chinese kids are so successful, insists Amy Chua, author of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. (0)