| HN Mirror

First, that it's possible to speak harshly to children and make them feel ashamed without harming them, if they feel secure in your love.

There are many parents who never say an unkind word to their parents but who leave their children feeling insecure and unloved. There are parents who achieve the opposite. A child who feel unvalued and insecure may feel most scared and vulnerable when his parents are critical of him, but the fault lies with the child feeling unvalued -- that is where his parents went wrong, not in criticizing him. The two things are independent. Parents should concentrate on making their kids feel loved and valued enough that a little criticism won't traumatize them, instead of trying to be so bland and positive that their kids' security is never tested.

That's exactly what she illustrates in her two contrasting examples: "Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me." And later: "I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her 'beautiful and incredibly competent.' She later told me that made her feel like garbage."

That squares with my experience quite well. Many children of unfailingly polite and supportive parents will tell you they hate their parents' guts, that their parents never loved them, and that their parents made them feel worthless. Perhaps most of those kids are wrong about their parents not loving them -- perhaps -- but their feelings show how ineffective it is to mask your negative emotions and deal with your children through a rose-colored facade. Children are quick to sense (or wrongly assume) that flattering words hide a lack of real affection, or even hide resentment, and they know when they're being disciplined by a parent who loves them and would lay their life down for them. Of course, it's easier to simply suck up to your kids than to take on the much harder task of loving them unshakably and making sure they understand that. (Easier not just in the sense of being more pleasant, but also in the sense that people often try and fail to convince their children they really love them. In engineering we would say that something with such a high failure rate has no place in a well-designed system, but I think in childrearing you have to accept that this is a vital step that cannot be designed out no matter how hard it is.) Being careful never to say anything harsh to your children because they doubt your love and loyalty is like driving extra carefully because you failed to buy car insurance -- it doesn't change your fundamental irresponsibility.

Second, that most of parenting is predicated on taking freedom away from children because parents know better.

It is better to state that up front than to try to pull off a sham where children are told they have freedom, but at the last second their parents lose their nerve and try to stop them from doing things. My own parents were a bit like this -- they would maintain the fiction that I had freedom of choice, trying persuade me to change my mind, until absolutely the last minute. Then they would find some excuse for stopping me from doing what I decided to do. That was common behavior for my friends' parents, too. It's better to be honest than to practice this kind of hypocrisy.

Third, that hard work and mastery lead to greater satisfaction than dabbling. No need to explain that here. Why shouldn't parents teach this to kids with the same urgency and insistence that they teach other facts of life?

Fourth (related to two and three), that forcing kids to work can lead to benefits that the children appreciate later. "Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up." Americans are schizophrenic about this, accepting it readily in the case of athletics and rejecting it with horror in other areas. Why is the piano so much different from basketball? Or we cling to the cop-out of playing the compassionate "good guy" and leaving the less pleasant job to coaches and teachers. Once again, children are sensitive to hypocrisy: do you approve of the discipline imposed by coaches and teachers or not? If you do, why are you such a softie yourself? Don't you love them enough to be tough with them? At report card time, I always felt most sorry for the kid who got bad grades and didn't get in trouble with his parents. The other kids are talking about how their parents yelled at them, and this kid gets to say... what? That he has great parents who love him so much they are nice to him even when he gets bad grades? He knows that isn't the reason.

The article caricatures all of these ideas. Possibly the author assumes they are alien and unacceptable to American culture and just wants to make them clear and memorable, but the vibe I got was that the author is arrogantly, perversely savoring her readers' inability to accept her ideas. In either case, the WSJ picked an author whose presentation of these ideas is so inflammatory as to alienate readers. The article does not make a sincere effort at addressing the predictable concerns of the audience. That was a deliberate rhetorical choice, by the author and definitely by the WSJ. If we want to evaluate these ideas fairly, we should imagine how they could best be presented to our own sensibilities and reconciled with our own ideas, instead of allowing the WSJ to dictate the outcome by presenting the ideas in such a negative light.

In the final paragraph of the article, the author presents a false opposition where a sincere author would offer a synthesis: "Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away."

Since the author did not offer a synthesis, it's up to us to provide one for ourselves.

P.S. Here's another interesting angle, better written and more persuasive for a western audience:

http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080709_19951195premo...