Grrrrrrrr Tiger Moms

I was first introduced to Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, one day while watching the Today show.  The interviewer was clearly disgusted with her and seemed downright angry that she had to speak with her.  Chua, on the other hand, looked confident and stood up for herself.

For those of you living under a rock the past five weeks, Tiger Mother, is a book written about the Chinese method of parenting.  The book is controversial, and has been getting tons of negative press.  The methods that Tiger Mother uses seem downright cruel - forcing a piano practice through dinner and well into the night with no bathroom or water breaks, calling her daughter "garbage", rejecting a homemade birthday card for lack of effort, hours of math and spelling drills a day, hours of piano and violin practice daily, and never accepting a grade lower then an A.  And then there's a slew of activities the children are never allowed to participate in - play dates, sleepovers, watching TV, playing computer games, going to camp, and being in school plays.

When I first heard about Tiger Mom, I was horrified.  I couldn't understand how a parenting book about oppression and borderline abuse could be released - and why the media was covering it.  Surely, the media is well aware that Americans love scandal, and this would jump book sales to incredible heights.  Well, I wasn't falling for it.  I had no intention of reading a book - even out of curiosity - that would teach me to ruin my child's self-esteem and break her little spirit.

But then I saw the book in Barnes and Noble.  It was in the new releases section, right next to a romance novel I was buying my mom for Valentine's Day.  I refused to touch Tiger Mother, I didn't want anyone to see me looking at it.  But I eyed the cover curiously, and read the tag line (?)...

 "This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs.  This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.  But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old."

I was shocked.  From all the media coverage I had seen, I assumed that Tiger Mother was a how-to parenting book.  But it's not.  Tiger Mother is a memoir, an autobiography.  And now I was interested.

I didn't buy it.  But I did start to research it online.  First, I started with a Time article that gave a gentle introduction to the book.  Then, I read the article that Chua herself had written that brought the media attention to her memoir.  And finally, I read an interview with Chua.

The main focus that resonates throughout each article is how different Chinese parenting methods are in comparison to Western parenting methods.  Well, children in general are viewed differently in China then in America, but you can read about that on your own.  I do want to mention education in general though... As mostly everyone knows, Chinese students outrank American students on test scores.  Why?  Well it could be the fact that the Chinese have a longer school year overall, and that U.S. kids spend more time watching TV then attending class.   Or it could be, as Chua believes, the entire parenting mentality.

According to Chua, "children on their own never want to work," which coincides with the fact that she believes that children should never be allowed to indulge in their own desires and preferences, but rather what the parents want because they know what is best for them.  I, for one, don't agree with either of these statements, but there were other things that Chua said that I do agree with.

Chua believes that you should hold your child accountable for bad grades in school.  She said that Americans instantly want to blame someone else for their child's failures - and look for problems with the school or curriculum instead of looking at their own child's efforts.  (Chua also says that you should shame your child, but according to Susan Goodwyn of the book Baby Hearts, people who feel shame always blame someone else for failures. So either Americans shame better or Chua meant to use the word "guilt".) So, I agree - everyone should be held accountable for their own success/failure and not always claim to be a victim of circumstance.

[I can't help but think that the Chinese must be somewhat horrified with Americans.  Kids today spend hours upon hours playing video and computer games, chatting on social networks, texting, and... well I guess that's pretty much it.]

Chua says that Tigers mothers are blunt and do not tip-toe around feelings like Western parents do.  (I guess this justifies why she called her kid garbage...)  And she does not believe that there should be such an emphasis on self-esteem.  She believes that children will turn out just fine if they are berated for unsatisfactory behavior, as long as they are genuinely praised when they deserve it.  Chinese parents "assume strength, not fragility".

In Baby Hearts (an excellent book I read about raising emotionally healthy babies), Goodwyn talks about the self-esteem issue in great detail.  The best way to foster a healthy self-esteem is to praise both ability and effort, never make love feel conditional, and to communicate that failure is caused by something fixable.  Chua says something similar in defense of the controversial piano incident:

To Americans, we think that making your child practice piano and violin for six hours a day is horrifying.  According to one Amazon book review, Chua would sit next to her daughters the entire time and critique them and push them to perfection.  Most American parents would never do that.  Could you imagine spending six hours that way?  Awful.  But Chua doesn't feel that way.  The time, to her, was well spent.  "I believe in you so much that I know you can be excellent" she said.

According to Amazon reviews, Amy Chua's memoir is described as humorous, entertaining, and "written with the intent to shock".   Out of 298 reviews, almost half gave the book 5 stars.  I'm going to read it to see what its about.  I figure it can't be any worse then the horrors in The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls or the traumatizing content in the fictional novel, The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle.

I'll let you know.



And here are the book I've mentioned: