Best Column

The Chinese mothers debate: They're the ones who are too 'soft'

The New York Times' David Brooks argues that it's Chinese parents like Amy Chua, not Western ones, who indulge their kids by depriving them of opportunities to master social skills

Yale law professor Amy Chua's controversial Wall Street Journal essay, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," continues to provoke debate. Many took issue with Chua's proud description of her child-rearing methods — no sleepovers, a boot-camp approach to piano practice — and her assertion that "Western parents" are doing their kids a disservice by being too coddling. But The New York Times' David Brooks says that it's Chua who is too "soft" and indulgent: "Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as [participating in] a sleepover with 14-year-old girls" and other "arduous" and important social situations kids need to master. Here, an excerpt:

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood.

Read the entire story in The New York Times.

Recommended

A company made a meatball from lab-grown woolly mammoth, and you can't try it
Mammoth meatball
'extinct protein'

A company made a meatball from lab-grown woolly mammoth, and you can't try it

6 marvelous homes with great kitchens
House
Feature

6 marvelous homes with great kitchens

The Check-In: How to plan a trip to Antarctica
Penguins on an iceberg
Feature

The Check-In: How to plan a trip to Antarctica

The Week contest: Seaweed invasion
sargassum seaweed.
Feature

The Week contest: Seaweed invasion

Most Popular

The snowmelt in California could cause a long-lost lake to re-emerge
flooding in Corcoran, California.
lost lake

The snowmelt in California could cause a long-lost lake to re-emerge

The 8 most bizarre moments of Gwyneth Paltrow's ski crash trial
Gwyneth Paltrow
downhill

The 8 most bizarre moments of Gwyneth Paltrow's ski crash trial

33 swimmers in Hawaii accused of 'pursuing, corralling, and harassing' dolphin pod
A group of swimmers chase after a pod of dolphins.
Leave 'Em Alone!

33 swimmers in Hawaii accused of 'pursuing, corralling, and harassing' dolphin pod