Going beyond just parenting, I do think everyone should try to excel at something - unless the middle manager is fully engaged and driven by his work, then I think it'd be good for him to strive to excel in music or art or charity or philanthropy or teaching or athletics or trying to build an amazing family or something I think not striving for excellence in anything is kind of sad.
Why not try to push civilization forwards? Sometimes the main reasons said out loud - "well, I just want to be happy" - seem to mask other darker reasons, like fear of failure or inertia or feeling ill-equipped to make a difference. That's a damn shame.
Why not strive to make some excellent contributions, in addition to striving to be happy? Sometimes obsession with external validation masks the same things.
There are no easy answers as to what is best for any given human, but there's definitely a market for those looking for the kind of easy answers that Amy Chua is selling. You know cantelon, I'm going to think twice next time before I take up a position that the people who agree are quiet, and the people who disagree are loud. I put my perspective and reasoning up as impersonally as possible, and people are voting up someone who blames everyone else for their problems, saying he hates me and "fuck you"?
I dunno man, there's been some good discussion but I'm incredibly disappointed with some people just empathy-voting up raw hostility. Y'know, I don't care about someone's motives if they're conducting themselves well Likewise, someone who invents just to have their name on an invention or innovation. A lot of great scientists, inventors, philanthropists, builders, and people who did good things really liked seeing their name in print.
So be it, if they're doing good things. There aren't easy answers. I dunno man, I come in here to share an alternative point of view. Yeah, both attitudes are simplistic. Hadn't seen the hostility directed towards you until now. Not constructive as you have no ill intent. I think people are downvoting this because it appears you're fighting the wrong person.
Everybody else is doing it? That's what discourse on HN has come to? C'mon Sebastian, you've been called on building a whole argument on an anecdote, suck it up and admit your mistake. I would add one: 4. Hard work is more important than being smart. The reason for this has been discussed a lot, but the jist is that telling kids they are smart causes them to feel like there is something wrong with them when they try new things and fail "I'm smart, why can't I solve this??!
Praising hard work has been shown to work better. For more details, go to the source: Carol Dweck. A good starting point is her popular book Mindset. That's what he meant by 3 :. This, a thousand times.
I was raised like this. My mom showed me no real love, nor did my family. I buckled under the pressure and when the time came for any real emotional support, they abandoned me in an attempt to get me to "try harder.
In the end, regardless of how they felt or their intentions, I was made out to be nothing more than an ornament, a product for the glory of the family name. I get the impression you were not on the receiving end of this sort of treatment, and I mean the real receiving end.
The constant drumbeat of criticism, the cutting remarks, the dread of never living up to the horizon of expectation, never catching it.
I hate my family for what they did, and frankly, I hate you for advocating it, for encouraging a parent to make some other child's life miserable beyond imagining so you can placate your ideal about overachieving. I am a real god damned human being.
I am not "just one of those cases" that didn't work out. PS: The real shit-kicker is that eventually I did get it together on my own terms, with just OK grades by even my own standards and graduated from some out-of-state land grant university. Some of those other kids who got straight As or whatever, some whom went to Cal or Stanford, whom spent their youth jumping through hoops for their parents' affections, work at the same place I do, writing shitty enterprise code.
I don't think driving your children to excel is incompatible with showing them "real" love. Just because parents derive pride from their children's success doesn't mean that you are nothing more than "an ornament.
I am personally disappointed in my parents because when I decided it was easier to just skate by in life as a teen, they let me get away with it. Things are sharper now, but I wasted a huge portion of my life and they were more concerned that I didn't want to go to church any more and were placated by my athletic achievements. So, showing your kids no love is bad, but giving in to them for short term happiness sucks too. The self-esteem movement is overdone. I know people who are afraid to tell their kids that they are fat.
Honesty and direction communication among family is enabled by strong family bonds, and, particularly in East Asian cultures, Confucian values that clearly establish the roles of parent and child. It's just hard to find the right balance to get kids to maximize performance. Well expressed - had a similar experience growing up When you grow up learning to coast along it is hard to transition when you cant coast any more. EthanEtienne on Jan 11, root parent prev next [—].
You should leave in the "fuck you". That emotional response is apt in to convey how much this screws up people. Only if he'd say it to lionhearted in person, over a dinner conversation, per the HN etiquette guide. He's certainly within his rights to feel strongly about this, and to convey his belief in the harm caused by the demanding, uncompromising style of child-rearing; but there should be a way to do that with a modicum of tact.
Retric on Jan 11, root parent next [—]. I did not see the original format, but I have seen "You know what, fuck you! A short expletive is IMO appropriate for denoting intense emotional reaction. It would seem odd if someone said "wow, this hurts would you mind backing your car off my leg" to the point where you might wonder if you had actually driven over them.
So, if your having dinner with the queen it's probably not appropriate but "I was deeply hurt by their actions" is somewhat emotionally ambiguous. So you're saying that one can't express strong emotions in writing without swearing?
If you're Dave Mclure, you should add a couple dozen more! If I went back in time or have an opportunity to tell a kid like me growing up, I'd tell him that don't look at all of the kids who are jumping through the hoops for parents or for the Asian sub-culture. If you do your own thing, you'll be the envy of everybody else who is secretly insecure to buy into the crap. PS: I second and confirm also the phenomenon on the East Coast. Reminds me of my wife's story.
Talented as a young child and pushed by korean parents until she burned out by high school. It is not the pushing by itself but the pushing devoid of love - which is a different issue. All societies have their pathologies. Witness the stuff women had to go through in the 50's and 60's in the US.
There's always ugliness under the surface. People just adapt and accept things as normal. It will always be the case that some part of "normal" is messed up if you look at it the right way. That's almost as bad as telling a depressed person that they are overreacting and to just "cheer up". Incredibly stupid.
That's not what I meant. Just take it as face value. I'm saying that 1 these pathologies are real 2 they're not unique to any one culture 3 there are powerful forces that keep them from our everyday consciousness. Thanks for revealing your biases so cheaply and easily. Confusion on Jan 11, parent prev next [—]. The plural of anecdote is not data. The story about Agassi is nice, but a red herring. Most people do not succeed in such a spectacular way. They remain mediocre and still 'hate tennis and their father'.
A prime example are Chinese olympic teams. If you've seen the documentary about the rowing team, hand-picked, drilled in military style and note they still losing to Western teams, you can be nothing but sad for them and resent a culture that thinks they can force every kid to be succesfull.
For one Agassi, there are a thousand Chinese children pushed as hard that don't make it anywhere. That's the kids you should be considering when choosing a parenting style. They will only resent tennis and their father. There was no time for anything else, so mediocre tennis players is all they are.
Thanks mum. The question isn't whether you achieve the highest levels of success - it's how results stack up on average A lot of the numbers bare this out, depending on what you're looking for. My children may be mediocre, but their happy memories will last them forever. But they're not mutually exclusive But this is the opposite of what most people in the West believe right now.
I disagree respectfully. Everyone chooses their own parenting style, but I think a focus on achievement and duty in younger years leads to more well-being and a better foundation than just-do-whatever-everyone's-a-winner.
As a young person in the West, almost all the unhappy other young people I know just want a girlfriend. Perhaps you should find some young people and see if teaching them duty gets them one.
Duty to the glorification of one family seems a petty thing to me. The egoistic pursuit of personal glory or the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure also seems petty. I suggest instead a devotion to truth and substance. Instead of pushing your kids to play violin to "get to State," I would suggest finding joy and art in music yourself. The former often produces mediocrity. The latter produces the sublime. There are tons of former "young prodigies" who put away their instrument as a forgotten childhood thing, whereas many of the best artists I know received a true joy in music from their parents.
It can even help with the girlfriend part. Totally agree. Just pushing your kids to be 1 at something is like designing a system with a single point of failure.
What if the kid is not able to achieve it? Obviously, with a large population striving to achieve the same thing, there will be failures. What would you do then? Instead, parents should concentrate on raising stable, open and mature children. Children, who as adults, develop a good sense of discrimination and discretion. Children, who know that failure is a part of life and they better learn from their mistakes.
Children who realize that not everybody can be 1, but it's still worth trying. Children who appreciate the journey, and not just fret over the destination. You can't say that these children who do not make it to the top, do not make it anywhere? Obviously a lot more study needs to go into this before anyone can make such blatant remarks either way.
The hardest part for the children who do not make it to the top is that they feel like they have not made it anywhere. There's more than one person close to me who feels this way -- if you've been raised to believe that 2 is the first loser, you may have a very hard time adapting to a real world in which success is often collaborative and has no end point. How do we know Agassi is a success? We know he failed at many things for a large part of his personal life.
Just because he became 1 at tennis doesn't make him a good person. It does seem like he's found a good place in life, but I don't think anyone here knows what daemons might be present in his mind. I think we judge success by a shallow metric. Money or fame or success at a single thing in like is not a gage of success. Success is made from many things, not this narrow list. I am trying to fit this in with what I've seen in college and at work. I attended computer engineering college in India, and here it gets extremely competitive.
You've got gazillions of students fighting over a college seat not because they love programming or because they love software, but because being a computer engineer is key to financial success. Consistent results mean they get placed in-campus and escape the monotony and the soul-drubbing experience of a fresher's jobhunt. And what then?
It's all about the next appraisal, the next promotion, the next overseas opportunity. Better pay means better marriage prospects, a better lifestyle and a better social circle, whatever their definition of the latter term may be. And in this pursuit of lifestyle comfort and material excellence, the only time they really, really care about code quality or software design is when it has a real and direct bearing on these prospects.
And that bugs me - not the pursuit of material comforts, but the relegation of software craftmanship to a second order of priority. I have an inkling that in their upbringing, the economic and social aspects of success were ALL that that was defined. Often to the detriment of every other aspect of quality.
And it is this unbalanced focus that I take issue with. And if you can get that consistently at the University of Pune, Bob's your uncle and the universe is your oyster.
I didn't say it did. It's just surprising to see that much of a difference, regardless of the cause. I am Chinese and grew up in China. I suspect by the time their kids reach school age, some of that parental competitiveness would return, but so far the evidence is clear which way the pendulum is swinging.
I have a feeling that this article is just product of our time, in which the sole remaining superpower of America suddenly realizing China is hot on its heels -- a fear that I think it's largely blown out of proportion. As a reaction there arise all this interest in China, including our parental style.
I remember reading Gladwell's book "Outlier" in which he attributed math abilities to Chinese ancestors growing rice and not wheat. Such farce is more telling of the changing balance of power than parenting styles having anything to do with said change.
On a similar note, we Chinese have been interested in how Americans raise kids for decades. To use your line of reasoning, let's take another anomaly: Steve Jobs. The dude was adopted, was a community college dropout and did a ton of drugs. He woke up one day at 42 and found himself back at the CEO position of the company he co-founded and now he's considered by many the most successful CEO of our time.
Creativity and passion is not something you can teach your child--much less beat into them this actually achieves the contrary. But yes, that doesn't mean some discipline and other blahs aren't important. Factual correction: Jobs went to Reed, hardly a community college. His management style isn't what something I would call liberal either.
The success that he's achieved is based on control and demanding the best. NeXT and Pixar in the middle, hardly just waking up. Read the literal sense of the phrase. He just "woke up one day"? Steve Jobs is the Chinese mother in this story, not the child. He demands excellence from his team and is sometimes pretty over the top about the demand part of that phrase.
Why do all of these examples always focus on physical tasks that are obviously improved by practice. Playing a musical instrument like piano or playing a physical sport like tennis takes hand eye coordination, strength, agility and endurance. These examples are so horribly one-sided. Of course practicing a repetitive, manual example for 16 hours a day will make you better at it. That's called motor control skills and luckily for these mothers it has nothing to do with interest or liking what you're doing.
Yes you can force someone to develop better motor control skills. But please don't start conflating that with "life skills" and "determination". Training your kid to be the best at fine motor control and manual dexterity is not exactly the way to be successful in the 21st century. They can learn that from video games.
And don't call this Chinese parenting, my Russian-Jewish mother made me study in very similar ways when I was younger. Fortunately, for me she realized that rote memorization is not the linchpin of a successful career, but at best a tiny foundation stone in your studies.
What I think western culture values more is internal drive. Sure you can beat greatness out of someone or you can inspire it. Inspiration can be a hit or miss thing, but when it happens, it is a beautiful thing. There are only a few top spots. Only so much space in Ivy league schools, so these other people are needful, and they should be allowed to have their own brand of self-actualization without being seen as inferior.
Success that can be counted, does not count. We should aim as a society to redefine success as something that everyone can attain, such as happiness, tranquility and good health. Come on, now! Achievement and having fun aren't mutually exclusive, like you seem to believe.
If anything, they should go hand-in-hand. In your world-view, you seem to believe that you either end up like Andrei Agassi, or some middle-aged loser.
I teach chess to this 12 year old Chinese boy. He clearly has zero interest in progressing his game. And yet, his mother is there, always pushing him senselessly into a vocation he will be, at best, mediocre.
Their time and money would be better spent on finding something that the kid really enjoys. That's not what I said, not what I meant, and not what I believe Let's not do that. We can't know what you believe, we can only guess at what you meant, and what you said is obviously open to misinterpretation.
If someone misinterprets you, it's not necessarily done out of spite, it could be because you need to clarify your viewpoint. If the comment you're replying to is wrong, don't just point out that it's wrong, explain why. You're right - I guess I tend to assume bad faith when someone writes "like you seem to believe" about something I don't There's a couple points: -What kind of parental focus produces better well-being in children? I know this goes against the current dominant Western thought, but it's not a radical perspective historically speaking.
A looser, more relaxed, less disciplined parenting style doesn't guarantee happiness - in fact, I think it might produce less happiness on balance. Again, I'm in the minority of current Western thought, but there's been a lot of very successful societies built on a childhood focus on duty, achievement, and service Dove on Jan 11, parent prev next [—].
On the other hand, Erik Demaine was homeschooled by a father whose educational philosophy consisted of "the child should pursue his own interests. Early google result, matches what I remember of his story. The problem with the super-strict parenting style described in the WSJ article is that it destroys passion. I'm not Chinese; I'm Indian. Nevertheless, I've seen a lot of this style of parenting applied to my peers.
The pernicious thing about this parenting style is that it appears to work very well for the first 18 years. Then, the child graduates from high-school, and goes to college.
Some break down without the constraints imposed by hovering parents and constant scheduling. Some get pulled into the wrong crowds and end up doing questionable or illegal activities. But the most unlucky ones go through college just fine. Why are these the most unlucky ones?
Once they're done with the academic grind, they look around and have no goals. They never developed the ability to create their own goals - to be self directed. Not only is this a huge disadvantage in their personal lives, but it hurts job performance as well. No assignment at work is going to be as well defined as a school project. No manager will babysit these people as much their teachers and parents did.
What ends up happening is that these people find themselves being surpassed by others who have less skill, as the others have much more self direction and the ability to push themselves without requiring external motivation. I got a few emails about this I'm not sure if anyone is following this thread any more, but I reckon I should clarify my views for posterity.
Here's a reply I wrote - -- Your positions there were good I need to reflect and pick my words a lot more carefully when I write on something that touches people so closely like parenting.
I am actually an admirer of the Chinese way except not the abusive jerk part of it. But I studied Chinese culture some - they're incredible. They move somewhere, dirt poor, and within generations they're established, prosperous, educated, own businesses and real estate, have established families I remember one time I was staying in a small inn in Amsterdam owned by a Chinese family, recent immigrants to the Netherlands.
They'd rent all the rooms, and if every room got rented, the couple and their young son would go sleep in the lobby at midnight instead of their own room. In the end, the place would only sell out maybe 10 nights per month, for a total of perhaps euros per month for the inconvenience Later, they'd for sure invest that into education, expanding in business, things like that. It's why Chinese are so successful anywhere.
But I should've stressed that I think the abusive and mean aspects of it are crap. I do think it's crap. But more self-sacrifice, achievement, duty, service I don't know, I think America is way too far in the other direction.
It's funny cuz I'm guessing our ideal parenting styles aren't very far apart. Lots of encouragement but also emphasizing it's not just do whatever makes you happy - delay gratification, serve worth causes, strive for more, better yourself, give your kids a much better life than you had, etc, etc.
That tells something about the common wisdom that to succeed at anything, you have to love what you do. I'm talking just about results here, of course, not quality of living. By your logic, Natascha Kampusch's astonishing spiritual triumph over a childhood spent in a dungeon becomes an argument for the salutariness of child abduction.
For every success there will be 10 or more broken children who go through this "method". They will hate their parents. They will have a broken sense of self. They will not be socialized. They will have emotional problems, sometimes serious ones. How do I know this? I've met the failed ones.
I've never met a success from this method, either, and I'm The people that I've met that were a "success", were both smart, hard working and focused. And, they had one thing which is not praised much anymore: common sense. I have known more smart people than I can count in my life. A fraction of them had much common sense or "life smarts".
Yeah, they could run rings around me with their programming or math or whatever ability, but they often couldn't make a good decision to save their life. Lastly, I'll say that whatever drive your child has, cultivate it. You cannot create drive, it either is or isn't. Andre Agassi was addicted to meth for Pete's sake. This is a joke of an argument.
The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A. This might be a minor point, but being self-actualized means determining for yourself what's meaningful. Almost by definition, trying to be 1 isn't that, because you're basically living for 2, trying to get them to realize you're better.
If you're 1 at something, and then suddenly everyone with a lower rank decides to stop trying to beat you and goes and does something else, you've got nothing. You depend on them to believe that the game is worth playing, and if they stop doing that, being 1 means nothing. You haven't achieved real meaning when you're dependent on other people to believe in it.
That's why status is not the same as self-actualization. I hope I don't sound too racist or anti-Semite. Why is it that when a Jewish mother does the same as the Asian mother, no one complains? I'm a Chinese btw. No one complains???? Have you not watched TV in the last 10 years?
There are entire genres of comedy mostly devoted to jews complaining about their parents. When art historians analyze late 20th and early 21st century culture, they will certainly coin the jewish-complaining art movement, which spanned television, movies and stand up comedy for like 30 years, and is still running strong with Curb your Enthusiasm. It's also worth noting that this isn't a Jewish or Chinese phenomenon, it's an immigrant thing.
There isn't much Jewish immigration to the US anymore, and cultural divisions aren't as sharp. There is, on the other hand, still strong emigration from China, which is why this behavior is now thought of as a "Chinese" phenomenon.
Was about to say that as a Russian Jewish male , that if it weren't Jews complaining about their mothers, the literary and entertainment worlds would be far far poorer Chinese is the new Jewish. Used to be there were quotas on how many Jews to let into Ivy league schools. Now that's applied to the Asian kids, with "diversity" as the excuse. I'm also sure for every joke and stereotype of the Chinese mother, you can find an equivalent one about the Jewish mother.
One of my favorite MeFi comments on the original op-ed: Dear Asian-Americans, Thanks for taking over from us that stereotype of the overachieving, uncreative grind! Feel free to hand it off to someone else next generation. Should be pretty easy, since we're planning to pass you control of the media. ZhannaSchonfeld on Jan 11, parent prev next [—]. And WiFi is but one example. There are many areas in which Google has experimented and failed because of lack of vision, focus and consistency.
For example the Orkut vs Facebook lost battle or the Twitter vs Buzz debacle. Sometimes they leave in frustration. Employee churn is now a big problem at Google and it needs not be. Churn comes from first making people believe they can do anything but then depriving them of the company support that is needed to succeed in their endeavors. Larry needs to spend weeks going over each Google project in detail.
In this process he only needs to ask: Does this project make search or Android better? If it does not, kill it, and redeploy those talented employees into projects that do. And Sergey, in his new role as the head of business development needs to have the same discipline and only stick to new projects that enhance the two core areas of the company search which includes ads, and Android. Android is an incredible success so far and can be the computing platform of the future. Google TV should also be closely integrated with Youtube and in the end be part of Android.
Youtube is another amazing but disjointed asset, add full length content and music to it and you have the iTunes that Android needs. Google Chrome is a huge success and that is good because those of us who use it million of us love to search off the browser box.
If Larry succeeds in focusing, and I think he will, Google employees will work in projects that are backed by the company and are part of a common vision. Employee churn will decrease. Google will do even better. As it stands today, in terms of management, Google is the opposite of Apple. Steve Jobs, who I had a chance to meet in private, is a genius dictator with a very strong vision.
The whole company aligns behind him to execute. Google, like Apple, needs to adopt great design. Still I wonder how many people are not using AdSense because of how ugly the ads are. Apple has shown that both design and functionality are needed to succeed. For us at Fon, Apple, a company that is not even our investor, has been surprisingly easier to deal with than Google. Apple wants WiFi everywhere. That simple. We did a simple integration, it works well, and we have deployed millions of foneras in Japan together with Softbank.
At Google, so far, we have been unable to integrate with Android regardless of the fact that we are partly owned by Google. We are millions of units ahead with iOS than Android. And every other project that we tried to implement with Google did not get off the ground. Failed to gain company wide support.
We all like democracy, but businesses, whether we like it or not, are more dictatorships than democracies. Even employees who like to debate issues outside of work prefer a clear sense of direction from those at the top at work. A clear mission. Google is not a start up that needs to find its destiny.
Google has found its destiny and it is great. Time has come to focus on it and execute with a more forceful management style. When I was growing up in Argentina these types of accusations were common. This theme was especially dear to military dictators who frequently played the nationalist card while trained in USA. But then look at what happened. Latin America, a region supposedly controlled by the US, liberated itself.
In most countries a better, independent local leadership emerged. But overall I would consider today the leadership of Latin America much better, more democratic than that of the Muslim world. And I think that the Muslim world is now, where Latin America was in the 70s. Now it is mostly democratic, not perfect but much freer and better. So if Latin American could liberate itself from its own dictators, Arab countries can do the same. But first its citizens need to stop blaming the West for its problems and focus on their own dictators.
In short, not an ideal partner. So the solution in the Arab world has to be home grown and it is to get rid of their dictators as Latin America did in the 80s. Tunisians have finally rebelled on their own, but there are many, many other corrupt and barbaric dictators left in power in the Muslim world. These were common tactics in the time of General Galtieri in Argentina for example, Falklands invasion included. But just as Latin America nations such as Chile and Argentina, have gotten rid of populist leaders the Muslim world can do the same.
The Muslim countries can do it on their own. They may try to export terrorism, as Latin America did, but that will fizzle out as Muslims earn their human rights and self determination. This has led many in government to say that more needs to be done to protect privacy. That many may not become employable as their poor behavior becomes public.
Some have even said that people should have the right to erase their life from the internet. The right to be forgotten. Others put a big emphasis on rebuilding privacy around individuals despite the ever increasing popularity of compulsive sharing. That social networks show their worst behavior. That people go wild on the internet. My view on this is quite the contrary. Social networks have the same effect on people that classrooms have on children.
Users behave better and are more honest in them because they are being constantly watched by others and want to impress them. My mother was similarly overbearing when it came to teaching me Chinese. Today my technical grounding in understanding spoken Chinese is pretty good, and in a pinch I can speak Mandarin without much of an accent.
However, I have an extremely strong mental block against doing so - I will almost never do it voluntarily or for fun in conversation; when hanging out with other ethnic Chinese people I will speak in English and perhaps more concerningly , I have a strange psychological aversion to speaking in Chinese to my own children, despite even the exhortations of my wife that doing so would be good for them.
In contrast, my parents were relatively restrictive and discouraging of my spending time on the computer and playing video games. Video games were restricted only to the weekends, and spending a lot of time on the computer was discouraged and generally thought of as an indulgence. As I became a little older, it seemed to become apparent to them that maybe computer programming was actually a viable career path, so in my early teen years my dad made some minimal efforts to encourage me by buying me a couple programming books, but otherwise still left me alone and occasionally continued to frown at how often I was just using the computer to play games.
Being on the computer was one of my favorite ways to spend time, at least until I discovered girls. The rest is [LinkedIn] history - I went to Carnegie-Mellon for computer science, finally being allowed to spend all the time I wanted on a computer, and luckily found my way into an industry where my passion is one that is pretty highly-paid. The result is that my life today is almost devoid of piano or other forms of music, as well as any actual speaking of Chinese, despite retaining high technical skill in both of those - e.
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