Of course, not all children will be the best, and that works against a "Chinese" parenting focused on getting the best grades. Of course, you need social interaction at school, but even a "Chinese" parenting that forbids it cannot prevent children from finding ways to interact and have fun.

Of course, not all learning is fun, and thus a "Western" education that wants any and all schooling to just capture the children's attention and let them have fun is doomed to fail. You need to learn to persevere, but that can come from outside pressure or be broken by it, come from intrinsic motivation and personal interest, or never have a chance to develop against the allure of video games and fashion magazines.

The problem that parenting a problematic exercise in which people are often confident that they are doing everything right or that others are doing everything wrong. They'd be wrong either way, but as a result, each side fails to show any understanding of the other.

Even the way people talk about "Chinese" parenting versus lax "Western" parenting shows that straw men are being erected. All the normal and natural diversity is denigrated in favor of these stereotypical extremes.

It does not even do justice to Chua's book. Even just reading the book description, the subtitle of which says "... and how I was humbled by a 13-year-old," one should start to notice that something about its utter conviction may not be quite as it is described.

The book is not telling you how to produce a "Harvard girl" or the next Bill Gates. It just describes one mother's particular struggle being of Asian heritage in a Western context, wanting the best for her children who have their own ideas of what that would be, and struggling, like everybody else, with what she hopes is right.

What is definitely not right, however, are those arguments that always jump to the extremes, push the flames higher and higher, and never stop to think if maybe there's something to be learned from each other.

"That's the way we do things" is equally as bad as "you can't do that."

Progress, whether it is in getting and letting our children become better or in understanding each other better, only comes when we stop letting our stereotypes be the guide and really listen.

The author is an Austrian ecologist and cultural anthropologist. [email protected]