Do You Want Happiness or Success?

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Asian parenting tends to give children too little choice, i think western parents tend to give them too much. I remember once lulu came home from school with a bad math test. She was about seven years old, and she came home and announced, i hate math. My husband would say, don't worry, lulu. You don't need to be good at math. You can be good at something else. Second, on the point of choice and freedom. Whereas in am ria, i think there's a tendency to romanticize creativity. Just give your kid a saxophone and amazing jaz will pop out. And instead of being complaisant, we should try to

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

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