A friend of mine, a mother of a gifted 5th grader wrestling with similar issues of parental control as Amy Chua, shared the WSJ article with me today. It reminded me of something Steven Pinker writes about in one of his books. In his book, he breaks down the work of Judith Rich Harris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Rich_Harris) to this formula:
Genes have 50% influence over a child's development, peers 40%-50%, parents the rest.
Harris's work is strongly disputed, yes. But Chua's article seems to strangely confirm it.
By micromanaging her children's social interactions in a number of different ways, she wrests back a significant measure of influence back from their potential peers. I told my friend to note Chua's list of things she never lets her kids do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
Notice these are all activities that would potentially expand the influence of her kids' peers and undermine her totalitarian regime.
Chua probably believes that its her strictness and strong principles that are leading her children to excel. And these have their role, no doubt. But I would propose, following Harris, it is her oppressive control of their social lives which is the much stronger factor.
An interesting extension of her social experiment will be when it's time for her kids to go to college (the photo accompanying the article indicated they haven't quite got there yet.) Sure, they'll probably go to an Ivy League school, maybe even Yale where their mother is a professor, so it won't be complete culture shock.
Nevertheless: do her kids find peers who sustain their carefully disciplined social lives? Does mom continue to try to control their lives at a distance? Do they thrive with additional freedom? Or do they crack under it?
One additional observation. I shared this with article with my Chinese girlfriend. This is what she texted me in response:
I love the article. This is why we fight. I am your Chinese parent and call you "stupid" when I want to show you that I believe you can do better. When you tell me to "do whatever makes me happy," I feel you are being irresponsible because I can't control myself!
That's a lot like how abuse works: cut off from any social reality outside the abuser's, you come to think you deserve it; being abused becomes normal.
Reading that WSJ article made me angry, because it's obvious that's what she's trying to do. She wants something from her daughter (probably doesn't even herself know what), is abusing her until she gets it, and cutting her daughter off from any outside support so she'll put up with it.
She said that she gives praise and affection only as a reward for getting good grades. Of course that works; the motivation to do anything to get love from your parents is incredible.
One of my friends (who happens to be Chinese and was raised in a home like this) remarked, "but look at the kids! See their smiles? It can't possibly be abuse!"
I replied, "have you ever seen pictures of the smiling performers in a North Korea propaganda play?" Of course they are smiling.
1) They don't know anything else, so when they do things that bring them positive reinforcement, they show happiness (most people prefer to be happy than sad, so they work for those goals)
2) If they showed unhappiness, it would probably be considered a bad attitude and pushed into a feedback loop of negative reinforcement, wanting to stay out of that loop can make many people smile...habitually
Evidence: There are dozens of videos on youtube showing North Korean children playing virtuoso Guitar or Xylophone or whatever smiling their fool heads off. And there's not really a way for anybody to claim they have a fantastic, fulfilled and successful life.
A thousand times this. Not only do abused people not know any better, they're actively prevented from knowing any better. It's how abuse works.
It's especially terrible when parents do it, because children are naturally, genetically predisposed to try to seek approval from their parents. If they can't get it, or if it's contingent on something as arbitrary and pointless as playing a piano, it will destroy them for life.
I'm not a parent, and after my childhood I didn't think I'd ever want to be, but reading that article gave me new hope for myself: if anyone tried to do to my hypothetical children what the author is doing to hers, I would kill them. Instantly and brutally. That's got to be some kind of a qualification.
(My parents are from Taiwan, they came to the states for grad school, I was born in the US)
To reply to your last statement: Some of the families that we know continue to discipline their children during college. In the case that they only have a single child, that means the family picks up and moves to the college town of choice. I would be curious to know how these kids fare in the workplace after college.
On the other hand, I have seen other families who have treated their children with strictness (where the parents were themselves teachers/professors), have their kids rebel against them in college. Their personalities did a complete 180 as they were suddenly relieved of the harsh treatment, which often landed them into trouble.
I am one of those kids who was pushed into piano at age 4. I'm not going to lie - I hated playing for maybe the first 3 or 4 years. My dad would sit with me and force me to practice over and over again. But one day, something clicked, and to this day I have a greater appreciation of music than any of my peers, and I also have a love of music that can only come from myself. I didn't need my dad to force me to practice - I wanted to.
I think that my parents eventually switched tactics during my childhood (for better or for worse) after they were convinced that I would choose a path for myself that wasn't detrimental. I'm thankful for that - I find that I have pursued a lot more hobbies on my own and experienced things that didn't fit the asian mentality.
Parents have a mere 0-10% influence over a child's development? Clear delusion there, farcical right on the face of it.
One wonders if you get any social development done at all before you significantly interact with a peer group using that formula. Here's a simple example: language. Pretty much everyone learns the basics of language from their parents before they toddle off to anything representing a peer group. Genes don't give you language. Is there a gene for French? What about English with a Mancunian accent? Apparently the ability to talk and what that conveys is somewhere between 0-10% of your development. Not to mention dozens of traits that are formed from the people you interact with daily for a couple of decades.
This range of numbers is simply the result of someone who has a hobby horse and has plucked figures out of the air to reinforce it.
Pinker puts the number around 10% as I remember. And, yes, he's aware of all the qualifications that attend such a crude number.
The ability to talk is obviously a significant trait. But it is not an extraordinary one. Everybody uses language in some form (a subject in which Pinker is strongly versed.) What language you speak is decidedly less significant and something most parents don't get to choose. I'd be surprised if the differential impact among parents on this point was even 1%. Most kids don't end up speaking like their parents. They end up speaking like their peers.
Dropping a kid on her head or locking her in a closet for her teenage years (with or without a violin) are obvious ways a parent could have a more extraordinary impact on her child's development, but, happily, they are not very typical.
Harris and Pinker's point is that parents have a pretty perfunctory role in a child's development (feed, protect, provide the rudiments of cognitive development) and much less influence than most people generally suppose (probably, most of all, parents that think they are having an impact). What influence they do have is regularly mixed up with genetic characteristics that the child has inherited.
Chua's argument seems to reinforce the point: to move the needle requires draconian measures.
My point with language was it's simply an obvious one. There are a great many traits from our parents that affect us strongly on a subconscious level.
Besides, saying "yeah, we have parents, but we all end up the same regardless" is a total cop-out when you turn around and say "yeah, we have genes, but they count for a wild fluctuation of 50% - far more important in the development than any other factor". Which is odd. We all have eyes. Arms. Legs. Lungs. Run, walk, cry, think, breathe, eat, excrete, suffer cold and hot. If you're trying to paint this theoretical 100% influence total as "that which makes us individual from each other", then it's farcical to say "parents don't count because we all end up with the basics" but somehow genes get special treatment. The fact that some of us have red hair and some don't doesn't count for 50% of our individuality.
If such minor differences between people really counted for 50% of our differentiation, then there'd be far more homogeneity in personality for people of average height, average build, and average attractiveness. Those numbers are simply plucked from the air.
I read about him in Talent is Overrated. Great book by the way, for any parents out there who want their child to be the next Tiger Woods or Mozart. Just make them do it from as young as age as possible.
It sounds like the result of Amy Chua's mothering is to instill in her children a love of, maybe even addiction to, accomplishment through extremely hard work and sacrifice. And that's pretty much what it takes to do anything truly great.
If her kids enter college with that mindset completely internalized, then I'd say odds are they'll be less likely to get distracted by the low-priority frivolities their peers may.
Genes have 50% influence over a child's development, peers 40%-50%, parents the rest.
Harris's work is strongly disputed, yes. But Chua's article seems to strangely confirm it.
By micromanaging her children's social interactions in a number of different ways, she wrests back a significant measure of influence back from their potential peers. I told my friend to note Chua's list of things she never lets her kids do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
Notice these are all activities that would potentially expand the influence of her kids' peers and undermine her totalitarian regime.
Chua probably believes that its her strictness and strong principles that are leading her children to excel. And these have their role, no doubt. But I would propose, following Harris, it is her oppressive control of their social lives which is the much stronger factor.
An interesting extension of her social experiment will be when it's time for her kids to go to college (the photo accompanying the article indicated they haven't quite got there yet.) Sure, they'll probably go to an Ivy League school, maybe even Yale where their mother is a professor, so it won't be complete culture shock.
Nevertheless: do her kids find peers who sustain their carefully disciplined social lives? Does mom continue to try to control their lives at a distance? Do they thrive with additional freedom? Or do they crack under it?
*Edited for formatting and spelling.