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I was at a lovely wedding recently in DC, and across the table from me sat a very congenial older man who instantly struck up a conversation with me. After eliciting the name of the school where I teach and chatting some about independent schools in the area, he asked if the college-admissions season was particularly busy for me. I said yes, and also something along the lines of how hard it can be to watch students applying to fifteen schools and still convinced that they won’t get into their dream school, or that they won’t get in anywhere even when they almost certainly will, and how much pressure the whole system can put on kids. He nodded slowly and said, “Well, my son there, two seats down from you, is at All-Male Prep School (often called a bastion of the D.C. artistocracy) and we’re pretty determined to see him at Yale, where his sisters went, no matter what he thinks about it.”
I thought of this conversation when I read Amy Chua’s Why Chinese Parents Are Superior, the most recent parenting article to cause a stir. The article itself is well-written and provocative, and has spawned a lot of great commentary (Laura at 11d and her commenters do a great job, as usual, of corralling and expanding this commentary), but for me, the article is most interesting not as a critique or exposure of Asian parenting techniques, but as a lens for looking at greater questions of parenting, drive and motivation. Can we instill motivation and/or drive in children, or is it a question of inborn temperament? Do Asian children really end up excelling at higher rates than American children, and can that really be chalked up to piano (or violin!) lessons and a willingness to call your child “fatty”? There are also some really interesting responses and comments in this Quora thread, which includes responses from the Director of Engineering at Facebook (who happens to be Asian) and the sister of a high-achieving Asian-American woman who also committed suicide. Of course, there are no “correct” answers to any of these questions, which is why they are so interesting to debate.
This is an issue I have struggled with often in thinking about my own parenting and the parenting I received as a child, and as a student who would never have been described as “driven” or “motivated,” but instead, I expended “erratic effort,” I was not “living up to my potential,” I was “bright, but lazy.” These are all direct quotes from progress reports or report cards or teachers I had over the years, and I can see why they would have said these things. But what would have made a difference, or indeed, what did? Because teachers I had in my K-12 years would have (and did) say these things, but my college and graduate school professors did not. Instead, they commended and complimented me, asked me to assist them in classes and recommended me for prizes, honors and fellowships. So what changed, and what could have changed earlier?
For me, I identify with the Facebook engineer quoted on the Quora post, who said that his greatest joy and success has come when allowed to immerse himself in his greatest joys, even if it looked like aimless video game playing or chasing girls. He says that the method described by Amy Chua in her article is “great at producing skilled and compliant knowledge workers, but it utterly fails to produce children who can achieve greatness, remake industries, or come up with disruptive innovation.” In my own life, I now spend much of my time doing what I’ve always loved: reading, writing, and communicating with other people about what I’ve read and what I think about it. I’ve never needed any external motivation to accomplish this, and apart from buying me books and giving me a supportive space, my parents’ greatest contribution to this was probably their DNA (hence the image with this post).
But could I have earned better grades in high school? Absolutely, I think I could have, and I think that often I didn’t because I didn’t see the point, which sounds like a classically teenage thing to say. Sure, my parents were often disappointed in my lower grades, but my higher ones and test scores most often made up for it. I didn’t regret my choices until it was too late, really, and I realized what college doors were closed to me because I didn’t have grades to match those test scores–my transcript probably had “underachiever” in blinking lights on it. Would money-for-grades have made a difference, or consistent punishment, or earning privileges or rewards in a systematic way? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t know yet what will work with my own children, or even with the students I have that are most like the student I used to be.
However, I can say I do not want my children to ever think that their successes or failures are connected to my love for them; nothing is worth that kind of pressure, in my mind, even acceptance to Harvard or other similar signifiers of privilege. This is the fate I want to avoid, and if asked, I believe Chua would say the same. I want my children to discover what they are most passionate about, and I want all doors ahead of them to be as open as possible. I want them to push themselves, because they want to excel, not because they believe I’ll love them more if they do.
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