My plan for blogging had been to follow up immediately my previous post on the humanities by turning to Martha Nussbaum’s book, Not for Profit. Instead I’m going to detour to Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a just-released memoir about her torture-approach to raising two daughters. She claims her method derives from a Chinese heritage, and that it’s superior to American-style education. Chua’s Draconian childrearing methods include—in the cause of her kids’ academic achievement—name-calling, screaming and yelling, threatening the destruction of favorite toys, refusing to let her daughter go to the bathroom until playing a piece on the piano perfectly, banning all play dates and sleepovers, and forbidding participation in school plays. She wants her children to become “successful” adults, presumably like herself. (Chua, a Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, is now a professor of law at Yale).
Reactions to Chua’s memoir, and her essay about the book in a Wall Street Journal article this past week, fall into three categories: 1) deep anxiety from parents who now worry their self-esteem-oriented approaches to child-rearing won’t lead to adults “successful” in the competitive, global marketplace; 2) disgust from parents horrified at Chua’s cruelty (Chua’s article has even elicited death threats); 3) shock from Chinese-Americans—who were raised by “Tiger Mommies” like Chua—that a mother in another generation is hell-bent on producing inevitably emotionally scarred adults.
Chua’s method centers on the children’s unquestioning obedience to parents and teachers. They learn, academically and otherwise, by rote memorization and endless practice, with no time out for play. Chua’s is a no-questions-asked, my-way-or-the-highway method deeply opposed to Western-style educational philosophies propounded by Rousseau, Froebel, Dewey, Montessori, and especially Socrates. It has no room for poetry, or art, or theater, or for playing music for the fun of it. Chua defends all this by arguing that there’s no fun in doing something until you’re really good at it, and to become really good at something requires her kind of imposed discipline. She does, however, allow a few hugs and cuddles, and there’s a “good cop” non-Chinese Dad who takes the girls to Yankee games. Happy photographs of Chua and her daughters have been plastered all over the media, and friends testify that Chua’s family is indeed a happy family. But there’s no question that Chua is a mommy on a mission. Short-term goal: all A’s at school and pianists’ skills at Carnegie Hall level. Long-term goal: daughters who are tough, brilliant super-achievers just like she is.
Does the “Tiger Mommy” method work? If you’re a reductionist who believes people fall into two camps—winners and losers—maybe so. I’ve no doubt that many American parents practice a laissez-faire style of childrearing in which their kids don’t do their homework, watch too much television, play too many video games, and generally run wild. But to correct this by something that’s simply bullying by another name, by considering your child’s appetite for play as an impediment to being admitted to Harvard, and raising your child to be the human equivalent of a show horse, casts a profound and despairing pall over human existence. The suicide rate for Asian-American women ages 15-24 is, incidentally, the highest for any race or ethnicity in that age group. So, I for one hope that Chua’s “Tiger Mommy” methods remain confined to a certain small circle of control freaks who see in their children nothing but little them’s. And I hope Americans as a whole can find their way to improved educational standards without destroying the natural élan that makes children so joyful and curious.
After reading about the hoopla over Chua’s book, and the author’s piece in the WSJ (in which much is probably exaggerated in the venal interest of promoting a book), I couldn’t help but wonder how Chua views her fellow human beings, or even her colleagues at Yale. Are they good enough for a winner like her? Indeed, is Chua good enough for herself? Her bio indicates that her Harvard A.B. degree was stamped a mere magna cum laude and not summa, and that she emerged from law school with a lowly, unembellished cum laude. What? Not the tippy-top? Too many sleepovers and going to the bathroom when that piano piece was less than perfect? My goodness, the shame of it all!
17 Responses to Bad Mommy
record - January 16, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Maybe this sort of focused brutality works in boot camp, or the monastery, but one could be forgiven for doubting it’s efficacy in child rearing.
trendisnotdestiny - January 16, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Dr. Fendrich, you bring up an excellent point (reductionistic thinking)….
What is particularly alarming (sentiment and approach aside) is the large amount of human development and family studies literatures that gets brushed aside when there is one standard, one formula and one dominant path. What we know about family life and education is that students develop at different rates (much like the body). To accelerate this process through academic achievement boot camp is to place one template on a whole group and ask students (unconsciously), teachers/parent systems (consciously) to be complicit in programming/indoctrination….
Selling Reductionism (winners and losers) in the name of education (NCLB) or in the business world of STEM is a conscious decision to let markets educate our children rather than people… The people most vulnerable to this myth are those who choose to see things with a black-white, good-bad lens….
I have been hoping that at some point people here at CHE would view the Harvard, Yale (IVY)degrees with the type of disdain that accelerated the academic arms of race of tuition, brought down wall street financial institutions and are comprised of the wealthiest benefactors (usually)in the country. At a time where we need someone to take paternity over their responsibilities for failures in: 1) economy, 2)social safety net institutions, 3) local and municipal governments, 4) politics, and so, I am always amazed how quickly we forget where so many of our crooks have been educated…..
fizmath - January 16, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Have any arrest warrants been issues for Mommy Dearest Chua?
record - January 16, 2011 at 10:20 pm
The emphasis Chua places on her own ethnicity is a bit fishy. Why should anyone particularly care what a descendant of the Han thinks about child rearing? Is there some exotic insight here that is intended to catalyze a new trend, with attending book sales? This smells like marketing, with a racist whiff of ethnocentricity.
22086364 - January 17, 2011 at 8:28 am
I think that a careful rding of the text would yield the revelation that the author ends up questioning her own childrearing philosophies. The take-away might then be that there’s no one best way to raise children.
While people are exaulting themselves by excoriating Chua they miss the point. SHe learned humilty, and so should most of us who have raised children.
But go ahead, if you want to miss one of the points. Feel great about yourself . . .
record - January 17, 2011 at 8:59 am
In all humility, I’m confident that cystitis inducing disciplinary tactics never helped anyone learn piano.
mark_r_harris - January 17, 2011 at 9:16 am
The notion that Amy Chua has learned humility is flapdoodle. She is willingly participating in a marketing campaign for her book that is outrageously provocative, cross-ethnically inflammatory, pitiably reductionist, and borderline self-hatingly racist. If her “text” is more nuanced than that, she is the one who is misreading and misrepresenting herself. As it is, she is coming across as someone who wants to gain fame as the Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin of child-rearing. Hey, there might be a niche. But this is a woman who truly deserves her backlash — even though, alas, she will in no way truly suffer from it, since it will simply serve to goose her book sales.
As a Yalie, I’m embarrassed that my university’s law school harbors someone whose aspirations to the limelight are about on par with those of the nearest reality TV contestant. But my rage can’t begin to compare with that of the millions of Chinese women that Chua is maligning, as a Google search will reveal.
The children will no doubt write their own memoir someday. One can only hope that they don’t go all Menendez Brothers on their mom first. In the meanwhile, I say it’s time to bring on Child Protective Services!
janina2010 - January 17, 2011 at 10:27 am
There has to be a middle-ground, and that middle-ground is unique to each family, each parent, and each child. I have not read the book, so I cannot fairly comment upon it. But as a parent of a teenager, I can definitely concur that there has to be a drastic change on the part of some parents regarding their parenting techniques. What those changes are will and should vary, but that our American society has been on the decline regarding our children, their learning and discipline seems to be evident (though I cannot cite statistics).
Think about it for a second…. When you were a kid, (if you’re in your 30s like me or older)you probably didn’t dare not do your homework, at least 80%-90% of the time. ( I was a nerd, so I did it all the time, lol.) You feared the wrath of your parents, surely, (whatever punishments, correctives, etc. that were meted out) or just the consequences of shame and embarrassment in front of your teachers that arises when you didn’t turn in an assignment or cannot answer when asked in class. You had some sense of pride in your work (even if for some it was minute).
Many of today’s kids don’t even have the obedience, self-discipline, and small sense of humility we had. Many could care less about doing a good job in school for it’s own sake, let alone to gain a teacher’s pride, to have self-pride, or to–gasp—learn something because learning is fun! As a volunteer in my kid’s school, I tutor and try to instill a love of learning and foster an environment where learning is useful, fun, and good in its own right. But sometimes I am extremely frustrated by the childrens’ nonchalance, laziness, and utter ineptitude.
I expect excellence, and I encourage each child to be the best. Each child is different, and no one approach fits all. But I still strongly believe that what appears to be a climate of permissiveness, coddling, and uneven (if not absent altogether) discipline or consequences greatly increases our childrens’ overall lack of achievement and intellectual development.
SO, do we need to beat the heck out of ‘em, berate and belittle them? Surely not. Do we have a hands-off, anything goes, easy-does-it method? Nope. Do we helicopter parent, watching every move and making every decision for them? Uhm, ew. So, what DO we do? I don’t have the answers, unfortunately, but I do know that we should at least fairly assess what is out there, and try to take a good, hard look at our own children and accept where many of us have really failed them, or allowed them to fail themselves.
mstripling - January 17, 2011 at 10:56 am
And my Yale-educated daughter’s chief complaint is that we held up a high standard for her–by example. When she taught Teach-for-America in the South Bronx, few of her students, by comparison, had home support. Nothing’s perfect.
11291652 - January 17, 2011 at 11:11 am
I suspect Amy Chau’s memoir is hyperbolic. I also suspect she’s trying to be funny. Too bad she’s not a Jewish mother. Jewish mothers are funny, which is a way of saying that there’s a grain of truth in every stereotype. And the grain of truth in Ms. Chau’s reportage can be found by just looking at achievement scores or simply dropping by the local piano store.
trendisnotdestiny - January 17, 2011 at 11:25 am
@janina2010
nice comments… in reading your response I thought of Cornell West’s common retort: that we are just holding witness and passing through, we do not own people or things (of which takes up an enormous amount of time and energy).
Students are not our own, they are own to themselves of which there are a few moments where the intersection between their lived experiences and our relational/information histories align. Dr. Essig said it beautifully, they are not commodities.
Thanks for reminding me about Cornell West’s version of the blues society where catastrophe (anxiety) is channeled into lyrical…
sand6432 - January 17, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Want I want to know is whether Amy Chua is really happy? Her first mistake is to think that there can be no enjoyment in doing something unless you are really good at it. I have gotten great enjoyment out of playing drums and swimming competitively without ever thinking that I was even close to perfection in either activity. What motivated me to do well in school was less anything my parents did than how well my brother did as a student and athlete before me. That was all the inspiration I needed. My brother went to Yale, and I went to Princeton (and graduated summa cum laude, by the way).—Sandy Thatcher
11161452 - January 17, 2011 at 10:08 pm
“Many of today’s kids don’t even have the obedience, self-discipline, and small sense of humility we had. Many could care less about doing a good job in school for it’s own sake, let alone to gain a teacher’s pride, to have self-pride, or to–gasp—learn something because learning is fun! As a volunteer in my kid’s school, I tutor and try to instill a love of learning and foster an environment where learning is useful, fun, and good in its own right. But sometimes I am extremely frustrated by the childrens’ nonchalance, laziness, and utter ineptitude.”
*****
So true. I observed “trickle up effect” of this phenomenon when I taught in a nonselective small liberal arts college. The most disturbing and demoralizing thing about teaching there was the malaise (which sometimes dragged down even the better students) where the attitude was “I can’t do it, I’ll never be able to do it, so why should I even try?” In my own university studies, such students were weeded out quickly, but what do you do when they are all you’ve got?
I don’t agree with Chua’s use of a child’s bathroom urges as a practice-makes-perfect bargaining chip…but I also wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her when I regularly see the awful end result of the other end of the parenting continuum.
cathybaobean - January 18, 2011 at 11:21 am
Her methods are in the context of a marriage where the father seems to be a complement of her rigid rule approach yet the writer seems to credit only her own input as the reason for “success.” And though she mentions using the sister’s accomplishment as a standard to aspire to, there is no mention how the sister fits into the family dynamics.
She seems to totally ignore the fact that most children develop an ability to reason, to do, e.g., basic Aristotelian logic (syllogisms) by 5 years old. There is a difference between “talking at” and “discussing,” between browbeating and explaining.
And while mother and daughter “reconciled” upon successfully playing the piece, I wonder if the daughter’s feelings were more a matter of relief (from terror). Chua seems to think there is only triumph. I detect no joy, no moderation, no sense of play.
I meet and talk with a lot of these high-achieving students – from West Pt to Carnegie Mellon to Princeton. Many are conflicted about their identities, thinking they must choose (irrevocably?) between fulfilling individual vs familial/relational expectations etc. But, even more so, all are so relieved to have these issues aired by a (grand)mother aged person with a SENSE OF HUMOR which, in the Chua excerpt, I do not detect.
There is a mean between extremes, a way that moderates the “rule” driven state of mind which, it seems, is her profession as well (as in teaching law). I wonder whether her approach to students/teaching is similarly driven by rule. Not to say that rules are “bad” but to mention there are other forms of logic – as in the paradoxical “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
The Western world operates on the presumption that there is a “perfect” – it could be God, the Heisman trophy, Olympic gold. And when one wins or gets to the top there is room only for one.
The Asian world operates on the presumption that there is no perfect and that one can always do better (or, to put it another way, better is not ever good enough). However, when one does win or fail, it is not a lonely venture, but one shared with those who helped or hindered. When you mix the two without humor, diversity, joy, one can get the (real) satisfaction of a “model minority” but there are those who really can’t and don’t want to– for legitimate reasons! – compete with themselves or others in this way.
Cathy Bao Bean http://www.cathybaobean.com
President, Society for Values in Higher Education http://www.svhe.org
author of:
The Chopsticks-Fork Principle, A Memoir and Manual
The Chopsticks-Fork Principle, A Bilingual Reader
with Dongdong Chen
delfeld - January 18, 2011 at 12:27 pm
We create a relation between two ideas — both in ourselves and in our children. Associating using the restroom — or any other *necessity* — with a milestone in an *optional* activity seems detrimental.
Piano sales are on a downward trend:
http://www.bluebookofpianos.com/uspiano.htm
So what is the point in teaching a child an optional, declining industrial trade? Not that a child should not learn the piano, but rather that piano as a life’s goal is misplaced if you want to be #1 of the #1′s.
What if she changes her mind? The piano is not the highest pinnacle, let’s say, so if she picks, for instance, the accordion instead (maybe another bad choice to be 1 of 1′s), the child will now have spent a significant portion of his or her life doing something useless — not a winner’s model!
I’m sure there are skills that would transfer between instruments, though the child would not be allowed to *express* any ideas about that piano — it’s old news.
Unquestioning obedience does not create winners, it creates dictators. And if a dictator happens make it to the top of the heap (of lawyers — big surprise! No, wait . . .of teachers of lawyers.) then that does not imply that there is a value in being a dictator, but only that a dictator happened to make it.
I would want to ask the children what they thin in about 15 years from now, when they are on their own. This book is only proof before the pudding is done. I actually am interested mostly in the “no complaining” rules; these show that the kids do have minds of their own, which will come into play very, very soon (puberty is on the cusp!).
Finally, I wonder what non-child-owned skills will be necessary to become another lawyer-teacher-winner? Being a Yale faculty is probably one . . .
lothlorien - January 21, 2011 at 11:30 am
Hey, here is an idea, how about some of you READ THE BOOK before making judgments about Chua as a person. If you had bothered to do this, you would know that one of her daughters rebels against her, and Chua expresses doubts about the methods she has been using. Sure, some of the marketing campaign is a bit hyperbolic – but in this day and age, not unsurprising, given the competitive book market. But have a listen to an interview with her, and read her book, and you will not come away with a one-dimensional view of her as a person, even going to the ridiculous extent of suggesting she should not be Yale faculty.
goxewu - January 23, 2011 at 1:10 pm
If Amy Chua didn’t want to be judged on the basis of a short WSJ essay she wrote about her book, then she shouldn’t have written it or had her agent pitch it to the Journal. The same goes for her TV interviews. She could have said, “I’m sorry, but this subject is just too large and complicated for me to encourage people to make judgments concerning it on the basis of a short essay or TV interviews.” And “the competitive book market” is no excuse.