Desi Mom

I just finished reading Amy Chua's book, and it was compulsive reading. Well written, fast-paced. At the end of it, I realised that I was made very uncomfortable by the WSJ article that came out and the book, because we share many of the same values when it comes to parenthood. I believe that kids shouldn't be raised to become praise-junkies. They should learn to take a fair amount of criticism. They shouldn't be given the option to opt out of any activity as and when it pleases them, because often they give up too easily at a young age. They need to be forced to practice various skills, because it's much more fun for them to play beyblades than do their casio routine. There are various skill areas or subjects in which rote learning lays a great foundation for life, e.g. maths, the scientific table. They need to be taught how to raise their own bars rather than having whatever level of performance they turn out being acceptable. They need to have a certain amount of their time structured. They do need to have and demonstrate respect for their parents, family. They need to know that family is one of the most important things in the world. I agree that parents, rather than looking for popularity with their kids, need to ensure they are doing the things that will equip kids better for the future, even if that means your kids hate you from time to time.

I started wondering if I was a Chinese mother underneath my ghunghat, but then I realised that there were a whole set of other values I believe in that Amy Chua doesn't seem to. I also have a fundamental disagreement with her methods - scolding a child or giving them negative feedback is a far cry from the kind of excoriation she seems to specialise in. It's kind of sado-masochistic, the way she humiliates her daughters in the name of helping them, and then talks about how bad it makes her feel. She's actually downright nasty in her conversations with her husband - surely parenting is meant to be a joint activity, rather than one where one parent takes control and runs everyone else down all the time. Judging purely from the book, I got the feeling that their household really is all about her - what she wants, how she feels. Even when she's speaking about getting her daughters ready to play at a concert, she says, "I had just a month and I was so tense", not "My daughters had a month to prepare and I was tense on their behalf". It's as if she is living vicariously through them, which is something I have a huge problem with. The other thing I have an issue with is how she feels that Chinese children 'owe' their parents their lives.

Coming from an Indian family, which up until my parents generation, used to be run on similar lines of thinking, I have seen the kind of havoc it can cause. Some of my friends have gone through those situations where a parent just decides to oppose a particular decision by their child, for reasons that have everything to do with the parents' happiness and nothing to do with the hild's happiness, and I feel it is just wrong. I'm much more of a believe in Kahlil Gibran's philosophy of how parents shouldn't make the kids feel they owe it to their parents to make them happy with their life choices(exact quote below, I paraphrase wildly!). First of all, making anyone but yourself responsible for your happiness or lack thereof is a lovely shirking of responsibility. Second of all, what a nasty burden to put on someone that you supposedly love!

I can understand parenting along similar lines as Chua is one if a first generation immigrant, struggling to survive or from a lower income background. I know that in such a case, the urge towards survival and the climb up the ladder of success would seem such a guarantee of stability, security and therefore happiness, that it would be the most important thing for the parent to push their child towards. But surely, those of us who are now in the privileged position of having become upper middle class or higher can have different dreams for our children.

Surely our dreams can move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs to look for self-actualization, rather than merely social esteem and success by society's standards. because if people don't evolve and move up to higher order needs, there will be no art, no social service, no community spirit, nothing apart from the kind of jockeying for success, status and more-self-important-than-thou spirit that one sees in Delhi and other Indian cities today. We ourselves will need to evolve and look for higher purpose and more spiritual satisfaction in life, once we achieve material security, so how could we deny our kids that?

They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

Kahlil Gibran