Last week, I picked up in Newsweek and Time stories about a controversial book written by Chinese-American law professor Amy Chua: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. What the book entails is a memoir from Chua of her childhood and subsequent parenting that stems from an age-old long tradition of raising children under alarmingly strict pretenses. But one wonders, is Tiger Mother a wake-up call to overly-permissive American parents? Or was the book's timing impeccable, due to our recent competition with China?
As an example of what "tiger mother" parenting entails (I will restrain from designating the parenting as "Chinese", since that would be biased) is described as such from Chua's Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. According to Chua, her daugters were not allowed to:
- attend a sleepover
- have a playdate
- be in a school play
- complain about not being in a school play
- watch TV or play computer games
- choose their own extracurricular activities
- get any grade less than an A
- not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
- play any instrument other than the piano or violin
- not play the piano or violin
Shocking? Believe it or not, this style of parenting is unbelievably prevalent among many "Asian" cultures in the United States. I went to school in a very diverse neighborhood; the largest minority of students were of Asian descent in numerous ethnicities. I knew many students who confessed about their parents enforcing rules like these upon them; my cousin's Chinese-American ex-girlfriend, included. I was always perplexed by the strict nature of these parents; I grew up imposing the discipline on myself that these parents have been striving for, because my own parents taught me the value of self-worth and independence without penalizing me for failures or putting me under the gun to succede - these were treated as "life experiences". What concerns me is how do you prepare a child to accept failure when it occurs and "jump back on the horse"? Clearly, "tiger cubs" are being trained to be immune to failure, can such a thing really be possible?
In the more current interviews that I've read, Chua seems to have relaxed her parenting style a bit, she actually allows her daughters to go out more and even allowed her eldest to have a boyfriend. It's an interesting changeover from her condescension of American parents in what I see as hypocrisy and ethnic arrogance. I am in no position to give honest critique on parenting other than what I objectively see what other parents do; I have no kids of my own (yet) to actually dictate any sound advice. I don't see Chua as a bad person, and I think she's raised some fairly right-minded children. However, I do find her insights to be a little narrowminded.
I majored in psychology in college, one of the concepts I learned about was the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate: Does our environment shape who we are? Or is it how we are raised?" I strongly believe the former is a more influential aspect in our maturity as human beings into adults. Chua's concept of "tiger mothers" seems to undermine this idea, in my opinion. In a society where "tiger mothers" are training breed after breed of these überkids to pretty much rule the world, one wonders: where is the individuality that institutions like college and their admissions personnel are seeking? Where is the opportunity to actually learn and gain skills other than those prerequisite of "tiger mothers" outside of homework?
Given the economic competition the US is currently facing between China, of course some people may be alarmed at what the "tiger mother" parenting style may mean for future generations. I don't particularly see this as a huge concern because of my already-established position on ambition with individuality being key to personal success. Maybe Chua's style of parenting isn't particularly for everyone; I doubt all "tiger cubs" are really that predisposed to reaching success. Success comes from a variety of different factors; to prescribe it in the form of a laundry-list of parenting suggestions has questionable reliability.
Peace,
- Jon
EDIT (10:42 PM): I found a very interesting blog article from the perspective of an Asian-American that details why "tiger mother" parenting is imperfect and doesn't always correlate with success.
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