Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it

Three Chinese-American students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have killed themselves in the last three months. Two died by helium asphyxiation and the cause of death of the third student, though deemed a suicide, is yet to be determined. Their stories have been covered in the Chinese language media, but remain virtually unreported in the mainstream.

These suicides are anything but isolated incidents. Popular opinion may project Asians and Asian Americans as super achievers, scoring high on the SAT, dominating prestigious colleges and working as high-paid professionals, but the dark side of that narrative is that they are much more likely than the average American to commit suicide, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

At Cornell University, for instance, 13 of the 21 student suicide victims between 1996 and 2006 were Asians or Asian Americans. That picture is not complete unless you consider that Asians make up of only 14 percent of the total Cornell student body. Cornell is so concerned that in 2002 it formed a special Asian and Asian American Campus Climate Task Force to look into the reason behind the high number of suicides.

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.

This is an extremely interesting article about how/why Chinese children seem to be more successful than the average Western child.

What she really seems to be describing (at least to me, and I'm probably choosing the wrong words so someone correct me) is immigrant culture -- families that came to America with children wanting a better life.

July was supposed to have marked the start of Liu Wei's new life.
With more than six million other students across China, the 21-year-old was due to graduate from college this month.
For Miss Liu, the daughter of poor farmers, a degree was to be her passport out of a life of poverty, a way to escape working in the fields, or toiling as a humble migrant worker in a far-off factory in southern China.
But her dream of making the huge leap from farm girl to college graduate will never become reality. Deeply depressed and ashamed about her failure to find a job to take up when she graduated, and consumed with guilt about the financial sacrifices her family had made for her, Miss Liu brought her studies and her life to a premature end by drowning herself in a ditch full of freezing, filthy water.

[...]

Miss Liu's reaction to her predicament was extreme, but not unusual. In April, a report by the Shanghai Education Commission listed suicide as the leading cause of death among students.

What bothers me is that she seems to think that ALL Chinese mothers are one way and all Western mothers are another way. I don't think this is true at all.

What bothers me is that she seems to think that ALL Chinese mothers are one way and all Western mothers are another way. I don't think this is true at all.

Millions of people raise their children this way. It’s not just Chinese people. It’s really an immigrant thing. I know Indians and people from Nigeria and Ghana and Jamaica. Even some Irish. I did not write this book to promote the Chinese model. It’s as much about mistakes as it is about successes.

I haven’t done a study but I think that, ironically, although Western parents are the ones that worry so much about self-esteem – and Chinese parents don’t, they assume strength rather than fragility – I wonder if the Chinese approach isn’t better at creating self-esteem. You can coddle your child and tell them, “You’re the best no matter what.” But in the end, when they go out into the real world, I think it’s pretty tough out there and other children are cruel. When your child doesn’t do so well at school or make the team they’d wished they’d made or can’t get the job they want, that’s when people really lose self-esteem.

The happiness question is up for grabs. I definitely don’t think that one approach leads to happier children.

Lulu rebelled on a family trip to Russia. It started with you calling her an “uncultured savage” for not trying the caviar in Red Square. It ended with her calling you a selfish, terrible mother and saying she hated the violin and you.

I felt, “Oh my gosh. Is my family falling apart?” At that moment I thought nothing is worth the possibility of losing my daughter. I needed to change. I went cold turkey.

But as rebellions go, Lulu’s isn’t earth-shattering. She scaled back the piano and took up tennis.

We’re in a much better place now. It’s still painful for me to be honest. I know that her violin is not at the same level any more. I know that she can never be as good a tennis player as she was a violin player. You just can’t start at 13. But the other day she said her most favourite thing was playing violin. That makes me happy.

I don’t think I’ve retreated on the academic front at all. We’re in hybrid mode right now. My daughters have so many more choices right now. They do have sleepovers and hang out with their friends now. Sophia just went to a rap concert.