Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Author	Amy Chua
Language	English
Publisher	Penguin Group
Publication date	2011
Publication place	United States
Pages	240
ISBN	9781594202841

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a book by Amy Chua. Chua published the book, her third, in 2011. The complete subtitle of the book is: “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.”

Summary

Wall Street Journal preview

An article published under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal on January 8, 2011, contained excerpts from her book, in which Chua describes her efforts to give her children what she describes as a traditional, strict “Chinese” upbringing. This piece was controversial. Many readers believed that Chua was advocating the “superiority” of a particular, very strict, ethnically defined approach to parenting. Chua defines “Chinese mother” loosely to include parents of other ethnicities who practice traditional, strict child-rearing, while also acknowledging that “Western parents come in all varieties,” and not all ethnically Chinese parents practice strict child-rearing.

Chua also reported that in one study of 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, the vast majority “said that they believe their children can be ‘the best’ students, which some people think it is not right, that ‘academic achievement reflects successful parenting,’ and that if children did not excel at school then there was ‘a problem’ and parents ‘were not doing their job.’” While not endorsing their views, Chua contrasts them with the view she labels “Western” - that a child’s self-esteem is paramount.

In one extreme example, Chua mentioned that she had called one of her children “garbage,” a translation of a term her own father called her on occasion in her family’s native Hokkien dialect. Particularly controversial was the ‘Little White Donkey’ anecdote, where Chua described how she got her unwilling younger daughter to learn a very difficult piano piece. In Chua’s words, “… I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.” They then “work[ed] right through dinner” without letting her daughter “get up, not for water, not even for bathroom breaks.” The anecdote concludes by describing how her daughter was “beaming” after she finally mastered the piece and “wanted to play [it] over and over.”

Reception

The Wall Street Journal article generated a huge response, both positive and negative. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, for instance, argued that “large numbers of talented children everywhere would profit from Chua’s approach, and instead are frittering away their gifts — they’re nice kids, not brats, but they are also self-indulgent and inclined to make excuses for themselves.” In a poll on the Wall Street Journal website regarding Chua’s response to readers, two-thirds of respondents said the “Demanding Eastern” parenting model is better than the “Permissive Western” model. Allison Pearson wondered the following in The Daily Telegraph: “Amy Chua’s philosophy of child-rearing may be harsh and not for the fainthearted, but ask yourself this: is it really more cruel than the laissez-faire indifference and babysitting-by-TV which too often passes for parenting these days?”

Annie Paul, writing for Time, describes, “[i]n the 2008 book A Nation of Wimps, author Hara Estroff Marano, editor-at-large of Psychology Today magazine, marshals evidence supporting Chua's approach. ‘Research demonstrates that children who are protected from grappling with difficult tasks don’t develop what psychologists call ‘mastery experiences,’’ Marano explains. "Kids who have this well-earned sense of mastery are more optimistic and decisive; they've learned that they're capable of overcoming adversity and achieving goals." Ann Hulbert of Slate remarks on Chua’s “shocking honesty about tactics. She has written the kind of exposé usually staged later by former prodigies themselves. ... [Chua] is a tiger who roars rather than purrs. That's because no child, she points out, naturally clamors for the ‘tenacious practice, practice, practice’ that mastery demands.”

MSNBC stated that the article “reads alternately like a how-to guide, a satire or a lament.” MSNBC’s critical response goes on to state that “the article sounds so incredible to Western readers – and many Asian ones, too – that many people thought the whole thing was satire... [but] aspects of her essay resonated profoundly with many people, especially Chinese Americans – not necessarily in a good way.” In the Financial Times, Isabel Berwick called the “tiger mother” approach to parenting “the exact opposite of everything that the Western liberal holds dear.”

Charing Ball of The Atlanta Post stated that Chua’s parenting style has “less to do with cultural difference and more to do with affluent classism.” Ball felt “[h]er insistence that her children learn ... the piano [or] violin [is] reflective of ... classic cultural snobbery” and that many struggling working-class families could not afford to educate their children the same way. David Brooks of the New York Times, in an op-ed piece entitled ‘Amy Chua is a “Wimp”’, wrote that he believed Chua was “coddling her children” because “[m]anaging status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.” The Washington Post, while not as critical, did suggest that “ending a parenting story when one child is only 15 seems premature.”

Others have noted that the Wall Street Journal article took excerpts only from the beginning of the book, and not from any of the later chapters in which Chua describes her retreat from what she calls “Chinese” parenting. Author Amy Gutman felt many have missed the point of Chua’s book, which she described as “coming of age”, and states the controversial examples shown in the book “reflect where Chua started, not who she is today, and passing judgment on her based on them strikes me as a bit akin to passing judgment on Jane Austen’s Emma for her churlish behavior to Miss Bates. Like Emma’s, Chua’s narrative has an arc. It’s a coming-of-age story -- where the one to come of age is the parent.” Prawfsblawg, comparing Chua to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, notes that “the story of her coming to terms with the resistance and rebellion of one of her two daughters is as important and perhaps more important than Chua’s pitch for strictness. In a (massive) concession to liberalism’s concern with individuality, Chua admits that traditional discipline just won’t work with some children, including members of her own family.”

Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle felt the excerpts in the Wall Street Journal article failed to represent the content in Chua’s book and states that “the excerpt was chosen by the editors of the Journal and the publishers. The editors wanted to make a sensation; the publishers want to sell books” but “it does not tell the whole story.” A spokeswoman for the Wall Street Journal told the Columbia Journalism Review that “[w]e worked extensively with Amy’s publisher, as we always do with book excerpts, and they signed off on the chosen extract in advance.” Chua maintains that “[t]he Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they’d put that kind of a title on it.”

On March 29, 2011, the Wall Street Journal has organized an event under the title 'The Return of Tiger Mom' in the New York Public Library. This event has discussed different aspects of child-raising, in a more subtle and non-sensational manner, compared to controversy which the book had previously evoked. Amy Chua's husband, Jed Rubenfeld, and their two daughters have also attended the event. Rubenfeld, who has become known as 'Tiger Dad,' has said that he doesn't see the Tiger Mom education method as a representative of Chinese education, but rather a more tradition old-fashion style. He and Chua expressed a more liberal attitude compared with the Wall Street Journal's article, while still stressing the importance of discipline in a child's early years.

Chua's defense

Chua has openly confronted criticism in print and during her book signings. In a follow-up article in the Wall Street Journal, Chua explains that “my actual book is not a how-to guide; it’s a memoir, the story of our family’s journey in two cultures, and my own eventual transformation as a mother. Much of the book is about my decision to retreat from the strict ‘Chinese’ approach, after my younger daughter rebelled at 13.”

In an interview with Jezebel, Chua addresses why she believes the book has hit such a chord with parents: “We parents, including me, are all so anxious about whether we’re doing the right thing. You can never know the results. It’s this latent anxiety.” In a conversation with Die Zeit, Chua says about her book: "I would never burn the stuffed animals of my children - that was a hyperbole, an exaggeration. I have intensified many situations to clarify my position." She adds that the book "was therapy for me at the time of a great defeat."

Reaction by Chua’s daughter Sophia

On January 17 an open letter from Chua’s older daughter, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, to her mother was published in the New York Post. Sophia’s letter defends her parents’ child-rearing methods and states that she and her sister were not oppressed by an “evil mother”. She discusses some of the incidents that have been criticized as unduly harsh, and explains that they were not as bad as they sound out of context. She ends the letter saying, “If I died tomorrow, I would die feeling I’ve lived my whole life at 110 percent. And for that, Tiger Mom, thank you.”

See also

• Kyoiku mama - Japanese culture
• Harvard Girl

External links

• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother book website