Weighing in on the Tiger Mother

For the past couple of weeks, netizens have been up in arms about Amy Chua. I will state for the record that I wrote this post yesterday, before today's deluge of articles on the topic in the Straits Times, so these are strictly my views. In any case, Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School who just published a book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Penguin Press. The Wall Street Journal printed an excerpt from the book entitled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" which led to an uproar throughout the US (and thanks to the Internet, halfway across the globe).

In essence, it talks about why the Chinese parenting style produces more math whizzes and music prodigies than Western parenting, the latter she clearly considers soft and over-coddling. The excerpt describes her personal parenting practices for her two daughters, which include not being allowed to go for sleepovers or playdates, no tv or computer games, no grade less than an A. She has called her kids "lazy"and "garbage". When her 7-year-old daughter couldn't perfect a difficult piano piece, Amy forced her to practise for hours without water or toilet breaks until she got it right, threatening her with no lunch, dinner and birthday presents. I recommend you read the whole article (if you don't, Amy might say you're "cowardly" and "pathetic").

It all sounds like something from a Nazi camp, yet has familiar echoes. I think anyone who has a Chinese parent or is a Chinese parent would recognise the tune to which Amy sings, even if it's not to that extreme. Take this paragraph:

"Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)"

Come on, admit it. You do that too.

As you can imagine, that article has unleashed a storm of polarizing responses. Some laud Amy's courage and tenacity while others have condemned her. One reader called her the "worst parent ever" and she has already gotten death threats. Admittedly, it's hard to take Amy's side as she appears slightly manic. She's not only the Tiger mum, she's the Tiger who mauls other tigers.

Since then, Amy Chua has come out to say that the title for the article was not from her, it was a publicity ploy by the publishers (brilliant, by the way. Her book is already No.4 on Amazon's best seller list). She claims that the excerpt took all the most controversial parts of the book and highlighted them, that the book was also meant to poke fun at the Chinese parenting stereotypes, and that she never meant to imply that one parenting style was superior to another. In fact, the book was a coming-of-age for her because she realised she had to change her approach when her own daughter rebelled against her draconian methods at age 13. In this follow-up piece in the Wall Street Journal where she answers some of readers' questions, she appears a lot more humane.

Then the New York Post published a heart-warming letter from Amy's daughter Sophia, now 18, to her mother, thanking her for raising her the way she did. She sounds like a wonderful individual - certainly not the neurotic, nervous social recluse you would expect. Typical of me, I had a moment of suspicion - hmm... maybe her mother made her write that letter. But to be honest, it seems pretty genuine.

I really haven't made up my mind entirely about Amy Chua. Is she a crazed control freak trying to cash in on book sales or the quintessential strict but loving Chinese mum? As for whether such methods work, for every well-adjusted, accomplished individual that has blossomed from heavy-handed parenting, there's one who's resentful, insecure and laden with baggage. Therein lies the complexity of humans - we're all different.

In general, I'm more Hobbes than Shere Khan. However, like most cats, I have a Jekyll/Hyde syndrome and occasionally, the Tiger in me awakens and goes a-roaring (strangely enough, usually near exam periods). I think there's a little bit of that Tiger mum in all of us, though I would never recommend taking it as far as Amy Chua. Nevertheless, her article has brought to the forefront one of the most valuable tenets (in my opinion) in Chinese parenting - we believe in the enormous potential of our children, often much more than our kids realise themselves. To be good at anything, you have to work at it and that's why we push them the way we do. Not because we want them to be someone they're not but because we know they are capable of accomplishing a lot. Oh and by the way, that's how we build self-esteem.

So here's my message to my kids: the next time I make you do yet another fiendishly challenging math problem sum or attempt that convoluted piano piece - that's how much I believe in you.