Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Raising a child can be done in various ways, but one thing is certain: all parents want what's best for their children. There are however quite a few different opinions on how to raise a child in the best way. One of the more prominent and controversial ways of raising a child is the Chinese way, which is discussed by Amy Chua in her article "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", published on January 8th in 2011. The article is published in The Wall Street Journal, which is an American newspaper, which means the readers of the article are mainly Americans and western people in general.

In the article Amy Chua argues that the Chinese way of raising a child is far better than the western way.
Amy Chua has a decent insight on both the western- and the Chinese way of parenting, since she, herself, is Chinese and in addition to that she is married to a Western man, with whom she has two children.
There are quite a few things that appeals to ethos in the article. First of all, she was raised in the Chinese way, and because of that she is today a professor at Yale Law School. It shows us that strict parenting results in academically successful children.
Another thing that strengthens her ethos is that she is referring a lot to her own youth, telling us about a few incidents in her childhood, where her strict parents made her improve.

Chua is really comparative and mentions a few studies to prove her point about the very opposing mindsets that the western-and the Chinese parents have.
"In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way" (lines 34-38) In addition to that, Chua mentions that the high amount Chinese students with good grades compared to the smaller amount of western students with good grades is due to the superior mindset of the Chinese parents. Proving her points, by using several studies, appeals very much to logos. Overall Amy Chua is being really provocative, especially the title of the article is really provocative, since the readers of the newspaper are western and since she is basically saying, that she and Chinese mothers in general are better than all the American and western parents.

"Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty - lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image."

That's another obvious example of Chua being extremely provocative. She offends the Western parents by saying that they aren't able to help their kids improve when necessary.
Furthermore Chua is most likely outraging a lot of Western people, when she says that it's simple motivation, when a parent calls her seven-year-old daughter lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic. (Lines 135-140)

The Chinese way of parenting has been discussed quite a lot by western people, and there are lots of different opinions on whether or not it is the proper way to raise a child. One's opinions depends on which culture you come from, and the values and norms that are accepted in the west are very different to the Chinese values and norms, and therefore it can be very difficult for western people to accept the things Chua is doing to her children. Chua clearly sees herself as a good parent, despite the fact that she wouldn't allow her seven-year-old daughter to use the bathroom, because she couldn't play a piece of piano perfectly. Chua wouldn't even let her go to sleep; furthermore she threatened her and insulted her.
Her daughter eventually learned the piece, but what if she hadn't? Would Chua have done anything worse? It's very obvious that Chua's intention is to convince Western parents, that the Chinese way of parenting is the ideal one. However she might not succeed in that, because of her extremely provocative way of engaging the reader. Perhaps it would have been better if she'd been less provocative and more neutral and objective. As Chua claims, it's correct that Chinese students are getting better grades than Western students because Chinese parents force their children to improve themselves academically. But you could argue that the children deserves to have spare time where they can do whatever they feel like, and also have time to socialize. The question is whether academic success is more important than having a great social life. That is probably something that the two different cultures will never agree on. The Chinese parents want their children to be academically successful, while the western parents want their children to have free will and have time to develop their social skills. Perhaps the best thing would be to combine the two opinions.