Should you welcome China’s dictator Xi Jinping to co-parent your children? In an essay in The New York Times, Heather Kaye, an American who spent 16 years in China, says, “Yes.” But for someone born and raised in China like I was, her essay revealed much misunderstanding about Chinese culture and people, and what it means to be a parent.
Kaye is a fashion designer, and she and her husband raised two girls in China. Kaye didn’t seek out the Chinese government to co-parent, but she had little choice. She wrote, “In China, government co-parenting begins in the womb.” Although Beijing relaxed its population control from a “one-child” policy to a “three-child” policy, make no mistake that Xi still wants to control how many children a Chinese couple is allowed to have.
But according to Kaye, she saw three main benefits of having an intrusive authoritarian government as a co-parent to her girls.
Actually, Parents Play a Role
She thought the Chinese government had relieved her and her husband of the burden of instilling good values in their girls. For instance: “our girls came home discussing self-discipline, integrity and respect for elders. With school instilling a solid work ethic and a total drive for academic excellence, my husband and I didn’t need to push the girls to complete homework; the shame of letting their teachers and classmates down was enough to light their fires.”
The truth is we Chinese learned these cultural values, such as respect for elders, hard work, and self-discipline,
