Are you a "Chinese mother"?

[Periwinkle]

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A screwball parent, regardless of the style, can screw up kids real quick.

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<p>I agree–but if there weren’t any screwball parents, think of the loss to the memoir genre!</p>

<p>The Wall Street Journal again: [Larry</a> Summers vs. the Tiger Mom - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703956604576109962171060504.html]Larry”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703956604576109962171060504.html). Yes, you read that correctly, Larry Summers vs. the Tiger Mom.</p>

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But he recalled anyway some of his more turbulent exchanges there, like the time he once told puzzled faculty members: “I think you have to decide whether achievement is the route to self-esteem or whether self-esteem is the route to achievement. I think you guys think self-esteem is the route to achievement, and I think you’re wrong.”</p>

<p>And yet even the stern intendant of traditional academic values couldn’t quite bring himself to endorse the hard-ass Asian mothering style. Surprisingly for an academic who has won almost all the glittering prizes, he challenged the idea—cherished by Ms. Chua and her admirers—that academic success as a route to a rewarding career should be the sum of a child’s ambitions.</p>

<p>“Which two freshmen at Harvard have arguably been most transformative of the world in the last 25 years?” he asked. “You can make a reasonable case for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom graduated.” If they had been the product of a Tiger Mom upbringing, he added, their mothers would probably have been none too pleased with their performance.</p>

<p>The A, B and C alums at Harvard in fact could be broadly characterized thus, he said: The A students became academics, B students spent their time trying to get their children into the university as legacies, and the C students—the ones who had made the money—sat on the fund-raising committee.

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