Growing Up in China

Psychology Today has a fascinating article (ht: Alyssa Rosenberg) about the mental health implications of China's one-child policy on the current generation of young adults who grew up in one-child homes. The piece focuses heavily on both the pressure many Chinese children are under to fulfill all their parents' dreams for their offspring's success, as well as the lengths some Chinese families go to to indulge their only children. These anecdotes get far more play than research findings the article glosses over, however:

Yet despite the stereotype, the research has revealed no evidence that only kids have more negative traits than their peers with siblings—in China or anywhere else. "The only way only children are reliably different from others is they score slightly higher in academic achievement," explains Toni Falbo, a University of Texas psychology professor who has gathered data on more than 4,000 Chinese only kids. Sure, some little emperors are bratty, but no more than children with siblings.

Per Falbo's comment about academic achievement: One interesting point that the article makes is that China embraced the one-child policy in the 1970s not only as a population control measure, but also with an explicit goal of raising a generation of exceptional children who benefitted from the more intense resources parents can devote to educating and developing a single child--and these children, as adults, are indeed fueling China's current economic boom.

One way in which China's new middle class is investing more in its children is by increasing demand for quality preschool and childcare programs, and for-profit companies that provide quality childcare and preschool are seeing a growing market in China and other growing Asian countries. How do the services these companies offer compare to those they deliver in the United States?

The article emphasizes the pressure Chinese children are under to succeed academically, and this line in particular caught our attention: At one top Beijing kindergarten, students must know pi to 100 digits by age 3.

Lots of bloggers have been commenting on Nancy Zuckerbrod's recent article about the higher pre-k achievement expectations her American-born daughter faced when the family moved to England. And we do think that expecting pre-kindergarteners to understand fractions seems awfully intense. But that pales in comparison to this.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Micah Sittig, used under a Creative Commons license.