Culture and Childrearing

P.J. O'Rourke has a funny and insightful review of Amy Chua's Chinese Tiger Mom book. He begins by observing how Chua has riled up America's moms. Being told you're a bad mom tends to get moms upset.

But being a male parent with a typical dad-like involvement in my children’s lives​—​I know all of their names​—​I thought Battle Hymn was great. That is, I thought it made me look great. Not that I read the dreadful book, but I did buy each of my children a copy and inscribed it, “So you think you’ve got it bad?

What most amuses me about the Chua story is that she thinks she can parent better than her husband - because of her superior Chinese mothering traditions. She and her husband are both Yale law school professors, but her husband is Jewish. According to the Daily Beast:

He was raised in a conventionally success-oriented New York Jewish family. His father was a shrink. His mother was an art critic who, writes Chua dismissively, “believed that childhood should be full of spontaneity, freedom, discovery and experience.” (Chua devotes a fair amount of room to her ideological conflicts over child-rearing with her mother-in-law.)

Here's the thing. Even if Chua doesn't like her mother-in-law's child rearing methods, her mother-in-law somehow raised a person who is at the same general level of accomplishment as Chua!

Here's the other thing. Jewish people have been enormously successful in America, across academic, professional, and business endeavors. They must know something about raising successful children. Statistically speaking, I would bet that they are more of a success story than the Chinese.

O'Rourke calls himself an "Irish Setter Dad".
But I bet he's not bad.