Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids was recommended by a friend. I was interested in the major thesis–that nature is more influential in a child’s life than nurture, and that we worry too much about our kids for no reason, since they’ll mostly tend to turn out just like us. Caplan even quotes Steve Sailer on page 3! (I’m assuming it’s the same Sailer dude who helps the loons navigate the world of HBD.)

It’s a breezy read. The “nature” thing was going on all kinds of illogical tangents with twin and adoption studies, such as the “fact” that adopted Korean kids of rich white folk don’t go as far as biological kids of rich white folk (because, you know, adopted Korean kids naturally fit into the family just as well as the kids who look like the rest of the family), or that parents who taught their kids to read often have adult children these days who don’t read (as if blogs and the internet have no effect on this). But at the end of the chapter, Caplan hedges by saying that’s what he believes and that the studies have limitations, such as the fact that the adoptions were mostly middle class families. He also relieves himself of the Sailer extrapolation by saying kids in the ghetto might not stay in the ghetto if given the opportunity.

Aside from the main reason I picked it up, the book does have some interesting economic observations about the price of kids and our investment/recuperation of our investment. For example, he writes about grandkids, and how when we get old, we often want nothing more than to spend more time with our grandkids, and that we can increase our chances of having grandkids by having more kids. He lists some interesting statistics about child safety, and how children today are safer than ever despite the media stories, and he says that the best way to influence how your kids turn out is to choose your mate wisely.

One problem that my friend who recommended the book brought up was the whole idea about your kids turning out just like you. As my friend said, “But what if you’re not happy about how you turned out?” Maybe that’s the mate selection. Marry a doctor so you can say, “My Son, the Doctor.”

Related posts:

1. Empathy and Kids
2. Podcast with ChineseMom on American culture, education, and raising kids
3. Raising my Asian kids Jewish

Anyway, there was a great profile on one family in the NY Times today. Here’s the quote of the week:

“Ms. Rossi sees many similarities between long-distance running and married life. “The beginning of a marriage is similar to the beginning of a marathon,” she said. “The gun goes off, and there’s an intense feeling of exhilaration. You have your life ahead of you.

“Then, along the way, there are deaths in the family, layoffs, renovations, financial problems. All of that. But as long as you’ve done your training and built a foundation of respect and trust, you can literally run through it all.””

Related posts:

1. The Evolution of Marriage
2. Money, Marriage, and the Arrangements People Make
3. Money or Love?

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the kid on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

Good nightmoon, and goodnight manhood. Yikes. I always felt a decline in aggressiveness after changing diapers, so I’m glad to know it’s not just me.

Related posts:

1. Podcast with Ben and James on Fatherhood
2. Dudescape to Dadscape

A Chinese guy who isn't me; a Jewish guy who isn't Hertsel

This is a podcast that I’d been hoping to do for a while. On this podcast, my good friend Hertsel and I discuss the Jews, the Chinese, and the humanities. It’s about fifty minutes, and it’s 46.2 MBs. Download it here, or listen to it here:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the humanities over the years.  As most of you know (and as I mention in the podcast), I had two big posts on the humanities: David Brooks’s The Big Shaggy and Michael Roth’s Why Liberal Arts Matter.  ChineseMom and I had a podcast that addressed much of the same issue.  In this highly informative podcast, Hertsel and I discuss the Jewish view of the humanities vs. the modern Chinese American view.  We talk about how (some) Jewish parents raise their kids with respect to the arts, and how the arts are important.

This topic/podcast is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  I remember in college how lots of Chinese American students used to downplay the humanities, saying that humanities majors would someday get jobs serving fries, and how arts majors, if they didn’t go into fast food, would all someday find themselves working for engineers.  Years later, we realized this was all untrue; I was talking to a friend just a couple of weeks ago about how wrong we all were.  Humanities majors, in fact, often rise to the top.  I can’t even recall a U.S. President who majored in anything other than humanities (usually economics or history).  I believe this outward dismissal of the humanities hurts Asian Americans more than any other issue afflicting us.  The Jews, as we discuss on the podcast, shaped their own narratives.  We’ve done good work in getting our stories out there, but we can do better.

My favorite part was when Hertsel exhorts us to tell our stories.  I was talking to him after the podcast and said that we should do this again, maybe on the same topic, maybe on a different topic that could use some dissection by a Jewish guy and a Chinese guy.  Enjoy the podcast, and sound off below with any opinions.  If there are any topics you’d like us to discuss, please feel free to share ideas as well.

(pic from here)

Related posts:

1. Podcast with ChineseMom on American culture, education, and raising kids
2. Humanities and CEO Thought
3. Literature and Religion: Podcast with Kobukson

The book presents several case studies of children from three kinds of backgrounds–middle class, working class, and poor, and it charts how the children have different childhoods, most often based on class.  According to the research, middle class parents engage in “concerted cultivation,” where they use adult-led activities such as team sports to cultivate their kids.  They also talk more to their kids, encourage them to debate, and build up their verbal fluency and vocabulary.  Kids learn to navigate their way through institutions and develop a sense of entitlement, which is a good characteristic for success in middle class careers. Middle class parents play a more active role in their children’s schooling and extra-curricular activities.

Poor and working class families, on the other hand, tend to use “natural growth” strategies, where their kids control their own schedules. They don’t sign their kids up for soccer camp because it’s more expensive and time intensive (which is hard for people who don’t have flexible work schedules); plus, the parents are less likely to see the value in organized sports. They are more deferential to teachers and medical professionals, and they are less likely to question such professionals (although they are more comfortable dealing with other people such as landlords and cable companies). They are less likely to engage in debate with their kids and more likely to issue directives. Poor and working class families tend to be more family-oriented, and the kids often play with extended relatives. Poor kids have much more exposure to other kids of different ages, since they don’t do age-specific organized sports.

Lareau explains that there are advantages and disadvantages to both styles.  Poorer kids are rarely bored; they are happier; they learn how to be creative; and they are far more relaxed and energetic. Middle class kids learn to negotiate with institutions; they pick up better vocabulary; and they learn a sense of entitlement that helps them to get ahead.

This book was fascinating.  Not only does it address issues of parenting with respect to social class, but it explains much of the class divide outside of parenting as well. It helped me to see a lot of the class issues which divide us. I highly recommend this book.

One last item of interest–there have been a number of articles and blogs on encouraging children to play. People say that kids of yore used to play a lot, that the play was unstructured and allowed creativity the same way the poor and working class have it today.  Lareau makes the point that the idea of children playing freely among the middle class really only took place for kids born during the 50′s and 60′s. Kids before that had to work; kids after that were put into the organized activities track.

Related posts:

1. Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida (Review)
2. Manifesto for Young Asian Women: The Life of Shiuan’s Vagina (Review)
3. Race and Specialized NY High Schools

Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan

(I don’t know if Michael Roth is Jewish. I assume he is, but even if he isn’t, it’s not relevant, since I’m mostly working off Steven Silbiger’s book.)

There was an excellent article on CNN.com today: Why Liberal Arts Matter.  It’s written by Michael Roth.  In the article, Roth makes an argument for the liberal arts.  He writes:

Many seem to think that by narrowing our focus to just science and engineering, we will become more competitive. This is a serious mistake.

Our leaders in government, industry and academia should realize that they don’t have to make a choice between the sciences and the rest of the liberal arts. Indeed, the sciences are a vital part of the liberal arts.

The key to our success in the future will be an integrative education that doesn’t isolate the sciences from other parts of the curriculum, and that doesn’t shield the so-called creative and interpretive fields from a vigorous understanding of the problems addressed by scientists.

His argument is that the liberal arts matter, and that narrow training does not fully develop one’s capacities for change or growth.  He writes:

We should look at education not as a specific training program for a limited range of mental muscles but as a process through which one will generate some of the most important features in one’s life. It makes no sense to train people as narrowly as possible in a world going through cataclysmic changes, for you are building specific strengths that leave you merely muscle-bound, not stronger and more flexible.

We should think of education as a kind of intellectual cross-training that leads to many more things than at any one moment you could possibly know would be useful. The most powerful education generates further curiosity, new needs, experiences to meet those needs, more curiosity and so on.

I agree with Michael Roth about the humanities. I agree with him 100%. Mental flexibility, interpretation, and the expanse of new ideas has always benefited our greatest entrepreneurs and creative thinkers in this society. I used to believe that we had to stress the sciences more, but I’m beginning to see that well rounded individuals are the future of America. The purpose of an education shouldn’t be to simply get a job, but to be able to conceptualize and understand the world in order to create new and better jobs.  In other words, an education should teach a person how to be a leader.

We’ve talked a little about Jewish parenting vs. Asian Tiger Parenting, since Amy Chua, the original Tiger Mother, is married to a Jewish guy.  In my post about the Tiger Mother, I mentioned that I found it somewhat ironic that Chua was espousing Chinese parenting over the parenting style of her Jewish American husband, especially given the fact that Jews have been much more successful in the United States than the Chinese. I have never, ever heard a Jewish person dog the humanities the way some Chinese people do.  In The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People, author Steven Silbiger has an entire chapter devoted to knowledge, another chapter devoted to individuality and creativity, and another devoted to “verbal confidence.”  In other words, three of the “seven keys” are humanities-type skills.

I won’t expand too much on this topic, but here’s a quote from Silbiger’s book, linking the humanities directly to the Jewish religion (not “faith,” as Silbiger points out, since the non-Orthodox Jews are NOT required to accept God on faith):

The Jewish religion focuses on the individual and his or her own spiritual exploration and journey.  It is therefore important that Jews are involved in spirited discussions and debate about the various stories and laws in their religious texts as a means of forming a personal and intellectual attachment to their religion. (p.27)

I think there is something to be learned here.  As ChineseMom and I discussed in our podcast, modern Chinese culture seems to discount the humanities.  If history is any indication of the past, we do so at our peril.  People will need to learn to create, and well-rounded individuals will be much better prepared to create and innovate than those who avoid the humanities in search of a more narrow focus.

Edit: See Eurasian Sensation’s take here.

Related posts:

1. Raising my Asian kids Jewish
2. Podcast with ChineseMom on American culture, education, and raising kids
3. Conditional Parenting

This was probably the scariest podcast I’ve had!  I honestly had very little idea of what goes on in China or what it’s like to raise a 12 year old and 14 year old, and I thought I’d choke (which I think I did!).  But that’s the fun part of blogging and podcasting, right?  I get to learn from people who have life experiences that I don’t have.

Here are some notable parts of the ‘cast:

9:30: Why ChineseMom decided to immigrate to the U.S.

14 minutes: Differences between cultures in the U.S. and China

20 minutes: Differences in teachers in the U.S. and China

24: Reasons Chairman Mao would LOVE the U.S.

29: The Chinese view of the humanities

30: Differences between men and women in the U.S. vs. men and women in China

45: Sports as a system of education

46: After experiencing two different systems, what gifts would ChineseMom give her kids?

I had a great time with this podcast, and I learned a lot.  It was interesting how the conversation kept moving to education–academic education and physical education.  I enjoyed talking about the difference between how Americans and the Chinese view the humanities.  In the U.S., smart people study both math and science, but in China, humanities are seen as a landing area for losers who can’t do math.  I don’t remember if it was Krugman or Friedman who pointed this out (and it doesn’t really matter since I’m sure they weren’t the first to realize this either), but if you look at the leaders in China, most of them have science or engineering backgrounds, while America’s leaders tend to be lawyers and history majors.  I liked how ChineseMom stressed the importance of the humanities, and I can understand a bit more of her context when we talk about affirmative action.  Steve Jobs, the CEO of the company that’s producing the hottest tech gadgets on the market, once spoke about how the most important college class he took was in calligraphy.  There’s definitely value in the thinking that the humanities teach.

My main takeaway from this podcast was that we Asian Americans are fortunate to be here, and we often don’t take advantage of what we have.  ChineseMom talks about sports and humanities, but how many of us actively pushed ourselves to achieve in these areas when we were growing up?  (Haha…the other side of the argument is: how many of us had a choice?)  Oftentimes, I think we Asian Americans measure ourselves by the old country standards that ChineseMom mentions–how good we are in math and science, and how we stack up against other kids.  When I went to college, it was also about how well you spoke Chinese.  Many Chinese Americans at my school looked down on humanities majors.  It was almost as if the group imported all their aspirations and values. Many aspired to the same kind of ideals that ChineseMom describes, which, if you think about it, is kinda boring.

In addition to the marvelous forms of thinking that a liberal arts education bestows on a student, humanities also teach expression, and I agree with ChineseMom that the ability to express oneself is underrated.

I’ll let you guys listen to the podcast and form your own decisions, but I’ll leave you with a personal closing note.  When I think about my late grandfather, the original Wong who immigrated here, I don’t remember him ever:

a) chastising me for not speaking Chinese well, even though he was fluent in three dialects;

b) expressing desire that I study only math and science to the exclusion of the humanities, even though he was an ship engineer who was proficient in math calculations;

c) dissuading me from sports.

In fact, my grandfather was a boxer who was well read in Chinese and great in math, but whenever I think of stuff that he taught me, it was always related to history, games (xianqi), cooking, or how to fix stuff (which was his personal interest).  It was mostly non-science, non-mathematical stuff.  Success for him was not narrowly defined.  The world is much bigger than that.

Thank you, ChineseMom, for an excellent podcast.  Check it out and sound off below.

Related posts:

1. Raising my Asian kids Jewish
2. Podcast: bigWOWO Interviews Dave Porter, Activist for Bilingual Education
3. Asian Education Foundation: Podcast

The Alpha has a post here about entitlement, and how he would like his daughter to be able to articulate her needs to adults.  Alpha references Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, where he reports that Gladwell says that middle class kids have an advantage over working class kids because they know to speak up.  Alpha quotes Gladwell:

“Even in fourth grade, middle class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantage. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires.”

By contrast, the working class and poor children were characterized by “an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint.” They didn’t know how to get their way, or how to “customize” whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.

Alpha tells us how his marriage is a sort of mixed marriage–he’s Southern Chinese and has a “peasant” mindset, while his wife is Northern Chinese and has an aristocratic mindset.  I’m much the same as Alpha–I’m southern Chinese, and on my mother’s side, I’m the grandson of a laundryman.  I’ve got Southern Chinese blue collar values mixed in with fundamentalist conservative Christian values.  The result?  Put it on a plate, and if it tastes somewhat good, I’m in!  Who cares if I’m eating at a hole in the wall.  Practicality rules.  Good children don’t lead, question, or demand; they obey.

It reminds me about an excellent book I read years ago: Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano.  In the book, Lubrano, the son of a bricklayer, writes about the disadvantages he had transforming from a blue collar kid to a journalism student at Columbia University.  He writes about the sense of displacement he felt and continues to feel as a person who is neither truly white collar nor truly blue collar.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with blue collar values–they teach you to persevere and to follow, which are both useful traits.  But they’re not the only skills necessary to thrive.

I mentioned that I was a bit aghast at Richard Florida’s dismissal of the so-called service and working classes, and I felt that his sense of entitlement was a bad thing.  However, a sense of entitlement can be a good thing.  It’s hard to get ahead unless you demand more.  It’s hard to truly get ahead unless you demand more than the bare necessities of what you need to live.  As our social structure reinvents itself in the new economy, we need to evaluate where we’re going and where we want to be.  This is true not only for individuals, but for groups as well.

(pic from here)

Related posts:

1. The Blue and the Brown

“I love you as high as I can reach,” said Little Nutbrown Hare.

I love you as high as I can reach,” said Big Nutbrown Hare.

Jeff from Daddy Dialectic writes:

Am I the only one who thinks the adult rabbit, like the father in the scenario I laid out at the beginning of this post, is a bit of an asshole? Aren’t the adult rabbit’s constant moves to up the ante on the little rabbit evidence of an ego that’s out of whack? Even when channeled through professions of love, this kind of behavior doesn’t feel particularly tender to me. In fact, it seems to me that the adult rabbit’s answer to the question of how much love it has for the little rabbit should be, “Not enough to restrain myself from besting your every move.”

Hugo Schwyzer read the book differently, and so did I.  As Hugo points out in his blog post, it’s natural–within this society at least–for parents to love their children more than children love their parents, and he read the book as a comparison of the asymmetrical love between parents and children.  Hugo writes about the hypothetical burning building question.  Who would you save if you had to make one choice–your mother or your daughter?  He says that he would save his daughter, without question.

What I found interesting was what he wrote here:

One of the great truisms in contemporary therapeutic Western culture is that parent-child love is always uneven, or should be. Unlike the love between spouses, where equal affection and passion is the ideal, a parent should always love a child more than the child loves the parent. I know perfectly well that this is not a universal cultural ideal, though I frankly wish it were. It’s not a two-way street: we give to our children unconditionally not to receive the same level of devotion in return, but to equip them for their lives.

Of course he’s right when he says that it’s true in contemporary Western cultures, but the question then arises…is it true in contemporary Eastern cultures?  And is it true in older more traditional Western cultures?

I don’t know where I got this from, but somewhere in the back of my head I remember someone asking the same hypothetical of a burning building to a Chinese man.  He answered, “I would save my mother.  Why?  I can always have another daughter.  I only get one mother.”  Granted, this guy may have come from the old culture where people had kids in order to have someone to take care of them in old age, the “traditional 401(k),” and there isn’t a right answer that applies to all families–some modern parents, Asian and White, would be risking their lives to save the family antiques and jewelry before either daughter or mother.  But what do we know about parental love from a cultural angle?

And fast forward to today: is there a cultural movement for Asian Americans to express love for their children?  And what do you think about the original story?

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2. Asian Parents and the Arts
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[Most of the AA Blogosphere has been angry and incensed at Amy Chua's article about Chinese-style parenting.  I got hold of someone with a different take on the whole debate.  Printed with permission; read it below, and feel free to comment. --B]

Initially I was incensed at the audacity of Professor Chua’s article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” and what seemed to be the proposition: exercise totalitarianism over your children if you want them to become high-achieving good Samaritans; use negative reinforcement as the primary instrument in aforesaid method of parenting. Because that in a nutshell was my childhood and adolescence, an aspect of my past that brings up less than idyllic memories, and reminds me of the parental governance I viciously defied. In fact, Chua’s article brought up stories of trauma I don’t even remember.

My mother and I were talking the other day about Chua’s article, which my mother describes as “brave.” She further describes Chua’s demeanor during all the interviews she’s been doing these past few days as “full of grace.” Then she asked me if I remembered that time in Kindergarten when my father forced me to play 6 straight hours of piano on a Saturday and after 2 hours, I rebelled and fought back, and my father lost his temper and went to hit me in the arm but I struggled, he missed and instead hit me square across the face, leaving a huge welt. She said I started bawling, he stumbled backward in fright, and then upped and left the house and didn’t come back until evening. He avoided me for days thereafter.

In school the next week I was asked to draw a picture, perhaps by the school child psychologist, and I drew myself holding a sword on a unicorn with a sharp, giant horn. The psychologist asked me why all the sharp points and I allegedly responded, “To protect me, so no one can ever hurt me.” Needless to say, a phone call was placed to my home.

I have zero recollection of this. None. Zippo. I can’t even attempt to picture any piece of the story. Nada. I don’t remember a welt on my face, I don’t remember talking to a child psychologist, I certainly don’t remember drawing anything of that sort, and I don’t remember how big and dramatic of an incident it was. Mother claims, “Oh, it was huge! I was so scared! You know how those Americans are. I was afraid they’d drag your father to jail! It was terrible. One of the scariest times in my whole life.” She said. Wow. That major? And I can’t remember one iota of it?

However, I do remember that my father had always been neurotically strict about my music lessons, about everything, so Mom’s story is plausible. Back then my father and I constantly fought, because he thought every day of my childhood should be like a day at West Point. My room had to be cleaned a certain way. I had to eat at the dinner table a certain way. I had to speak a certain way, sit a certain way, dress a certain way. I even had to write my personal diary a certain way. (He once read my journal and marked up the margins to point out the flaws in critical reasoning splayed all over the pages.)

In many of the responses to Chua’s article, people who lived through that same totalitarian “Chinese-style” upbringing have said that they remember being hit, being verbally assaulted, but not why. Interesting. Because I remember.

I remember how one simple, softly-spoken response from my father had shed light on the years of countless instances of indescribable insanity. My father had said, “I sit with you every night while you do homework and I watch you solve the problems and I listen to the type of questions you ask me when I give lessons. I know better than anybody what you are capable of, and you are capable of more. That is the only reason ‘B’ is not good enough.”

See, he never intended to assault my self-esteem when he yelled things like “How could you be so stupid as to get a B in AP Calculus, I don’t care you’re only 12!?” And I believe other totalitarian parents felt the same way about their children, but perhaps those words were never expressed. Asian kids jokingly use the example “If I won the Nobel, my parents would shake their heads and say ‘Not good enough.’” That’s because their parents, like my father, had trouble communicating what they were really thinking: The Nobel Prize is not good enough for my son/daughter; he/she deserves even better. How can you not be touched by that intensity of faith?

In later years when my younger siblings were born, and when my parents had been better assimilated into this country, my father forebeared from corporal punishment. He continued to be strict and demanding though… or at least he did until one of my sisters attempted suicide in junior high by popping a bottle of pills.

She was rushed to the ER, had her stomach pumped. That same evening, I overheard my parents arguing while my sister was staying overnight at the hospital. My mother yelled at my father, “I’d rather have a stupid daughter than a dead one.” Although I cannot remember the welt-on-face-unicorn-child-psychologist incident, this one with my sister I remember crystal clearly. That time I remember speaking with a psychologist, who asked me leading questions (which infuriated me because even at that young age I could see right through her) to find out whether my parents were abusing us, and I had stood up for my father even though inside I was still angry at him for being a totalitarian.

As testament to my father’s profound love, he changed. He let the suicidal sister socialize, hang out late with friends, go to slumber parties, and get Cs on her report card. When she got a C in Physics, he’d ask calmly, “Well did you try your best?” She’d say, “Yeah, of course I did.” And he’d say, “As long as you tried your best.”

What I want to say to that is counterintuitive to Western attitudes. I want to say that Chua is right and my father was wrong for changing. That sister under-achieved. By leaps and bounds. And then where I and my other siblings excelled in both academics and extracurriculars, this sister’s self-confidence drained, and she ultimately turned to drugs, alcohol, and partying until the falling out between my father and her, and of all the siblings, she is the most emotionally distant from our parents. My parents gave her everything she ever wanted; they spoiled her rotten; they put her happiness as the #1 priority. And this emotional distance and her utter underachievement was the outcome. Meanwhile I have acquired a deep respect for my father’s intellect, and will call him up for advice on my cases at work (I am a corporate lawyer, and this is where you roll your eyes and think to yourself “of course you are”) and will have robust debates over politics, political theory, and philosophy with him.

After my parents, in my view, gave up on the suicidal sister (this is a terrible choice of reference, I know), as the eldest in the family, I had continued to be strict on her. While my parents thought the best goal for her was happiness, I expected more, mostly because I already knew by then that when your only goal is happiness, happiness cannot be attained. I wanted her to have ambitions. I didn’t care what those ambitions were, poetry, modern dance, flying to the moon, but I expected her to have at least one and then to follow through with it. Her problem was two-fold, problems that will resonate with our perceptions of America’s Generation Y: (1) she had no idea what she wanted out of life, and (2) even when she casually decided on a direction, she lacked execution.

At one point my sister wanted to go to design school and become a graphic designer. I did copious amounts of research on schools, matched it with her credentials, started pushing her to prepare her portfolio, helped her get her works on microfiche (this was back in the day when art school apps required you to submit portfolios on microfiche slides), and printed out the applications, organized them in manila file folders clearly labeled, and put them on her desk. In the end she said the work was overwhelming, too much for her, and in any case she doesn’t want to be a designer anymore.

Then she wanted to become a nurse. We went full-throttle for that too and I learned more about the nursing profession than I ever wanted to know because of the research I did. In the end, she didn’t want to pursue that either because “it sounded like way too much work.” She never even got past the “declaring a major” step.

There are at least 5 other vocations she wanted to pursue, each one of which I took seriously and did everything I could to support. Finally she settled on waitress. In a few years’ time, she moved up to bartender. Bartender at a very, very posh restaurant, I will have you know.

My mother, if one can believe it, once berated me for my approach toward my sister. She told me I was too pushy. “Why do you expect her to be like you?” she asked. “She is her own person and you need to let her blossom as her own person.”

My response to her regarding my sister is the same rationale Chua gave about why she pushed her daughters so hard and what my father had said to me: I love my sister deeply, unconditionally, and I know better than anybody what she is capable of.

Maybe my mother would rather have a stupid daughter than a dead one, but she doesn’t have a stupid daughter. My sister is incredibly intelligent, quick-witted, and charming. She lights up a room. She flourishes under the spotlight. She’s funny. Stand-up-comedian-level funny. You need to be way above-average in intelligence to be funny. And she is a phenomenal bartender. With the kind of natural, untaught charisma she possesses, that you cannot even learn if you wanted to, she could do great things. And all I have ever tried to do was to get her to do something great. Why would anyone vilify me for that? Why should people vilify Chua for wanting the same?

One time my sister said to me, “I’m thinking about law school. Do you think I can do it?” Yes, I said, with absolute conviction. But my mother said to her, “You don’t want to be a lawyer. Just focus on being the prettiest bartender you can possibly be.”

At bottom, perhaps the culprit for the Chua controversy is a gap in communication. Her direct, deadpan style of writing, severe honesty, and the tone she took is what incited readers. (Along with what later emerged: The manipulating of the publication in the hands of editors and a Western, Sinophobic press.)

I mean, I could see how if my father wrote a book on parenting, it might not go over so well:

Chapter 5: How to Teach Your Daughter Tennis.

Step 1: Yank her out of bed at 5 AM and make her do drills until she collapses.

Step 2: Do not let her collapse. Instead, set up tennis ball machine and shoot 300 balls at her at 100 miles per hour so she can practice returning.

Step 3: When all 300 tennis balls have been exhausted, give her a basket and make her pick every one of them up by herself, and time it: she must pick up all 300 balls with basket in 15 minutes. For every minute after 15, start taking balls out of the basket and make her pick those up too. This is good exercise and helps train stamina, which is a very important element to competitive sports. Also teaches important lesson on consequences.

Step 4: Once all the balls have been collected, make her practice the first serve 300 times in a row. No need to practice second serve because when you are through with training, she will never need to use a second serve.

Step 5: Identify her weak point. Oh my, it’s her backhand. Okay. No worries. Make her practice backhand returns 900 times until she really, really collapses. Do not let her collapse. Instead, yank her back up and tell her to practice 900 more backhand returns. As both of you will soon learn, the backhand return will become her power shot. Weak point becomes undefeatable strength.

Step 6: Repeat steps 1 through 5 until she tells you she hates you, hates tennis, and never wants to pick up a racquet again.

Can you imagine THAT being a how-to book on parenting? And yet… there it is. My father, my hero. It is true, I hate tennis now. When I step onto a court, I go through PTSD. But when I venture onto the court notwithstanding, because my husband is intrigued about learning tennis and I had once told him I “used to play a little” and he wants me to play with him, I settle into my old performance habits quickly and the proof of parenting from a tiger becomes undeniable.

My husband says, “How can a little girl like you play tennis like a big ass dude?” The velocity at which I can strike a ball takes him aback. He is shocked at how I can catch a fastball with my bare hand (I learned to do this once when my father got mad and started serving fastballs at me and the only way to not get hit and bruised up by the balls was to catch them…with my left hand; I’m right-handed), and the precision of my every movement. He is even more shocked at how after a few hours, he wants to keel over and collapse, but I’m hopping about, ready for the next set.

“Don’t you have asthma?” he asks.

“I do,” I say back, “but my father taught me how to get over it.”

“How the hell does one simply ‘get over’ asthma?” the husband wants to know.

Beyond that, the lessons learned from my father’s parenting (and tennis coaching) are tenacity and ferocity. These are the two most important traits I picked up from him, traits I would fall to my knees in gratitude for. The people in this world can be harsh. Life can be harsh. Yet I have persevered through every obstacle, through every offensive act ever attempted to be perpetrated on me by others because my father taught me tenacity and ferocity. Today I am a woman who is more than the apparent sum of her parts because of my father’s teachings.

Likewise, in spite of all the negativity and hostility hurled at Professor Chua, she weathers all of it with grace, as my mother noted, and the controversy won’t hit deeper than her skin because she possesses tenacity and ferocity, traits that can best be nurtured through my father’s style of parenting.

What’s more, in my heart of hearts I know that if only I had listened to my father more, I would have gone even farther, accomplished a hundred-fold what I accomplished today. I wasted my teenage years rebelling against him and pursuing a so-called elusive ever-changing speculation of happiness, and didn’t concentrate on my academics and extracurriculars as much as I should have.

Chua, I say, is right.

(pic from here)

Edit 1/21/10: Ask a Korean also supports Tiger Parenting.  See his excellent blog post here.

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