What bugs me most about the article isn't the parenting, it's how it falls completely in line with a lot of parochial "You're only Chinese if you do X or Y or this or that", and if you somehow don't do it, you're 'not Chinese enough'.
The parents I'm thinking of understand if their children don't have aptitude for certain subjects, and one parent even believes in letting a child learn by consequence. They all strongly believe in Confucian values, and they're strict on their kids (yes they do practice corporal punishment) -- they're just not, if I may be really frank, emotionally abusive about it.
Oh, but I can already imagine the kind of objections to this -- that the parents are not 'Chinese' enough because they are Westernized, Christian, etc. I'm just 'meh' about this kind of thing because I am comfortable with not identifying as Chinese, but I know that for these parents, their Chinese identity is important to them, and this kind of stereotypical image and "Yeah! We are Chinese because we are all like this!" chest-thumping ebbs at them and would upset them, if only slightly.
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The parents I'm thinking of understand if their children don't have aptitude for certain subjects, and one parent even believes in letting a child learn by consequence. They all strongly believe in Confucian values, and they're strict on their kids (yes they do practice corporal punishment) -- they're just not, if I may be really frank, emotionally abusive about it.
Oh, but I can already imagine the kind of objections to this -- that the parents are not 'Chinese' enough because they are Westernized, Christian, etc. I'm just 'meh' about this kind of thing because I am comfortable with not identifying as Chinese, but I know that for these parents, their Chinese identity is important to them, and this kind of stereotypical image and "Yeah! We are Chinese because we are all like this!" chest-thumping ebbs at them and would upset them, if only slightly.