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“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”

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“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”

The Chinese parenting style creates success, teaches determination, and prepares children to be exceptional. “Chinese parents” won’t accept anything but the best, while “Western parents” think learning should be fun (p.143). According to Amy Chua and her controversial article concerning Chinese and Western parenting: “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”, this first group can get away with harsh treatment and reasonably insensitive language, while Western parents may even induce legal consequences for “lightly” correcting their children. Chua firmly believes that her disciplinary actions won’t affect her child’s self-steem; in fact, she believes children’s confidence will increase upon successful completion of a challenge. Unlike the other category of parents, who worry about how failure will emotionally perturb their children, rather than attacking the actual problem, which according to Chua’s realistic perspective it is the child’s mistake for not working hard enough. “As a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child’s self-steem is to let them give up. There’s nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn’t”, says Chua (p.146).
Throughout this article the author’s only purpose is to achieve her daughter’s academic excellence, disregarding her feelings of being heavily burdened. This mother’s beliefs insinuate that children owe everything to their parents (p.144), and she expects absolute obedience from them. She won’t approve any deviation from her arduous routine, thus invalidating her children’s choices. Chua says this parenting approach requires “practice, practice, practice”. She defines the Chinese strategy as a “virtuous circle” (p.143). Her ability to formulate strategies in order to resist the child’s opinion is her only way of instruction. For the

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