Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua's daughters, Sophia and Louisa (Lulu) were polite, interesting and helpful; they had perfect school marks and exceptional abilities. The Chinese parenting model certainly seemed to produce results. But what happens when a screaming child, who would sooner freeze outside in the cold than be forced to play the piano, confronts you? BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how you can be humbled by a thirteen-year-old.
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- I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother two years ago. Though the book has a bit of controversy around it, I really enjoyed seeing what Asian tiger-parenting looks like, and how it blew up in her face with her second daughter and how she had to adapt to a more American style of parenting. One of the interesting dilemmas was that when doing tiger-parenting in America, your children will eventually notice that their friends have parents who are way easier on them and that can lead to defying and undermining of authority. Whereas in China, because many parents adopt this style it is seen as normal.
Thanks for recommending No Drama Discipline, that sounds like a good read!
- I believe the term "tiger mother" was popularised by Amy Chua's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" which is a great read for people interested in parenting.
It's been a few years since I've read the book, but your upbringing sounds extreme dissimilar from what Chua calls tiger parenting. Where you start to diverge is where you have time for video games once academics are taken care of.
In the tiger parent model there are no video games or playtime with friends when academics are done. That is when you do additional academics or learn foreign languages or practice classical music.
Getting good grades is not an accomplishment to be rewarded and straight A's don't get you any latitude. These accomplishments are the bare minimum of expected behavior for your child.
A gifted child can become a high achiever with a casual approach to academics. With a rigorous approach the idea is that average children become high achievers and gifted children become world class.
- I'd recommend going back to school. When you go:
* Join some exercise or sports club. Martial arts, ultimate frisbee, swimming -- anything.
* Ask a few women on dates. If you're at all like I was, you will make an awkward mess of it and get rejected. This is a good thing. It will make you dread failure less.
* Some Saturday, when you really should be working, take the day off and explore whatever city you live in. Don't go to the standard tourist locations. Walk around all day and explore at random. Walk into businesses you might not otherwise walk into. Approach strangers and ask random questions. They'll probably think you're weird -- that's okay, you'll never see them again.
(This might not apply directly if your town is small and/or unsafe.)
* Find some off-campus activity to go and join for a day. The more ridiculous the better. Country line dancing?
* Take some class in some subject that really interests you, but will be useful for nothing. Shakespeare, music theory, some obscure foreign language, ... anything.
* Do reasonably well in your classes. But don't be afraid to get a few B's. Disappoint your family slightly, not totally.
* Read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Wonderfully insightful and funny, and based on what you say I imagine the story she tells will be familiar as hell.
* Tell all of this to your family. IMHO, you will be very, very glad you did so no matter how they react.
Good luck to you!
- This reminds me of the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” (admittedly by the since somewhat disgraced for other reasons, Amy Chua) where the central argument is that by pushing children to continue doing something even (especially) when it gets hard, they will find confidence and fulfillment. Children need to “borrow” their parents’ discipline in the beginning until the flywheel starts moving in them and they develop their own discipline.
- Yes, speaking as an insider, cheating at universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT is ubiquitous. I'm not talking about undergrads copying exams, so much as research fraud, bizarre financial schemes to funnel endowment funds into faculty pockets, conflicts-of-interest, and occasionally, actual crime.
I was following the article until I ran into xenophobia:
"The absurd parental efforts of an Amy Chua, as recounted in her 2010 bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, were simply a much more extreme version of widespread behavior among her peer-group, which is why her story resonated so deeply among our educated elites."
Chua is an immigrant academic who has devoted much of her life to the study of cultural dynamics in the US. She published an honest account of her life parenting in the US, coming from a different cultural background, as a means of helping people understand the immigrant experience with America trying to Americanize them.
Instead, what she did got cast through an American cultural lens, anecdotes got distorted by the media, and she got beat up over a very personal, very honest, very well-crafted account.
I am an immigrant, and her book resonated 100% with me. Things I do with my kid seem absurd from an American cultural perspective. It's not the same set of things as Amy did, at all, but that's true of most immigrant families from different cultures, be that Middle Eastern countries, Africa, or many other places.
An author of this article either doesn't know what they're writing about (they're citing a book they haven't read), or they're lying.
- From my perspective as someone who has become familiar with Amy Chua only recently, what is going on is your typical college campus cancel culture story. Amy Chua authored Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and is a political moderate wary of tribalism, and is now the target of ideologically progressive students, administrators, activists, and news media. The push against her is due to her affiliation with Brett Kavanaugh (speaking in support of him and sending law students to clerk for him), her support for stern/focused parenting that is (relatively more) common among Asian parents, and because she is not going along with the progressive monoculture on college campuses.
While those are the true motivations in my opinion, the attacks against her are built around a different set of issues, which are allegations against her husband of improper behavior that remain unproven (and never brought to a court of law to my knowledge), and are being used as a guilt by association to attack Chua. There are further allegations that Chua herself did the same to a lesser extent by hosting occasional dinner parties with students invited (which frankly seems normal among Professor-grad student relations), and those too remain unproven. It’s all one big ball of character assassination attempts with nothing concrete beyond repeated attention drawn to it by news articles like this.
For those not familiar with Chua, I recommend listening to her yourself on one of the many podcasts she’s appeared on. For example she’s been on podcasts from Vox, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Megyn Kelly, Coleman Hughes, and a Chris Hayes. I found her to be intelligent, articulate, and insightful. She represents a diverse voice that colleges desperately need today and I hope Yale doesn’t make the mistake of diminishing her role in the community based solely on flimsily allegations and social pressures.
