Tiger Mom: Is Harsh Parenting Really the Answer
March 18, 2011
Tiger Mom: Is Harsh Parenting Really the Answer?
Discuss the following issues:
1. What Philosophical perspective is applicable to the article? “[Nature and nurture are] a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence that affects him after his birth” (Fancis Galton, 1874). The Nature/Nurture Philosophical perspective is most applicable to the article.
Amy Chua was raised in an “exceedingly strict household” by “Ethnically Chinese parents”. Her parents first migrated to the Philippines where they suffered very difficult times during the Japanese invasion of that territory. After several years, they moved to the USA. This presented a completely new set of challenges for the couple – “a new country and a new language”. Ensuring their children were fully prepared to compete in the economically competitive wild west which is the USA, Amy Chua’s parents put less emphasis on hers and her sisters’ happiness and more on restricting their choices and modeling to them that hard work and dogged effort are key to success.
As children, Amy and her siblings were not permitted to utter a word of English at home. Doing so earned them “a whack with a pair of chopsticks” per word! Raised in a home where her father demonstrated a formidable work ethic; Amy was given little elbow room to explore any deviating ideas she may have had growing up.
Amy imitated the behavior modeled to her by her parents, possibly because the temperament she was born with was in sync with facilitating such behaviors, “although a genetic predisposition does not necessarily imply genetic inevitability”, (Wade and Tavris, 2008). This rang true for Amy Chua’s case. The environmental conditions existing in her home worked hand in hand with her inherent personality traits to produce behavior traits of
Tiger Mom: Is Harsh Parenting Really the Answer?
Discuss the following issues:
1. What Philosophical perspective is applicable to the article? “[Nature and nurture are] a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence that affects him after his birth” (Fancis Galton, 1874). The Nature/Nurture Philosophical perspective is most applicable to the article.
Amy Chua was raised in an “exceedingly strict household” by “Ethnically Chinese parents”. Her parents first migrated to the Philippines where they suffered very difficult times during the Japanese invasion of that territory. After several years, they moved to the USA. This presented a completely new set of challenges for the couple – “a new country and a new language”. Ensuring their children were fully prepared to compete in the economically competitive wild west which is the USA, Amy Chua’s parents put less emphasis on hers and her sisters’ happiness and more on restricting their choices and modeling to them that hard work and dogged effort are key to success.
As children, Amy and her siblings were not permitted to utter a word of English at home. Doing so earned them “a whack with a pair of chopsticks” per word! Raised in a home where her father demonstrated a formidable work ethic; Amy was given little elbow room to explore any deviating ideas she may have had growing up.
Amy imitated the behavior modeled to her by her parents, possibly because the temperament she was born with was in sync with facilitating such behaviors, “although a genetic predisposition does not necessarily imply genetic inevitability”, (Wade and Tavris, 2008). This rang true for Amy Chua’s case. The environmental conditions existing in her home worked hand in hand with her inherent personality traits to produce behavior traits of