Chinese Mothers? Nah. Consider Jewish Mothers!

Amy Chua has published a Wall Street Journal provocative piece called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." In doing so, she has opted to use the broadest possible brush for painting one class of parents as "Chinese" and another as "Western." Not my favorite palette, admittedly, but no matter. If Professor Chau would be so kind as to tear aside the canvas partially covering her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, she would unveil one of the most caricatured, stereotyped, and successful mothers of all -- the Jewish mother!

Okay, I can hear the groans already, but wait just a minute. Jews like Jed Rubenfeld and Amy Chau's own daughters (who, she has acknowledged, are being raised Jewish) make up less than .25% of the world population while the proportion of Chinese people is almost 100 times as great.

Yet somehow the children of Ms. Einstein, Ms. Friedman, and Ms. Singer have earned more than 20% of all the Nobel prizes ever awarded. This number refers not so much to "soft" fields such as literature and peace as to the hard sciences, such as medicine, where more than 25% of the winners have been Jewish. The number in economics exceeds 40%, even if you don't count Paul Krugman!

Self identified Jews also score among the very highest on IQ tests and the SATs. These sons and daughters of Jewish mothers, furthermore, make up a vastly disproportionate number of faculty at such schools as Yale law.

Now, I don't mean to suggest Amy Chau needs to work on her matzoh ball recipe or practice the fine art of the kvetch. I would recommend, however, a little less on suggesting the parenting that gave us Chairman Mao has anything on that which produced Boris Pasternak.

Meanwhile, I'll happily encourage my children, Jews all on account of their maternal line, to enjoy sleepovers and try out for the school play. And I'll defy Amy Chua to smear them with the claim they're not being mothered as well as anyone.