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I love this. It's an honest and unapologetic explanation of a parenting style that is not dominant in the US but has some real advantages. It teaches discipline and hard work, and it gets kids to acquire useful skills. Sure, it has its disadvantages, as noted by some commenters here. Let's not deny the obvious, though. It's no coincidence that they author was pushed insanely hard by her mother and ended up a professor at the top law school in the country.

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Selection bias. The author is published because she ended up a professor at the top law school in the country. Plenty of Chinese mothers raise mediocre children, and they don't get to write opinion pieces in Murdoch rags. (Or did you take it literally when she claimed that Chinese children don't get B's?)

But you're right that this parenting style has benefits. It strikes a chord with me, as a parent of small children, when she says that you're not doing them any favors by letting them give up. But parents have to find the right balance. Maybe the author's children benefited from having both kinds of parents, one strict and Chinese, one doting and Western---Cue shock and horror from Chinese grandparents. I know many successful children of mixed East/West families. Sure, that's anecdotal evidence, but so is this article.

It also has an effect at producing ruthlessly sneaky folks who learn to game the system their parents have set up by producing an equivalent appearance of conforming success with far less work.

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