The Tiger Mother Vs. Western Culture

The Tiger Mother vs. Western Culture

Parenting styles have slight variations within a community at large when taking out a few anomalies, but there are drastic differences when not constrained by location anymore. Chua who was a Duke law school teacher wrote the essay “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”. She goes over her strict rules and how she guides her two daughters to become successful later on in their lives. Meanwhile Blackmore who graduated from Oxford University describes in her essay “Strange Creatures” the effect of memes and and how they spread. Memes have geographic constraints and this is shown in how parents from different origins have different beliefs in how to guide their children development.

Every country has their own dominant memes which have specific traits which were integrated in their evolution. These dominant memes are for the United States “Freedom” while for a country like China it might be “pressure”. These minor memes are also seen in the country's parenting styles. Dawkins believes “mutually assisting memes will gang together in groups just as genes do” (Blackmore, 39) The bonding make these memes more attractive for the humans who will end up using them. That is the reason we see common traits between two completely different memes in the same area. “In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that ‘stressing academic success is not good for children’ or that ‘parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun’. By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way.”( Chua 52). The quote shows that the Chinese parenting style doesn’t shy away from making their children's life stressful. This happened because the dominating meme of pressure is also included in the “Tiger Mother” meme. Which causes them to be ok with this. All the different memes surround these people life affects how they choose to upbring their kids.

The Chinese government is very involved in the daily live of their citizens, which can be related to the “Tiger Mother”, a popular parenting style among the asian immigrant community in the United States. Over time “Each of these memes has evolved in its own unique way with its own history, but each of them is using your behavior to get itself copied” (Blackmore, 37). The evolving of memes is the reason political, religion, and even parenting styles are different by region. These memes become successful or die out based on what the end goal is for the person spreading them. Not unlike their government “Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desire and preferences” (Chua, 54). This disregard for their children's interests will destroy their individuality. This makes them unsure of what they want to archive in their life once their parents leave them to find their own place in the world. Chua is describing the effects of a meme which has evolved as Blackmore is illustrating. This development has caused chinese parents to favor this strict upbringing of their children while western parents favor a less stringent nurture. The “Tiger Mother” evolved from a government which was based on not questioning authority. This trait is seen in countless memes in China which integrated this character in their evolution.

Chua grew up in Champaign, Illinois a small city in The United States, yet somehow the upbringing of her children is called the “Tiger Mother” which is normally only reserved for Asian children who are first generation of immigrants, or still living in China. It used to be that memes would only“Spread by one person copying another. Memes are stored in human brains (or books or inventions) and passed on by imitation.” (Blackmore, 56) With invention like the internet and satellite TV memes are able to spread faster than ever before. The important part is that after we have use a meme it gets stored in our brains if it is a successful one. “ Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.“ (Chua, 56) This debt these adults feel towards their parents makes them more inclined to try to do the same parenting style as it worked on them well. Memes surround is in our daily lives. We adapt to them and integrate them into our daily lives as to not stand out as an outcast who can’t fit in. With small thing as what to wear that method is ok, but at something as important as the upbringing of a child. one simple choice can change the outcome from success to failure. Since the stakes are this high every parents has to ask themselves: to accept the memes surrounding them or to go back in time to when they were still children and use the same memes as their parents. This can also lead to a hybrid