Parenting Without Borders by Christine Gross-Loh Ph.D

Author:Christine Gross-Loh Ph.D
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

THE TIGER NATION

Our plane to China touched down in a vast expanse of lush green fields on the outskirts of Shenyang, an industrial city in the northeast region of China (BMW and Michelin are among the corporations that have factories here). We were there to visit Northeast Yucai School, a highly regarded K–12 public school with some seven thousand students, which had been recommended to me by an expert on education in China and America.

As soon as Anna, Kumi, and I passed through customs, we were met by a group of the school’s high school students and their young teacher Lois. They instantly gravitated toward Anna, exclaiming over her and bending down to engage her with kind smiles. Throughout our stay, every time we came to the slightest obstacle—a sidewalk, a short flight of stairs—which I had usually navigated by bumping Anna down in her stroller—nearby students rushed to my side to lift her stroller in the air like a palanquin.

China is a vast country. There are huge gaps between rural and urban, educated and less educated, wealthy and poor populations. Even so, several generalizations hold true. Confucian ideas about family and learning permeate society and have a strong influence on child-rearing. Learning is both a moral endeavor and a family obligation. In China and in many other Confucian-influenced Asian societies, parenting and education are closely entwined, and learning isn’t just for the purpose of becoming smart and informed—it’s a form of self-cultivation.

The evening of our arrival, after an afternoon of sightseeing, we met with Lois and her husband, as well as with Madame Wang, the head of the international program at Northeast Yucai and my liaison at the school, and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Angela. Angela spoke four languages, Wang told me proudly, and has helped raise money for charity.

Over sizzling plates of Korean barbecue, our conversation soon turned toward Amy Chua’s memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which had received a lot of attention in China since being published in early 2011. Chua’s story of raising her two daughters to excellence in America through strict, exacting child-rearing methods she dubbed “Chinese parenting” had provoked heated discussion and controversy. While few American readers initially questioned that her book reflected what parenting was like in China, it turned out that dubbing her methods “Chinese parenting” was what made her book controversial to Chinese readers. “The Tiger Mother method is backwards and out of date,” Wang insisted in fluent and capable English. “Today, parents are more concerned about how to educate children to find their own ideas, to find their own path. I have my own life, and my daughter has her life. We are trying to raise children in a more Western way. I cannot say one thing is really correct.”

I was surprised. Wang had a more nuanced, if flexible, view of education and child-rearing than I’d expected to encounter. But I soon learned that many Chinese parents like her—urban and well educated and with one child to lavish their

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