Maybe Freud was right: 'ordinary misery' is a part of life so, instead of aiming for unrealistic joy, parents should concentrate on teaching their children two deceptively simple things: to love and to work. Most cultures more or less agree. But how do they go about it? What distinguishes Chinese child-rearing practices, for instance, and how do they compare with western ones?

The short answer is that Chinese parenting is generally more hands-on and traditional than the child-rearing methods of, say, the typical American. Chinese parenting is also probably too firmly embedded in a supporting web of cultural assumptions and social relations to be transportable. What fosters the famous academic and professional successes of Chinese-Americans, for instance, cannot be easily teased apart for use in other communities. Indeed, it is perhaps the contrast with broader American society of the more stable Chinese parenting style that partly explains Chinese-American achievements.