Tiger Mama
Bill McGurn ·
January 12, 2011 at 8:59pm
Claire noted the Wall Street Journal article by Amy Chua arguing that Chinese mothers are superior to their Western counterparts. It's based on her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which I've just finished reading. I believe the article is better than the book, but curious if any Ricocheters have read the book. As the father of three Chinese daughters I do have an interest -- and my email traffic suggests it remains a popular topic of debate.
On the lighter side, it has also provoked an animated video from my friends at Next Media.
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Re: Tiger Mama
I read the article, but not the book (not yet, anyway). I find it hard to believe that she isn't exaggerating the extent of her strictness. But I agree that "western parents" (as she defines them) seem to be overly concerned with propping up their kids' self-esteem. With only one toddler, I'm no expert, but I suspect that kids are tougher than many parents think.
As a practical matter, the parenting that Chua appears to advocate is completely unrealistic for a family with two working parents. It's one thing if you're a professor at Yale Law - she probably teaches a few classes per week and has the summer off. For the rest of us, it's a little hard to take three hours each day to attend our kid's violin lesson.
The video is hilarious!
Jun '10
Re: Tiger Mama
Actually, it would be far easier for two working parents to practice the Chua method. Her daughters were never allowed to have friends or playdates, never do any extracurricular activities that kept them away from their house prison of three hour music practice. That's a heck of a lot easier to manage than the schedule of the normal family who socializes and allows their children freedom to participate in life. The "Western" method requires careful monitoring of your chilren and their friends, opening your home to teens you are obligated to supervise without being too overbearing. You need to allow plenty of time when kids interract with the outside world (good & bad) and offer guidance about how to negotiate the unknown.
Of course, you have to be pretty sadistic to parent like Chua in the first place.....
Jan '11
Re: Tiger Mama
What I took from the video was that "if you huff on a bong, you too can become president"
May '10
Re: Tiger Mama
This is why we must keep Taiwan free and not absorbed back into the Communist Motherland. Can you imagine this sort of news reporting happening freely in China? Oh, and because Taiwan reminds us all that China and Chinese culture do not inevitably have to be authoritarian.
Aug '10
Re: Tiger Mama
I read the article and forwarded it to my occidental wife who was raised in Taiwan by my then-missionary in-laws. She said that it wasn't anything new to her and that the pleasing your mother was a significant cultural attitude among the Chinese.
I thought the comments were hilarious and to some extent proved the point that Chua was making about our flabby and weak western parenting.
Jun '10
Re: Tiger Mama
Matthew, pleasing your mother and father is programmed into all little kids' DNA, not just Chinese kiddies. That's why her daughter snuggled up with Chua after hours of abuse at the piano. It's typical, even in extreme cases of sexual abuse and torture, for children to cling to their abusive parents & do everything in their power to please them. Chau's daughter was relieved that the abuse had stopped & hoped mommy wouldn't start up again.
I'm still puzzled why so many people seem to feel there is no middle ground. Chau is clearly abusive and that's the only point about parenting that her article proved. Flabby and weak parenting is also bad. Recoiling at the Chau story in no way means one is advocating milquetoast parenting style. At least she'll earn plenty of $$ from her book to fund her daughters' therapy bills.
Jun '10
Re: Tiger Mama
Sitting here in Hong Kong what I always notice is the "down stream" thoughts of Chinese families. They are looking down the road at what the kids can be, as economic life is more on the minds here.... Where I think the Chinese moms have an advantage is if the kid came home and said they want to be a "communications major" they would get the stick...
The economic outcome of education is more driven here -- mark
Oct '10
Re: Tiger Mama
Boy, what a creepy article. It was a twisted mix of Joy Luck Club, Lake Wobegon and Mommy Dearest. In Amy Chua's world all the "Chinese" kids are not only above average, but straight 'A' students, or I'll burn down your doll house.
Note to Uber-Mamma: It's usually the kids who write the Mommy Dearest book, while the parents deny everything and the public disapprovingly murmurs about the classless crass kids. The author seems to have turned this all up-side down.
There's also a darker side to all this pushing. I find it interesting that the author seems to back away from the model portrayed in the article.
Edited on January 14, 2011 at 6:09pmNov '10
Re: Tiger Mama
Mr. McGurn,
I discussed this with several others who, like me, have spent years in China, and we came to similar conclusions: this child-raising approach works, except when it doesn’t. The successes are celebrated; the failures forgotten.
The article is basically a self-serving post-hoc fallacy; an attempt to justify the little-league-parent mentality that makes children the servant of adult egos. To be sure, parental discipline works to instill personal discipline; I could have used more of it, in retrospect; many kids could. But the author cherry-picks both causes and results, overlooking other factors that likely contributed to her children’s success, and overlooking (ignoring) any shortcomings, given that her only measure is a narrowly-conceived notion of “success”. And her sample is minuscule: limited to her own family. The moment I read the article I remembered the young lady who previously occupied my Jiangmen apartment, who came from precisely this kind of background. She was found hanging from the mosquito-netting hook. Can we generalize from that? And we have all known many others who couldn’t make a move --emotionally or otherwise-- without every thought automatically vetted by an internalized parental tyrant.