The Taichi Dad Talks Asian Parenting

As a Canadian Born Chinese, I have a lot of observations on how Chinese culture, especially Confuciansm affect parenting styles within the Chinese diaspora and how we as the successive generation born neither fully culturally “Chinese” nor fully culturally “Western” define ourselves within that context. This is going to be a big subject; touching on a wide variety of topics from history, philosophy, parenting and psychology that will span multiple articles. So strap on your seat belts and let’s dive into the deep psyche of the Asian-American or in my case, the nicer, politer, hockey loving, Tim Horton’s drinking variety further up north. The Asian-Canadian.

When it comes to Asian parenting, perhaps the most obvious image that comes to mind is the tiger mom….or dad and what self respecting hyphenated Asian would I be without a discussion of the tiger moms and dads across North America. Ahhh…your friendly neighbourhood tiger parent, the bane of existence of Asian kids all across North America. Half Tiger. Half Parent. All Crazy. If you’re a parent, you have a love-hate relationship with them. On the one hand you deride their harsh parenting techniques, on the other hand you can’t help but notice baby Mulan has grown up into a fine lady commanding a 5.0GPA and a 1600 on the SAT. On top of that, her extracurriculars outside of school involve fighting a war against foriegn invaders on behalf of her aging father. (So filial and sweet. Is she married yet?). In other words, Mulan was an “excellent student”, not surprisingly, she also got a full ride to Harvard and her dad can’t stop bragging about it to everyone in town, especially to you. A huge gain in face for Mulan’s family, not so much for you (another topic for another day). If you’re Asian American or Canadian, this probably sounds all too familiar. If you’re white American you probably read about all this in alarming disgust from Amy Chua. (Alarming because, you’re like OMG!! They’re building terminator T-1000’s, what chance does my little Johnny have? The answer is none; unless a lesser reprogrammed asian kid is sent back in time from the future to tutor little Johnny to get 1600 in the SAT.)

Among Asian-Canadians/Americans the idea of extreme disciplinarian parenting is nothing new though it certainly reached new heights of popularity due to Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” which first made headlines in a Wall Street Journal article controversially titled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”. You can probably already guess from the title of her book what this parenting style entails. It’s everything you imagined and worse. Basically, the Tiger Mom, armed with the latest doctrines of Confucianism will conduct psychological warfare, physical and verbal abuse until they raise a tiger cub to be the civilian version of SEAL team 6. To reach that end, the ends justify the means, so calling your biological offspring “garbage” is fair game, so is banning “playdates” because we all know soldiers of the future only eat, sleep and train. Playdates with other kids might as well be colluding with the enemy. If all this sounds crazy to you, then you are not alone. As a second generation Canadian Born Chinese, I’ve observed this type of parenting in action but disagree with the methodology and would never raise my own daughter in this way. A quick google search of student suicide rates in Asia (China, Korea, Japan etc) will tell you all you need to know about this type of tiger parenting. It works for some and doesn’t work for many. And even for those it does purportedly work for, no one can truly gauge the long term psychological consequences of such a parenting style.

My grandparents were caught right smack in the middle of World War II during the Japanese invasion of China so they had to toughen and smarten up quickly to survive that type of harsh environment. My grandparents often lamented about how good my brother and I had it growing up in Canada and that we never had to test our survival instincts and resolve in chaotic times. They never outright called my brother and I “weak” but you could sense the implication in their speech. In Chinese, they would always say “你们没有吃过苦”, which literally translates into “You guys never ate bitter” but more accurately means “you guys never had to endure any hardship.” My grandfather would wax lyrically like Mr. Miyagi always repeating the Chinese proverb “Chi de ku zhong ku, fang wei ren shang ren” （吃得苦中苦方为人上人）which translates into “He/She (though mostly he because Confucious definitely did not see women as equal) who endures the hardest of hardships elevates themselves above all others”

(Translation note: In Chinese, “bitter or ku 苦” is used both as a descriptor for bitter but also a synonym for hardship and or suffering.)

Without a doubt my grandparents,like Amy Chua’s parents, lived through the Japanese invasion of China during World War II. These experiences certainly made my grandparents “tough” and resourceful such that they survived World War II and lived to a ripe old age; what isn’t always discussed in Asian families is how those traumatic experiences also caused them serious amounts of PTSD that they repressed for many years which they were never able to completely 100% reconcile with. Hardship builds resilience, that much is not disputed but it also causes trauma and here’s where Amy Chua and her supporters lose the narrative. Our parents or grandparents before us came from circumstances not of their choosing and they were forced to be more resilient and wiser beyond their years to survive, but to artificially create trauma for children such that they will be “successful” is hardly the way to raise kids in peacetime North America or anywhere else for that matter.

Unfortunately, if your parents like mine came from a country that was heavily influenced by Confuciansim, then you are carrying some serious historical baggage that is weighing you down before you were even born. Why is that you ask? Well, Confucianism has a huge obsession with enduring suffering. The ”gentlemen” or the “君子“ (junzi) is defined by his ability to overcome hardship. This idea is popularized by Mencius in the chapter called “生于忧患，死于安乐）or translated literally as “Suffering is Living, Happiness is Death”. Depression anyone? You can add that to the list of great inventions from your friendly neighbourhood China. Papermaking, printing, gunpowder, the compass and PTSD. And that’s just the title of the chapter, I haven’t even gotten into the actual content yet. Below is the actual content:

天将降大任于是人也，必先苦其心志，劳其筋骨，饿其体肤，空乏其身，行拂乱其所为，所以动心忍性，曾益其所不能

You’re looking at this and going, that looks like a sentence with less than 45 characters, how bad could it be? Well the Chinese language is designed to kick your ass in the fewest words possible, so let me translate this short enough verse into regular English parlance:

“When heaven is about to confer great responsibility on an individual, it must first fill their heart with suffering. It must make the individual suffer immense fatigue of the bones and muscles; from starvation and deprivation; from immense poverty; from great setbacks and failures so as to stimulate and develop resilience such that they can awaken talents they never had before.

Some of you are reading this and thinking, well that’s not all bad, there’s some wisdom in those words. And you wouldn’t be wrong to say that but as is the case with most things, the devil is in the details and wisdom is in implementation. Unfortunately for Asian kids across the world, Tiger mom’s have taken executing heaven’s will into their own hands (ti tian xing dao 替天行道) and they confer on their kids “the great responsibility” to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, in that order. Consequently, they also dish out any amount of suffering necessary to justify imposing their ideas of success on to their children. But if the cost of such parenting style is depression or even suicide; we really need to ask, what use is material success if your kids are traumatized psychologically/emotionally or worse yet, dead.

So is there an alternative? Can we raise kids that are still Seal Team 6 without subjecting them to psychological warfare and abuse? The answer is yes and no but mostly yes and ironically the Chinese also came up with an answer on how to do this. Stay tuned for the next part as The Tai Chi Dad explores Taoism (Daoism) and parenting.