Observations

My wife Dorit read the book and suggested that I must read it as well.  Actually it was more than a suggestion.  I sat down to start reading it, and within less than a day I was done.  The book took me to places I have long forgotten, vindicated some perceptions and attitudes I acquired over the years, and invalidated others.

As I started reading the book, I realized that Amy Chua, born in the year of the Tiger, is roughly my age.  She said, if I remember correctly, that her parents were married in 1960, and that in 1971 they moved.  Since the only year of the tiger around that time was 1962 (the year I was born), I knew we share a Chinese Horoscope.  I later found out that she was born October 26, 1962, which basically puts us a week apart as I was born November 3 of that same year.  Tiger, Jewish, son of a Chinese mother of Jewish Romanian descent…

As many of my friends know, my mother is a Holocaust survivor.  In fact, she was born in a concentration camp (or as we knew it at home “Lager”, short for Konzentrationlager).  She then became an immigrant in Israel.  My father was a son of immigrants (from Turkey and Morocco).  Children upbringing in the family was, to say the least, harsh.  Amy Chua does not mention physical punishment in her excellent book.  If I wrote a book, I would mention that.  My mother is extremely dominant.  Even today, she is extremely opinionated, argumentative, and always right.  She is also one of the few people I know who can use an argument, and as soon as she realizes that the argument is not going in her direction, take a 180 towards the opponent’s side, winning the argument from the opposite side.  Leaving the opponent baffled and claiming, in vain, that this is what he was saying all along.  As a parent, I once made a conscious decision to let my children win some arguments.  Only so they can feel empowered and not powerless (a better word would be impotent).  In the household where I grew up, my father’s opinion only counted when it was in complete agreement with my mother’s.  He was never the voice of reason, nor was he ever a shelter from her wrath.

In short, I see a lot of similarities between my growing up environment, and that of Sophia and Lulu.  An extremely dominant, clever mother, married to a nice guy.  A mother who would basically stop at nothing on the way to accomplishing her goals.  I’m saying her goals, as clearly the goals were hers and nobody else’s.

Now basically, and surprisingly, I actually agree with Amy Chua.  Relaxed upbringing leads to mediocrity.  Giving your child the feeling that he or she is always right, always the best leads to bad results.  There’s also the discussion of what is the motivation for good parenting?  Amy Chua keeps bringing up the point that many parents set a very basic goal of providing a happy childhood.  I agree with her.  Parenting is not about making your child feeling good about himself.  It’s about providing for him, while providing him the tools to become self-sustained.  In the Jewish scriptures, it states clearly that a father must teach his son a craft.  It also says there that by not teaching him a craft, he may actually teach him to steal.  The inability to provide, it suggests in the scriptures, will drive a person to steal.  By the way, a father must also teach his son to swim.  I would generalize these two skills and suggest that parenting is about survival skills and not about fun.  Swimming to save your life (and possibly others) and the ability to provide for oneself (and possibly others) are key to good parenting.  Fun is good.  And of course, if possible, fun should be experienced in childhood, but it is not the main goal.  I claim that as Amy Chua suggests, Western parenting is more about fun than it is about survival.  I tend to agree, yet I believe it has nothing to do with Western parenting, it has to do with bad parenting.

Indeed, as Amy Chua suggests, and George Carlin agrees, some parents think that (sometimes undeserved) great self-image, fun, freedom, privacy are sufficient to make a great parent.  I’m not sure whether or not children actually like this kind of parenting.  I suspect that most children like to be challenged, understand failure and motivation, dig the drive to become better at whatever it is that they do.  Being excellent is indeed the best feedback that one can get on his or her way to get better.  What George Carlin is saying that is the parent’s need to provide good self-image for their children, they avoid having him or her face the reality.  If a kid lost in a game, he is a loser, and there’s nothing to change that.  Carlin says that some parents would say: “you’re a winner, Bobby, you’re the last winner…” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4).  Unlike a good friend of mine who thought that Amy used humiliation, I actually agree with Amy: kids are strong, they can face the truth.

But there are areas where I completely disagree with Amy Chua.  There’s no particular order in the following.

First and foremost, let me provide a reasoning for my parents, but I guess Amy Chua won’t disagree.  When I was little, I mean as little as four years old, my mother always told me that I had to be a good student.  I had to be a good student because “they can take away your house and all your possessions, but they will never be able to  take away your education.  Your education will go with you everywhere you go, if you’re alive that is, and will be able to provide for you and your family no matter where you are”.  I know it’s a strong statement, and it certainly is big for a four year old.  But in all honesty, while I was a complete rebel during my school years, I became a good student where it counted most: in my college years.  And indeed, my life took me to many places, and I could practice my craft, or the results of my education in every single one of them.  It seems to me that being deported, stripped of your possessions, resorting to basic survival skills just to keep you alive, remains in the collective memory of a family for generations.  I suspect Amy Chua knows what I’m talking about.

I must comment that while I admire her dedication, I do feel that on occasions she was irrational to say the least.  Driving a child to success, and both Sophia and Lulu are undoubtedly successful, is no simple matter.  But one has to ask: at what cost?  This is more of a mental question, not a financial one.

Let me add that while I see bad parenting all around (from children who dictate the agendas for their parents, embarrassing them in public every time they have a chance, with no consequences), I doubt that it has anything to do with a certain culture.  Amy Chua does suggest that she’s seen Chinese Mothers from all walks of life, from different cultures.  But that the skill of being a Chinese mother can possibly be attributed to immigrants.  I have a tendency to agree.  But generally, I hate generalizations, and stereotyping.  I always tend to think that almost everything is evenly distributed.  But admittedly, some aren’t.  A good example will be the Nobel Laureates who are of Jewish descent.  22% of the Nobel Laureates are of Jewish descent (http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html).  I suspect it has something to do with Chinese Mothers…  This is not sarcasm, as I, a Jewish boy from Tel Aviv am the son of a Chinese Mother who happened to have been born in Romania…

I had (and still having) a reasonably successful career in the area of Computer Software.  My sister is a prominent researcher with a world leader in Pharmaceuticals.  My brother is a very successful investment banker.  With the exception of my sister’s Ph.D. we all have Masters degrees.  And the question that keeps coming to us is whether we would have made it here without our Chinese Mother, and my answer is simple: not a chance.