Definitely agree with you about the pressure put on Asian kids by their parents (we have a number of Asian friends, and the parents are hard-core taskmasters…with the results to prove it), but I think that IQ is also involved here. A “gifted” person is much more likely to understand the long-term consequences of their child’s ambitions and actions, so they are pushing their kids to attain success from the moment they are born. They are incredibly competitive.
My friends and I have talked about these differences, and about how (Caucasian) American parents tend to be warmer and more nurturing, less critical, less demanding, etc. My mother was Austrian (Germanic), and they are/were also more like their Asian counterparts. We’ve discussed the possibility that this more nurturing, less demanding parenting style seen in the U.S. is a symptom of a relatively easy life in a powerful country where even the neediest people tend to be better and more generously cared for. In other countries where resources are more scarce, and where survival can depend on how you place relative to your competition, the more competitive, hard-core parenting comes out. Just pondering…
Something I’ve just noted from watching my kids learn Mandarin over the years is that Asian languages are symbolic and more logic-based, as opposed to our phonics-based language. Even how the numbers work in Mandarin ensure that someone who knows how to count will know how to add and multiply to an extent. I think this could be one of the reasons that Asian kids tend to do better in math; they are learning a logical, symbolic language from their earliest years, and their brains might be wired differently as a result.
