Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Amy Chua
Summary
The
essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" is written by Amy Chua. In
this essay, Chua depicts the extent of differences between Chinese parents and
Western parents in terms of raising their children. Chua describes how Chinese
mothers set the basic rules that all Chinese children must obey some rules in
order to meet their goals and achieve successes. She used the instance from her
life to improve her viewpoints. As mentioned in the essay, she has not allowed
her daughters, Sophia and Louisa, to do some activities; such as attending a
sleepover, having play date, watching television, playing computer games or
even choosing their own extra-curricular activities. She believes that their
children can be the best students and their academic success would lead
successful parenting. She emphases that nothing is pleasurable until they were
good at it. Henceforth, to be great at anything, they had to work hard. She
says that children by themselves would never want to work that is why parents
should ignore their children's preferences because children will probably resist
things that look hard at the beginning, which was where western parents tend to
give up. On the other hand, Chinese parents believe that their children need to
have coherent training imposed upon them in order to be successful.
As
at her first view, the readers might think that he or she will find some
characteristics, which have made Chinese children; children owned with
supernatural intelligence. Instead, the reader will find that the writer
focuses on the use of some harsh tactics to force their children to study and
get an A grade, and the children will be punished if they don’t.
Moreover,
she developed her assumptions on her personal experiences with her two
daughters without making a survey on the experiences of the success of other
Chinese parents; and the proper ways that they used to encourage their children
to excel and succeed in their educational activities. In the essay, she attacks
western parents' behaviour with their children which is bad logic for them. In
contrast, she opines that the reasons behind the success of Chinese children
are cruelty and the stricter of their parents by preventing them from
practicing some of the activities they need and forcing that to focus on their education
only.
They
essay reflects a negative view about Chinese parents and how cruel they are when
she criticized and attacked the Westerners' view who believe that the use of
cruelty would lead to hurting their children's feeling and believe if they
respect their children and encourage them to study, that is the reason which
leads to success.
When
she notes that the children owned their success and superiority to their
parents, she stirs up a positive impression in her argument because kids would
be helpless without caring of parents and their eagerness to make their kids'
bright future.
In
essence, the author shows the differences between Chinese parents and Western
parents in the field of raising children. Moreover, she focuses on the reasons
behind the success of Chinese kids is the strictness of their parents. She also
argues the Westerners to get rid all of their children's desires. Finally, she
offers a positive view, and she hopes the children have achieved their
successes through the caring and sacrifice of their parents.
