Let's Talk About Your Mother...

I heard word (not the bird) of a book called 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' about the 'chinese' way of raising children. To quote the blurb that appears on the back, front and inside covers of the copy I perused - 'This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising children than Western ones.'

And rather than reviewing a book I haven't read, I read bits of it, in store like Amy Chua's take on what the violing represents but nothing comprehensive. This article probably makes most of my critique redundant, but here is a run down of the impression I get:

The 'chinese' way of parenting is to obsessively push your child to succeed. Thus an A- is an unacceptable grade and you pull your kid out of school for extra violin practice, you never give your kids praise and you put them down and make sure they never accept that they are good enough.

Amy argues (perhaps... or some reviewer) that 'the results are hard to argue with' and my fear is that prospective idiot parents may actually accept that statement as somehow valid in some way.

It's this 'success' that is the crucial fallacy that makes me worry about imitators of the 'Chinese' way of parenting, or even societal approach. This relentless pushing of your child so they get into Yale and can play classical music in world class symphony orchestras is all easily unstuck by the simple fallacy that it ascribes a universal definition to success.

Such a definition does not exist, but 'high-context cultures' fall into the trap constantly. While it is true to say that 'rules exist for a reason' it is not true to say that those reasons are good ones. Pursuing academic success is fine, if our educational system was actually a good one, but it isn't. Up until post-graduate university studies it is almost entirely about assessment and has very little to do with knowledge.

Higher education is very vocationally specific, in the same way as secondary education is very focused on getting kids into university, university in turn is very focused on getting kids into salaried positions at large pre-existing firms.

Both these situations arise I feel worldwide because security is far more marketable than risk taking. My personal experience studying economics and finance is that a degree in it is almost the equivalent of being a 'certified fool' unless you read widely outside of the prescribed texts and remain skeptical of everything you are taught.

It's on the outskirts of academia you find invention, creation and progress. The individuals taking these risks may be professors themselves inside academia, but there theories don't make it onto the academic syllabus worldwide (behavioural economics being a case in point, your average graduate won't touch this emerging feild and will not even know they have been trained in Neo-classical economics, they will just think they have learned 'Economics')

The merits of the 'Chinese' tiger mother method sink or swim against academic results being a worhtwhile pursuit.

I don't think the goal is necessarily 'Chinese' in my experience the same parental concern manifests itself everywhere. Namely 'Medicine and Law are for winners, dentistry and accounting for losers' attitude. What is the attraction to Medicine for example? There are few highly influential doctors in global society, they are not kingmakers, innovators (apart from the obvious medical breakthroughs) they don't sit anywhere within the Forbes 500 rich list, they are rarely Times' Man of the Year and are relatively low profile compared to business school graduates, musicians, artists and scientists.

The answer is that all the other professions entail risk, whereas Medicine is attractive because it is the best compensated secure profession. People will always get sick, due to the maslownian heirarchy people make a priority out of getting better and are willing to pay to do so. Thus doctors will probably always lead a comfortable life relative to the average shmuck. By comparison, one musician can earn $40 million dollars in a year while vast numbers of muso's earn almost nothing from their calling and most pouring coffees for doctors.

The parenting role is almost irrelevant though because from the information provided in the preceeding paragraph it is impossible to determine who would be happiest.

I have sadly controversial views on parenting, they are as follows:

1. You don't have to live your childs life.

This means exactly what it says. Your child is the one that actually has to practice medicine or live on the streets, not you. Their experience is subjective and it is up to them to choose how they wish to experience life. If somebody blocked you from taking some kind of risk to make them feel better, eg. preventing you from going on holiday to South America because of kidnapping, it would feel like usurpation - and you would be right. Your career, and education are far more significant than a holiday so why should any parent be allowed to usurp their childs will on such a significant part of their lives.

2. You owe your life to your child, not the other way round.

This argument is often degraded as immature the 'I didn't choose to be born.' But I feel it is fundamentally valid. One way or another a parent chooses to have a child, even if it is their choice to continue to observe their own religious prejudices. There are viable ways to prevent and terminate pregnancy. If you choose to have a child, then you take responsibility for everything that comes with. You are bringing a sentient individual into the world, yyou have to look after that individual until they can support themselves. Society will step in because our community is awesome, but fundamentally a parent in having a child has committed their lives to the support and raising of that child that they may be whoever they wish to be and belong to themselves (until such a time as they choose to have a child). In return, the child owes you nothing, absolutely nothing. Their requitted love is a bonus, but they don't even have to turn up to your funeral. It's your job to win their love, not the reverse. (which pretty much entirely invalidates Tiger Mother method).

3. Yu encourage and enthuse your kid.

Under 1, we have established that parents don't have the right to usurp the risks their child is willing to take for their own personal comfort. Stepping beyond this, a parent has to, to the best of their ability actually create opportunities for their child to succeed at what they want to do. It's your job to find your kid a basketball team, get them music lessons or pull them out of school and find them a butchers apprenticeship. This is not pushing though, this is going with the flow. As the cracked.com article pointed out whoever heard of a kid giving up drawing when their parent said their first crappy offerings were good.

4. You teach choice and responsibility.

Which you can't do if you don't accept number 2. That would be hypocritical. This though is the basic ingredient for making an individual not a dick, and thus a functioning member of a community. It is a simple repeatable phrase 'well that was your choice, you have to take responsibility for the consequences.' Much bad parenting is trying to insulate kids from the consequences of their decisions. They are protected from failure. An inability to accept responsibility for ones position in life is the key shaper of embittered individuals, they blame the world for their problems. My own mother for example has carried the belief that her family growing up were miserable because they were poor, it occured to me much later (if not her) that perhaps they were poor because they were miserable. Once again it is actually impossible to tell on the surface who is happier between a paraplegic and a lottery winner.

5. Happiness is the goal.

On the surface having an academically successful kid that can play an unpopular* style of music profficiently seems preferable to raising a child that has a drug addiction and no direction in life. However, if I had to bet on one actually finding the motivation to achieve happiness by implementing lifestyle changes it would be the latter.
Regardless this isn't a bogus dilemma, there is success in a predefined regimented context (like academia, and prescriptive genres of music) and their is success in reality. You don't even have to create the iPod to be a success. You just have to be happy, happiness is determined by genetics, parenting till around the age of 6 and achievement of short term goals (regardless of actual context). The first two an individual can do nothing about. Unless you are a parent you can do something about another individuals happiness. I imagine it takes collossal discipline to actually live the words 'I just want you to be happy' because vested interest crops up all the time. But that's the goal, parents should try and live it.

But the last thing I will say on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, apart from being pretty much the antithesis of good parenting from my own prejudice, is that on a personal level I found it reassuring. I have a prejudice against a totalitarian government responsible for decades of widespread misery rising up in the world. The emerging China myth though I feel will amount to very little. High context cultures are great when it comes to playing catch-up on a pre-defined path of success, as Japan did up until the 80's. But when it takes time to take the lead that's where you need the entreprenuers, the risk takers, the dreamers and these are not produced by blind dedication to a predefined path. China thus far has proved less innovative than Japan that at least produced the Walkman and the Nintendo before its bubble burst.

*I don't mean to diss classical music, but it is in most places in the world sustained by government funding because it cannot attract audiences willing to pay the monies that would make it viable as a private sector industry. I have enjoyed classical music, at free concerts put on by funded institutions, government bodies or long dead benefactors. By contrast I have often paid $80 or more to see public school drop outs from Brooklyn rock a concert hall and I am almost never alone at these events.