Analyse af 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior'

This article was written by Amy Chua and was published by The Wall Street Journal, 8 of January 2011. The genre in the article is argumentative and persuasive. Amy’s purpose is to persuade the reader that Chinese mothers are better at raising children to become whizzers than western mothers.

As parents or just as a mother, you always wish the best for your upcoming children. You want to raise them and give them the best opportunities in life. In China, often when children are young, you see some very talented individuals who have specialized in different sports, music instruments, and some also achieve extremely good academic skills. You always wonder how can it be that China have so many ‘’baby stars’’? According to Amy Chua, there are different techniques and different terms which are very crucial to how your child end up like a stereotypically successful kid. She use the term ‘’ Chinese mother’’ and ‘’Western mothers”.

Amy Chua engages the reader in different ways. Firstly, she uses a very provocative language which annoys the reader because it is a little bit arrogant and selfish. In line two on page one it says ‘’they wonder (the western mothers) what these mothers (the Chinese mothers) do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies….’’ In this line she thinks that everyone is searching for an answer how to raise a perfect child and the Chinese mother’s method is the only way to succeed. She also writes about her personal experience with raising a child like Chinese mothers do which is quiet interesting because you get an insight into Amy and her husband’s family and how Amy daily pushes her children to the limit and even beyond. To prove her point she emphasizes on page eight in a discourse the difference between how Chinese and Western parents raise their children under three main headings, first, second and third in which she explains her arguments and observations from her personal experiences. The way she argues about how you can push your child to the limit, and when it is enough for the child seems rather weak and not very concrete. One page seven line thirty four it says ‘’ in one study of 50 Western American mothers and forty-eight Chinese immigrants mothers, almost 70% of the western mothers said either that ‘’stressing academic success Is not good for children…. ‘’ By contrast 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. It is difficult to conclude anything from this analysis because she has been taking a test on a very small group of people which is not representative enough in relation to the whole population of the two countries. To get something concrete Amy Chua will need a much bigger group. When she writes about children it seems like she knows everything about every single child in the world, which is also kind of provocative. On page seven line forty-four it says ‘’that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work ‘’. It seems like she thinks that children are robots who cannot do anything on their own. She has confidence in her children but not when they are on their own and that is why she thinks that it is crucial to override their preferences.