Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy

January 18, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Amy Chua says that her recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is about her personal “journey” of change away from the “very strict Chinese parenting model.” But the Wall Street Journal op-ed page edit of her memoir reduces Chua’s journey to a one-dimensional promo for that extreme Chinese model. The WSJ selected those elements of Chua’s story that embody the current conservative world-view in the US. For example, the chief family virtues in this conservative model – for the children and the parents as well – are hard work and perseverance. The model also emphasizes goals rather than process; the “journey” is less important.  Still less relevant is the way the child feels about any of it. Finally, the tiger mom method places all responsibility on the individual and rejects the influence of external, situational forces.

The appeal of the Chinese model stems in part from our fear that America has become, in Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s phrase, “a nation of wusses.” Rendell was referring to the NFL’s decision to reschedule a football game in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when heavy snow made travel to the stadium dangerous and nearly impossible.

The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.

Rendell was joking, but the joke reflected our anxieties about ourselves vis-à-vis China.

The remedy for this wussiness, at least in the ideal WSJ family, is basically the parent-as-marine-drill-sergeant. The drill sergeant doesn’t “journey.” He barks that he wants results not excuses, my way or the highway, and similar bons mots. This model of child-rearing combines several elements of the conservative mentality: authoritarianism, intolerance of ambiguity, cognitive simplicity, and certainty.* Parents are always right, their rules are clear and absolute, and children should unquestioningly do what parents say.** Therefore, whatever parents do to enforce rules is legitimate and beneficial since it leads to the desired results. (Some of Chua’s methods will strike many readers as psychological cruelty if not abuse.)

Another virtue in the war on wussiness is Toughness. This means the rejection of emotions, especially “feminine” emotions like sympathy, as irrelevant or even detrimental to the task at hand. (Remember the right-wing reaction to “empathy”?) “Masculine” emotions that can be used for goal attainment are O.K. These include pride and anger, and perhaps even envy and greed (hey, four out of seven ain’t bad.)

This tension between toughness and kindness towards children is nothing new. The Lewis Carroll poem from Alice in Wonderland (1865) alluded to in the title of this post was itself a parody reaction to a popular poem of the time, “Speak Gently”

Speak gently to the little child!
Its love be sure to gain . . . .

And

Speak gently to the young, for they
Will have enough to bear;
Pass through this life as best they may,
’Tis full of anxious care!

The conflict is also reflected in the bimodal reaction over at Amazon, where Chua’s book is #6 on the bestseller list. In the end, I doubt that the book will have much lasting influence on child rearing here, though some parents will use it to justify what they were already inclined to do.

The stronger influence will run the other way; American culture will change Asian-American parenting. As Chua says, she was “humbled” (and presumably changed) by her 13-year-old. The Asian kids at my son’s high school (where they were about half the population) would often say, “Asian parents are crazy.” When these kids and Amy Chua’s kids become parents, they will probably not be quite so “crazy.”
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* For a somewhat controversial review of the literature on the conservative mentality, see this Psychological Bulletin article, which includes studies from other countries.

**This upends the usual American formulation, at least in movies and other fictions, where children are typically wiser than parents. (See my earlier post contrasting this configuration with the British version of childhood as seen in “Atonement.” Or this post on the non-authoritarian sitcom family.)

Mom and Apple Pie Sesame Noodles

January 17, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Amy Chua’s essay in the Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” has been getting a ton of attention.

When it comes to child-rearing, Americans seem forever to be seeking out expert advice. This used to be the province of print – books and magazine articles – but videos and TV shows are now in the media mix of advice for parents. This advice cannot be an “only in America” enterprise. Still, I would guess that we manufacture and consume more than our share.

Societies with a stronger sense of tradition would have less anxiety about whether they were doing it right. But in American culture, tradition usually loses out to rationality – effective means to desired goals. There seems to be a value on rejecting the ways of the previous generation (“I’m not going to make the same mistakes my parents made.”) Turning to experts for new ways of raising kids also fits nicely with American optimism and belief in progress. (“The new, improved child-rearing – get it now. Operators are standing by.”)

The trouble is that parents have many goals for their children – success/achievement, social skills and friendships, autonomy, self-fulfillment, proper behavior, happiness, and so on – for the immediate present and for various distances into the future. These goals are not in perfect harmony, and to get more of one good thing, you may have to give up another. Worse, even if parents could decide which goals they wanted to emphasize, they have precious little evidence, beyond the very short run, for the effects of one strategy or another. So we turn to those who claim to have some special knowledge, and the books and videos just keep on coming. “How can I make sure my kid is happy?” Or smart? Or successful? Or well-liked? If there were clear answers to these questions, we wouldn’t need another book.

So while these books purport to tell us how to raise kids, they also document the anxieties and ideologies of their authors and readers.

The Wall Street Journal article is a case in point. I refer to it as the “WSJ article” because the Amy Chua in that article is much different from the Amy Chua of the book. Here is the cover line Chua wrote for her publisher, Penguin.

This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

But the WSJ article has no such change of mind, no ambivalence, no uncertainty. The Chua in the WSJ is the Tiger Mom, driving her daughters with a strictness that most readers will see as cruelty. And in the end, the WSJ Chua is triumphant. Her unrelenting demands and no-sympathy tactics vindicated, she remains convinced of the rightness of her approach. But that is far from the whole story. Here she is in an interview with Jeff Yang at SF Gate:

The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they’d put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn’t even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model.

It’s possible that Chua is kidding herself. Yang’s SF Gate post quotes someone on Chua’s “woeful lack of self-examination.” But he also says, “The book’s tone is slightly rueful, frequently self-deprecating and entirely aware of its author’s enormities.” Yes, enormities.

The WSJ edit tells the story so as to make it conform with the American conservative world view (more on this in another post). I guess that one moral of the story is that you should be wary of heavily edited excerpts on the WSJ editorial page. Or, as the book reports my classmates in fourth grade invariably ended, “If you want to find out what happens, you’ll have to read the book.”

Animated Speakers

January 12, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

When I teach, I rarely use the board. My handwriting is terrible, and for just about everything I say in class, I have a write-up that I post on Blackbloard with the ideas and evidence laid out systematically and all the key concepts and names in bold type. When I do write on the board, I often see student struggling to decipher the letters. I tell students not to worry about copying it all down. They can find everything written clearly and spelled correctly on Blackboard.

Underlying my casual attitude to the board is the assumption that I-write-you-copy ritual breaks the flow of thought. That’s also one of my objections to PowerPoint, especially if students focus on writing down what’s on a slide rather than thinking about what’s being said.

Who am I kidding? The only one whose thought gets broken is me. For students, a pause while I write on the board would give them a minute to think about the idea. Besides, I realize now that having a written version, even with no pause for reflection, reinforces and somehow adds to a lecture. I realize this thanks to RSA Animate. Watch even a minute or two of one of their animations. Here for example is Zizek on cultural capitalism.



The drawings don’t really add anything intellectually, and the words are just a shortened transcript of what Ehrenreich is saying. But the message coming simultaneously via two senses seems much more memorable. (The RSA site also has the video of Zizek on camera for the full half-hour lecture, for connoisseurs interested in side-by-side comparisons.).

I guess I’ll be spending the rest of winter break working on my marker skills.

Beach Blogging Bingo

January 8, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

The SocioBlog is heading for a week in the sun (I hope). Internet access may be dicey. If I do post, it will be from . . . well, I’ll let the Saxophone Colossus tell you. (Jazzers will know what I mean. Or click on the link for the classic track.)