Western Parents Don't Know How to Bring Up Their Children

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Why are there so many Chinese maths and music prodigies? Because Chinese mothers believe schoolwork and music practice come first, that an A-minus is a bad grade, that sleepovers, TV and computer games should never be allowed and that the only activity their children should be permitted to do are ones in which they can eventually win a medal - and that medal must be gold. These methods certainly seem to get results but do they make for the rounded individuals Western parents are striving to bring up? Isn't it better that our children should be happy rather than burnt-out brain boxes? Who's right and who's wrong? In this debate from June 2011, Amy Chua, author of the best-selling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and Theodore Dalrymple, the writer and psychologist, speak for the motion. Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet, and Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent and parenting expert, speak against the motion. The debate was chaired by columnist and broadcaster Jenni Russell Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.8	Hello and welcome to all of you. Thank you for coming tonight. I am Jenny Russell. I'm a columnist for the evening standard in the Sunday times.
0:37.0	And when I was asked to chair this, I thought about the remarkable fact that in my adult life as a journalist and political commentator I don't think I've come
0:44.9	across any topic that has the capacity to divide and enrage people so much as the topic
0:51.9	of how we should bring up our children.
0:53.0	I have to say that for 18 months I lost a friend after her small daughter turned up to my daughter's birthday party
1:00.0	and then proceeded to spend most of the party leaning over the table and scooping the icing off the top of the birthday cake with her fingers and then licking them.
1:09.0	And when I told her to stop and behave herself, my friend stormed out of the house and didn't come back again.
1:14.3	And I have to say that in many years we're debating race and class and politics and religion
1:19.0	with my friends, I'd never lost one until that point.
1:22.0	Well, I can't really believe that there are going to be many of you who are undecided at the end of listening to tonight's panel,
1:29.0	and I hope this is going to be a pretty contentious discussion.
1:32.0	And the first speaker for the motion is Amy Chua, the Yale
1:35.5	Law Professor, who's somewhat wry memoir of her fanatical Chinese parenting style,
1:42.2	battle him with the tiger mother has been a sensational hit on both
1:46.6	sides of the Atlantic and it's made her heroin to some people and a complete hate figure to
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