Amy Chua on Parenting

Amy Chua writing in The Wall Street Journal makes the case that just because you've written a good book doesn't mean you're not history's greatest monster:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

— attend a sleepover

— have a playdate

— be in a school play

— complain about not being in a school play

— watch TV or play computer games

— choose their own extracurricular activities

— get any grade less than an A

— not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

— play any instrument other than the piano or violin

— not play the piano or violin.

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

Be all that as it may, I feel that many less extreme parents subscribe to some version of this "video games bad, classical music good" view of the world. Personally, I feel like I turned out fine despite a completely inability to play piano, violin, or any other instrument. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time playing SimCity and some might be so bold as to trace my present-day interest in urban planning back to efforts to try to understand this game better. I also had a less well-known game dating from approximately the same time called L'Empereur, a turn-based strategy game set during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. As I recall, my dad cleverly deployed my interest in this game to get me to read some Napoleon biographies, and thence over the years to some other material about the French Revolution and even War and Peace by high school—I was already familiar with Marshall Kutuzov and several other relevant figures from the game.

The larger issue about Chua's piece is that it just seems very strange for her to be so worried about this. On the list of problems typically experienced by the children of Yale Law School faculty "not successful enough" comes way below "has dysfunctional relationship with mother."