The Chinese Stereotype vs American Parenting

This week in sociology class, we were assigned a reading about how Chinese parenting techniques differ from the "western" parenting techniques. This Chinese mother made numerous points about how strict Chinese parent are compared to American parents. Chinese children would never get less than an A, they would never be less that #1 in every class, they could not have sleepovers and were required to play the piano and violin, etc.  I am sorry, but really? The child cannot even have sleepovers? The Chinese parenting model may be quite successful fro creating math wizzes and other Chinese nerd stereotypes but it doesn't seem like it succeeds in giving the child happiness. Academic performance,its states in the article, is a measure of how successful parents are. What these parents don't realize is that academics aren't everything. Kids need social skills as well. How many times are there those extremely quiet Asian kids who sit in class, never saying a word, and midway through 2nd semester the teacher calls on them and the reaction is 'who is that kid?'. I have seen it happen numerous times, and I'm not trying to be racist but a large percentage of the time it is Chinese kids who have not developed adequate social skills. These social skills are crucial to being successful in life, but even more important, being happy.

Afraid of the Inevitable

Americans are afraid of death. We don't even use the word "died" when someone close to us dies. We insist on using phrases that get the point across without really saying anything, like "passed away" or even "kick the bucket". We, people, created these phrases to try and protect us from the harsh reality that we will all die at one point. Talking about death openly is usually not considered to be a good conversation starter or topic, as people don't like talking about it. Death is even used to put fear into people, for example, the picture of the skull and crossbones on packs of cigarettes that has the caption "smoking kills you". We are frightening our population with death, and not just on cigarette packs. This fear of death could be linked to our materialism, as perhaps we try to fill our lives with as many things as possible because we never know what day will be our last. But that, is a topic for another blog post.