The Internet has been abuzz ever since the Wall Street Journal published Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, an excerpt from Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
I purchased the Kindle
The book is more of a memoir than a how-to manual on raising successful children. At best, it shows one of the many paths that a parent can take when raising their children—not the only way and not necessarily the best way. If you have children, I would highly recommend the book, just so you fully understand who you and your children are competing against. Seriously, I could not imagine that this type of parent even existed beforehand.
First off, Amy Chua is intense in a way I cannot relate. Three hours of piano practice? On one hand, I understand her determination. There are no short cuts to mastering a musical instrument. You simply have to practice. The more the better. And, if you are practicing three hours a day and someone else (like me) is only practicing 30 minutes a day, that pretty much explains why her daughter performed at Carnegie Hall and I did not. So, the number one lesson I got from her book is that even when you think you are working hard, someone else may be working even harder than you—not just a little harder, but a LOT harder. If nothing else, giving your children an appreciation for hard work will benefit them throughout their lives.
As for Tiger Mother making her children practice even while on vacation, I could relate to that. When I first read it, it sounded obsessive, if not bizarre. But, her motivation was that her children would not fall behind while on vacation. For me, I can recall the numerous assignments that I got from my dad during what was supposed to be summer vacation. The principle is the same. Work during your break so that you don’t waste all that you’ve learned.
Secondly, I can understand why Amy Chua’s book evokes such strong emotions. If you look at the customer ratings on Amazon, 43% (76 out of 175) gave her 5 stars and 33% (57 out of 175) gave her 1 star. In other words, 76% of the reviews were at the opposite ends of the spectrum. My explanation is that parenting is a funny thing. We don’t take classes in parenting, like we do for history, math, english and science. You don’t study different approaches to parenting or whether one approach works better than the others. So, all we are left with is how we were raised and how we wished we were raised, and our own experience as children or parents then colors how each of us views her book. People with overzealous parents and bad memories of childhood probably did not appreciate the lessons that her book imparted. On the other hand, people who experienced an academically challenging childhood and have found success because of their upbringing probably have a different outlook.
The most controversial aspect of her book is her approach to child discipline. And, I think this is an eternal problem that perplexes every new generation of parents. How do you deal with children that will not listen? You can opt for positive reinforcement, negative criticism, threats, bribes, timeouts, corporal punishment and everything else in between. Sometimes you have to combine the incentives and other times nothing works at all. I’m all in favor of hard work, but the question that Ms. Chua needs to ask herself is whether she could have helped her daughters realize the same degree of achievement without all the emotional collateral damage. The over-the-top threats and brinkmanship gets tiresome at some point. And, this approach definitely stops working when the child eventually calls your bluff.
Overall, I think that Ms. Chua’s approach is valid. Hard work begets talent. Would her daughters have worked as hard without her micromanaging? I don’t know. No one is going to conduct a double-blind experiment on their kids, I hope. Even then, each child is different and what works for one may not be suitable for the other. Regardless, by the end of the book, you can see how her daughters have internalized the intensity and diligence even when their omnipresent mom is not hovering nearby, so her work is done.
P.S. Many journalists have chimed in with their take on the book. I am troubled a bit by this line from David Brooks’ Amy Chua is a Wimp: “There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.” I have seen this statistic in a number of essays that attack the Tiger Mother approach, and have bookmarked the publication Health, United States, 2008 for further research. I want to fact-check this assertion. Also, note that correlation does not equal causation, which David Brooks’ article implies. If Asian-American women have a high suicide rate, of course there is a reason. There is a reason for everything, but it may not be because Asian-American women had problems dealing with their immigrant parents. Especially, since not all Chinese parents are like Amy Chua.
3 responses to “What A Monkey Dad Learned From Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”
PS Of course, as you pointed out, correlation causation. And even if it did, we still don’t know how many of those women were of *Chinese* or even *Asian* ancestry…
I am glad you mentioned that Amy’s approach is not the only way and not necessarily the best way. My opinion is that parents should learn from it and never force their children into doing something they don’t like because this may have a damaging impact on their development. Unfortunately, many parents see the errors of their ways when it is too late.
I do not begrudge Chua’s right to make money off her “AHA†moment, but I do resent the way she has further propagated the stereotypical image of the “pushy†Asian parent.
I am truly fortunate to have an academically successful daughter who achieved near perfect SAT scores, and received offers of admission from Harvard, Yale and Princeton. I will take credit for having given her a whole lot of support, but I am certain my parenting skills had little to do with her college acceptances. In truth, I suspect race and gender played major roles.
And yet, I was always perceived as the pushy Asian mother by her teachers, and her counselors, and by other parents as well, Asian and non-Asian alike.
I feel that most people, including Asians, simply refuse to believe that a young Asian woman can be extremely motivated on her own.
Chua and her publishers have every right to publicize her book, and they did a very good job, but it came at the expense of all the academically successful Asian students who will have an even harder time of shaking off the perception they could not have accomplished much without their tiger mothers pushing them.
Chua’s book has merely given an old stereotype a new name. Out with the pushy Asian mother. In with the roaring tiger mother. Somehow, I do not feel better.
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