Forums > Living in Kunming > Chinese Education and Parenting Interesting article, thank you. My 2 cents:
While there are many silly aspects to so called "western" style parenting today, the parenting style featured in the article-as well as the one my Chinese friends experienced- is no improvement. Unless your only goal is to stay alive.
This so called "Asian values" parenting represents a race to the bottom. If you want to adapt yourself to the most alienated aspects of the most alienated societies in history, and one of the most troubled periods-I am sure this method is helpful for short term survival and job security.
If you want to enjoy your life, develop into a 3 dimensional person, and also contribute something to society and the solving of its problems-being raised this way is counterproductive.
Survival and living have never been the same thing, and at our unique point in history, survival no longer even leads in the direction of further survival ( I am thinking about climate change for example).
The author of the article is a grown adult who still believes in the existence of "losers".
She also hasn't lived much if she thinks nothing is fun until you are "good" at it-and I question her concept of what good is. In truth nothing is fun if you are not comfortable doing it. Not the same thing.
The truth is, this person displays basically no ethics at all-I mean, don't look for Harriet Tubman, Da Vinci, Li Bai (Li Po), or Martin Luther King on her list of kids who turned out well. There would be no good life to enjoy in the first place, if everyone simply competed to conform to the basest requirements of survival and "success" in society.
The timing of this article (2010/2011) is no accident. People are worried about economic security.
I DO NOT think a balance is needed between this reductionist, cynical "Chinese" view of parenting (and life itself), and the confused, passive/aggressive, psycho babble techniques now featured in the west.
Both need to be rejected in favor of a 3rd way. That 3rd way can be found in other traditions. Or it can be something really contemporary.
Either way, the very creativity needed to forge a parenting style suited to the unique challenges of life in the present day, is proof enough of the inadequacy of the feudalistic approach offered by this woman.