Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Yale law professor Amy Chua, "Why Chinese mothers are superior," trumpeting the parenting style of Asian mothers in creating high achieving children. Her secrets included not allowing her daughters to attend sleepovers, nor have a playdate, nor appear in a school play, and "not not" allowing them to play an instrument -- and the instrument had to be violin or piano: "My Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough."
It created a lot of stir (as well as being a great plug for her book, which also came out last week), but the pushback has already begun. Among those pushing back is Ioakim Boutakidis, an assistant professor of child and adolescent studies at Cal State Fullerton. Altadenan Boutakidis wrote us that the stir about Chua's book "prompted me to collect my own thoughts on the matter as friends kept asking me about the story, given my background as someone who not only researches the effects of different types of parenting on child outcomes, but has focused specifically on Asian American parenting, and who himself happens to be married to a Chinese woman, with 2 half Greek- half Chinese sons." Using his own training and life experience, Boutakidis started his own blog, grecoamerican, where he examines parenting styles, culture, and outcomes, and we recommend you take a look at it.
UPDATE: Our friends at Macaroni Kid, one of the premiere parenting websites, have a review of Amy Chua's talk this week at Vroman's.
