Are Chinese mothers superior to American mothers?

[Pingieking]

*snip*

I agree with a lot of that.

One thing I really don't like about the "Chinese" parenting method is how much their kids feel like cookie-cutter products. They're some of the least interesting people I know. When I compile a list of the most boring people I've met (and I have done this) the first person who shows up that wasn't raised this way is number 16. 14 of the top 15 play piano like nobody's business, and 12 of the top 15 play violin. All 15 consistently score A's, and 11 of them are either doctors, in med school, or want to practice medicine.
I also find them to be not much fun to be around. They seem incapable of having a thoughtful conversation about anything that wouldn't show up in an exam. They've never had a serious discussion of who would win in a fight; a pride of lions or a school of tuna. They've never explained sex to someone using quantum mechanics and Dirac notation (men are simple systems with a p+ and p- state, while women are incredibly complex systems...). They've never given answers on philosophy exams like "Why not?", "Because I said so." or, "Since the derivative of that person's identity exists in all time..."

Yes, the kids who came out of the "Chinese" parenting system are incredibly skilled, but they're also not very interesting. Which is a shame, because I'm quite attracted to Asian girls (possibly a genetic thing, being Oriental myself), but I've yet to meet an Oriental girl who I've actually found interesting.

On another note, what is with Chinese mothers and piano and the violin? I play the Chinese zither and I've consistently gotten the disapproving response of either "that's a waste of time, nobody plays that" (which, somewhat ironically, is part of the reason I took it up to begin with) or "why do you play that instead of a proper instrument like the piano or violin?" Is there someone inherently sexy about those two instruments to Chinese women that I just don't see?

 

[Warachia]

NO. Although this is taking one person to stereotype all others, she seems like a horrible mother, good parenting is not making your kid commercially successful especially when that involves forcing your own set of valuables on to them.

 

[MikailCaboose]

No. Part of life is the social aspect of it. Being raised like that creates people who are insanely good at one thing, but horrible when dealing with people, which ends up being counter-productive to society as a whole.

 

[IceStar100]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?KEYWORDS=china+parents I don't agree with everything she said, especially not allowing your children to play computer games or join a sports team. But western parents being too hung up on their child's self-esteem makes sense to me.

Don't forget Asian are more likly to commit sucide.

 

[Nalesnik]

That sounds pretty rough. If every mother in the world felt that way, there would be no orchestras, athletes, artists, or actors. What a dry boring world that would be.

There would be orchestras, but they would be comprised entirely of pianists and violinists playing the same classical tunes over and over again.

 

[VanityGirl]

Yes because generally choosing a boy over a girl in the country of the "one child policy" makes one a tremendous mother.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

There's still mothers in the U.S.? I thought children these days were raised by TV, games, and the occasional babysitter because both parents insist on having/need full time jobs.

Insist on? They actually do need them, just to pay the larger and larger bills in this shitty economy.

Notice the slash. Insist on SLASH need. Meaning it could go either way.

Plenty of families need two working parents to pay the bills. There are also plenty that live an exorbitant lifestyle on credit, and thus they don't need two working parents, they just want to live beyond their means. There are also other families who do just plain insist on having two working parents because they put their careers above all else, it's really not that uncommon.

 

[Khada]

99% of ALL parent are bad. Ive only ever known one truly healthy and balanced family and no, its not mine.

This is so completely wrong of a generalization that it's more sad you think this rather than funny.

Perhaps I should clarify for your benefit. When I say 'bad', what I meant is; worse than they should be. I could even be lenient and say 90%. If you still disagree I would say it's sad you think that most parents have got it right. The prime reason it never changes.

 

[InnerRebellion]

I wanted to slap this woman so hard as I read this. I'm only fifteen, but I could feel rage building up inside me. I have an affinity for children from ages 0-7, and any parent who pressures, abuses (verbally, physically or mentally) a child of that age and puts so much pressure on them is not a good parent. Now, I'm not saying once you leave that range its okay, but that range of life is where I feel most involved.

I'd like to bring up an example.

Many users here will remember this from your childhood: You did something wrong, you got spanked on the ass. I'm highly against child abuse, and I classify that as abusing your child. When my brother was acting up once, my father took him on his knee, brought down his pants and underpants and repeatedly slapped him, ignoring his cries. They've done it to my sisters, and to me. I've seen hundreds of parents doing it to their kids in public places as well. But I digress. As I said, he spanked my then six year old brother about four or five times. Finally snapping, enraged that this was the third sibling I had seen this done to, I exploded on him, accusing him of child abuse, and telling him that hitting him is only going to the make the boy more emotionally distraught than he is now. Telling me I have no right to even dare to challenge him, my father went to hit me. I hit back, and we got into the first fist fight I've ever gotten into with him. (Out of a total of three.)

Yes, I may have acted like an insolent punk, but I still see hitting a child as "discipline" or "motivation" as cruel, and inhumane. Why is it you can't hit an adult for being disrespectful, but you can hit a kid for doing what the adult just did?

In short, I see abuse, no matter what form, as an ineffective and cruel method.

 

[BonsaiK]

Look at this post carefully. You might find some foul language but what you won't find is a spelling mistake.

Mum was in our bedrooms taking us temperature

(Not trying to take away from your actual point, I just thought that was pretty funny!)

Hey, "us" is a word. Anyway, I fixed it so I didn't get a beating, now piss off, Mum.

I guess joking around was never a big thing for you. Geez.

Hey I was kidding too, you know...

 

[Cowabungaa]

She clearly is. Come on, there is no sarcasm coming from that.

I guess I just couldn't believe the amounts of generalisations and stupidity. That first picture of her, I just couldn't believe that smugness on her face was real. She has this "Look at my awesome trophies, am I not awesome?" look.

The world keeps amazing me from time to time, for better or worse. I thought High Expectations Asian Dad was silly... Not ´allowing´ to get any grade below an A, bloody hell.

 

[BioHazardMan]

99% of ALL parent are bad. Ive only ever known one truly healthy and balanced family and no, its not mine.

This is so completely wrong of a generalization that it's more sad you think this rather than funny.

Perhaps I should clarify for your benefit. When I say 'bad', what I meant is; worse than they should be. I could even be lenient and say 90%. If you still disagree I would say it's sad you think that most parents have got it right. The prime reason it never changes.

Even that is still laughable. If that many parents "weren't that great" prisons would be our only form of economy.

 

[La Barata]

From what I've seen, Jeffrey Dahmer would be a better mother than most american mothers

You want to explain that a little more?

Nah, that's just me being a douche in a bad mood and looking for a random fight on the internet after my girlfriend dumped me and started telling all my friends that I tried to rape her

 

[Khada]

99% of ALL parent are bad. Ive only ever known one truly healthy and balanced family and no, its not mine.

This is so completely wrong of a generalization that it's more sad you think this rather than funny.

Perhaps I should clarify for your benefit. When I say 'bad', what I meant is; worse than they should be. I could even be lenient and say 90%. If you still disagree I would say it's sad you think that most parents have got it right. The prime reason it never changes.

Even that is still laughable. If that many parents "weren't that great" prisons would be our only form of economy.

You suppose that the only indicator that a parent is worse than they should be is whether or not they have a child in prison? You think prisons even exist because of bad parenting? They exist because of our flawed institutions/systems, and laws are what politicians without any expertise on the subject create as a solution to the problem that never addresses the root cause. Want to know why? Because prisons are privatized and the inmates used for slave labor. The people that own the prisons are the same people that line the pockets of the politicians.
Removing the reason people commit crimes (the big one being poverty) wouldn't benefit the 'right people'.
Anyway, I'm clearly bashing my head against a wall of ignorance so I'm done.

 

[JWAN]

Quantity, they definitely have us beat. Quality, well...

Not to offend any Jews or Germans, but she sounds like Hitler. Glad I'm not Chinese.

^ this. Good ol Chairman Mao knew how to raise children!... by raise I mean beat them and send them to a rice paddy

I always thought he raised children by starving them and making them murder their countrymen.

That too. He had all sorts of creative solutions to his country's problems and it all ended with people getting dead. Its like when you hear Russians joke about "40 bad years of weather" courtesy of Stalin's Collectivization programs. When you read about it you just cannot comprehend the insanity of it all, for gods-sakes my neighbor still has scars from the Gulags.