Jan 12, 2011 “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”
I’m borrowing a line from Party Down in response to this article in The Wall Street Journal. I’ll give the line some context: caterer Roman DeBeers is preparing junk food and cheap booze for a wealthy jock family, and doesn’t realize their clients are about to celebrate a first round draft pick into the NFL. Unsure why people would hire a catering company to serve junk food, Roman looks at the seven-layer dip, cheese balls, buckets of Bud light and says:
I don’t have a problem with this. I just want to know if I should celebrate the irony or pity the sincerity.
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
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.
The audacity is as funny as the satire is audacious.
What do you think?