Amanda Ripley takes a deep dive into education from several countries, including the United States, and also lays out the premises of the international PISA test. Along the way, she cites many studies, including those on parenting styles.
Mandarin Immersion has, sadly, fallen victim to faulty trends in American culture, and the false juxtaposition of negatively connoted "Asian" "Tiger Mom" parenting styles as an impediment to successful bilingualism. If you listen to the playground chatter too much, the end result is that many Asian American parents - moms, especially - are being led to feel embarrassed by the parenting they received, and therefore handicapped that they don't know what is truly right from wrong.
Ripley has a small section in her book that summarizes this well, and, as it turns out, the professionals can show that Asian American parenting, by and large, actually plays out quite well, even in a superior fashion when you look at the broader numbers. Forget the extreme stories of the Amy Chua's of the world, this is about the larger subset. It isn't even about being Asian American, but that there are plenty of parents around the world who leverage a style of parenting that is termed "authoritative."
"Authoritative" is different from "authoritarian." I will defer to her passage to explain:
Around the world, people who studied parenting usually divided the various styles into four basic categories: Authoritarian parents were strict disciplinarians, the "because I said so" parents. Permissive parents tended to be indulgent and averse to conflict. They acted more like friends than parents. In some studies, permissive parents tended to be wealthier and more educated than other parents. Neglectful parents were just how they sounded: emotionally distend and often absent. They were also more likely to live in poverty.
Then there was the fourth option: Authoritative. The word was like a mash up of authoritarian and permissive. These parents inhabited the sweet spot between the two: they were warm, responsive, and close to their kids, but, as their children got older, they gave them freedom to explore and to fail and to make their own choices. Throughout their kids' upbringing, authoritative parents also had clear, bright limits, rules they did not negotiate...
When researcher Jelani Mandara at Northwestern University studied 4,754 U.S. teenagers and their parents, he found that kids with authoritative parents had higher academic achievement levels, fewer symptoms of depression, and fewer problems with aggression, disobedience, and other antisocial behaviors. Other studies have found similar benefits. Authoritative parents trained their kids to be resilient, and it seemed to work.
It is perilous to make sweeping generalizations about people based on their ethnic heritage, but the research does suggest patterns. In the United States, European-American parents are more likely to exhibit authoritative styles than Hispanic or African-American parents, who trend toward authoritarian styles of parenting. (Although all ethnicities include all four kinds of parents.) However, the Asian-American parenting style may be the most consistently authoritative.
For example, studies have shown that Chinese-American parents are more hands-on with their children when they are young, training them in the ways of reading, writing, and math, but then they give their kids significantly more autonomy as they get older (a model that sounds eerily similar to the stereotype of the Finnish parent). "In high school, Asian immigrant parents really have a more hands-off approach," says Ruth Chao, who has studied parenting styles for over two decades. "They're not doing direct instruction. They're not managing the child's schoolwork anymore. They feel that if they are still having to do that, then there's really a problem."
So what does this have to do with Mandarin Immersion? Something that many non-Chinese parent peers in MI programs seem not to understand - That when your kid is young, i.e., in elementary school, then you the parent need to be very hands-on when it comes to getting them through all the hard work to acquire the skills that become their foundation for middle and high school, and beyond. If you really want your kid to become bilingual and bi-literate, then you have to be an authoritative parent who says that the hard work is non-negotiable.
Sure, Mark Zuckerberg achieved a lot by studying hard as an adult for a few years. But he will never have the level of mastery that your kid could have if you start early, before the brain has fully closed and formed. The Zuck will always speak Mandarin like he has marbles in his mouth - and I don't doubt that he will remain totally illiterate at Chinese. Your kid can do better.
But your greatest chances of success are in being tougher when they are young. So yes, copying characters is a chore, but it is also a valuable skill. Singing songs in a language you don't know may seem weird to do endlessly, but after a while, that forced habit can become part of your life's joy. And what magic when your kid meets up with scores of other kids who already know that song? It's bound to happen some day, if you just keep going.
And for those of you who have been working hard, then you know, because you can see it right before your eyes as your child gets older, that they do, in fact, become more independent - especially at sticking with the Chinese - so that it gets a lot easier.
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