TIGER PARENTING

My Response to Amy Chua as an Asian Parent

Chua appeared on the Today’s show and explained that this wasn’t about Chinese methods are “better” and that you have to put things in context.

But Amy why would you name the title of your WSJ article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”?

To sell a book by stirring controversy? Then you are CREATING the very context that you’re blaming others for misreading.

Also, Chua claims that the book is about making fun of herself, how she is a different parent at the end of her book than at the beginning, and it’s about reclaiming her kids from all the time-wasting Facebook and other meaningless activities. She also said that many Asian/Chinese parents are secretly horrified at how western parenting coddles their children:

1) First, your WSJ article never shows this context – don’t blame people for responding to your article exactly as you’d written it (with a dead-serious note, and coming from a law professor, it’s hard to tell if you’re actually making a joke because people tend to take “experts” seriously).

2) you’re making extreme comparisons – it’s not “all or none”, “coddling or extreme strictness”. I don’t believe in coddling, but I believe in building resilience in a different way that would not include belittling a child.

3) you’re assuming that most Asian parents pair extreme strictness and high expectations with love. I can tell you that this is not always the case, then you have extreme strictness paired with nothing resembling love. Hence, the despair, hopelessness, cutting, high suicide rates.

4) you’re assuming that most children will interpret and respond to these types of parenting cues the way you did as a child. obviously this is a nature/nurture debate. maybe you’re born with thicker skin and it doesn’t bother you to be called garbage because you know you’re not and you see it for what you believe it is (your father encouraging you). on the other hand, there are kids who will actually BELIEVE that they are indeed garbage and worthless.

5) yes it’s all about “knowing your children”, but many children will never dare to “rebel” the way Chua’s second daughter did. for those children, they continue to live in that oppression and turn their anger and hatred inward, upon themselves. that is how depression and suicides get started.

I think that the WSJ was meant to incite controversy for the purpose of selling a book, and the article itself is exposed to more readers than the book itself will, which means Chua should have been more deliberate in HOW she chooses to portray herself, her growth as a parent if any, and the book’s message.

For the purpose of selling your book, this is irresponsible marketing. Legal yes, ethical – not so much.

Norma Ming compiled research on parenting practices in the Asian American context:

Beyond Tigers, Dragons, and Sheep in Parenting Practices

COMMENTS

Social Worker says:

Thank you so much for commenting on this article. Never has a written word produced such a negative response from me. As an Asian American raised according to this method, I can tell you that I will need years of therapy to recover from the emotional abuse I experienced while growing up. Though I excelled in school, nothing I did seemed good enough for my parents. It’s wasn’t good enough to be a straight A student with tons of extracurricular activities…I had to be better than everyone else. When I went to college and decided against medicine, I was forever branded a failure in the eyes of my family. Given the way I was treated, I suppose it’s no surprise I ended up in the field of social work. Though I have a great career now as a medical social worker, to this day I am haunted be feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy from not living up to my parents’ expectations. Furthermore, I feel socially stunted and emotionally scarred as a result of having a childhood where everything was controlled.

I fear for the children of parents who will read this article and take its recommendations seriously. While I will agree that a number of children do become successful with this method, more often than not it will be at the expense of their happiness, mental health, family/social relationships, and in some cases, their own lives. If you look at the evidence, Asian American children and adolescents have higher rates of depression than their white counterparts. Asian women ages 15-24 have the highest rates of suicide in that age group. Disregarding the “cultural” aspect (as “culture” is NOT an excuse for this abuse), studies show that children raised with perfectionist standards and high levels of perceived parental expectation are more likely to develop affective disorders. I can only hope that more people will speak up and share the reality of this type of “parenting” with the general public before more children are scarred for life.

Jane says:

Some people suggested that this was more of a satire, used to market the book, especially when reviews of the book talked about Chua “being humbled by a 13 year old”. The subtitle of the book, I was informed, said: “This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story about 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.”

You only need to read some of the comments on this site to see the potential outcomes from the products of the type of parenting that Chua espouses as superior. It’s both painful and disturbing to read from both adults and teens alike on how years of belittling and emotional manipulation/abuse have left a profound effect on their psyches. I can’t even begin to describe the demons these people struggle with, and it’s especially hard for me to read the feedback from young people.

If the opinion piece was meant as a controversial flaming teaser to get the author and her book “shock and awe” publicity, it worked. I hope she sells enough copies of this book to make worthwhile against the costs to her conscience that will come, and have come, because of her approach to marketing it. There will be some parents who will take this piece literally, and point to it as proof and justification for their “Tiger Parenting” methods.

I’ve said this several times already and I’ll say it here too: anyone can force compliance from a person by using physical and emotional terror methods. It It’s not rocket science: it works on animals too. I consider this the basest form of gaining compliance from a sentient being, and in fact, this disproves Chua’s argument that “Chinese Mothers are Superior” and supports the argument that “Chinese Mothers are Inferior” if they have to resort to physical and emotional manipulation to prepare their young. They are conditioning a world-view in their offsprings that this is how the world works, and how “love” should only work. Superior methods will gain compliance from a child by eliciting that child’s desire to cooperate, which means the parent will need to get creative and actually use some of that evolved intelligence and consciousness that humans continually tout they have over other species.

Hailun Ye says:

I can’t thank you enough. I’m a chinese-american kid and frankly the thought of people following Amy Chua’s example scares me. My parents aren’t as bad as some,but the things they say, it hurts. They call me fat, stupid etc and compare me to other kids. It’s never enough, you know. I’ve got a 97+ average and it’s still not enough. With people like Amy Chua there is never going to be a limit or a real choice for a kid’s future. My parents wants me to make only chinese or asian friends, they pursued me about ditching art to the point I don’t find joy in it anymore, they want me to learn to read and write chinese, they want me to marry a chinese guy, they want me to drop the idea of becoming an author, do I have to say more? People say we all have a right to make our own future, but frankly? Amy Chua’s kids and other asian kids, we don’t get one. Every thing we do meets with disapproval. It’s never going to be just enough.

Chinese Parenting False Prophet Vs. Real Sage

Amy Chua is right about "Tiger" form of parenting when you want to create a society that:

1. considers physical, mental, and emotional coercion as the only form of gaining compliance from a human being

2. considers outward success based on a standard of “winning” and “better than” as the only form of success

3. considers parents as owners – not stewards – of children

4. considers parents’ “face” and “pride” and “ego” as synonymous with love for their own children

5. believes in “the end justifies the means”

6. believes that human beings experience contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment the exact same way

7. thinks it’s perfectly normal and even smart to use broad, sensationalizing, sweeping, controversial generalizations and stereotypes to hawk one’s book, and once she’s gotten the media attention, to claim that her book was meant to talk about HER own growth as a parent, and ignore the fact that her WSJ article was neither apologetic nor satiric in nature.

Conclusion: I don’t need to debate whether HER method of parenting makes sense – many readers in this thread already have.

I am looking at the type of parenting that results in the likes of Amy Chua, and I see this as an abject failure of Chua’s parents’ parenting methods. They’ve produced an offspring who is outwardly successful and has used her intelligence to manipulate human emotions for self gain.

Lao Tzu’s philosophy has endured and will continue to endure hundreds of years beyond the expiration date of sensationalist “parenting memoirs”.

We can look at his philosophy about leadership and apply it to parenting, and see Chinese Parents as they truly aspire to be:

Lao Tzu on the “Best” leaders:

“The Leader is best,

When people are hardly aware of his existence,
Not so good when people praise his government,
Less good when people stand in fear,
Worst, when people are contemptuous.

Fail to honor people, and they will fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who speaks little
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
The people say, ‘We did it ourselves.'”

If I, a Chinese parent, were to apply this to being the “Best” parent I can be:

“The Parent is best,

When children are hardly aware of her guidance,
Not so good when children praise her dominance,
Less good when children stand in fear,
Worst, when children are contemptuous.

Fail to honor children, and they will fail to honor you.
But of a good parent, who speaks little
When her work is done, her aim fulfilled,
The children say, ‘We did it ourselves.'”

Reproduction is a Gift, Parenthood is a Privilege: An Asian Child’s View

I receive many emails from Asian children (many of them grown adults, around my age, which is middle age) who have grown up in emotionally unhealthy environments. They usually write me after visiting this website and reading one of the articles on emotional manipulation and guilt.

Here is my response (unedited) to someone asking for my advice for his girlfriend, who is dealing with an emotionally manipulative mother. The (grown) daughter wants to stop living with her mother to regain sanity, but:

"… she is having difficulty being guilty that she is leaving her mom. She knows that her mom is the one that has spent all her life taking care of her and her other 3 siblings. She can’t help the fact that she feels indebted to her and must follow filial piety. She is Asian so therefore you understand how you always feel indebted to your family. It is ingrained into our culture. I don’t know what to tell her to make her more at ease and to tell her that she is not being a bad person if she leaves her home.”

My response:

That cultural indebtedness is something that she may need counseling or therapy on, it’s not something you ‘get over’ in a week or even a month.

Speaking as an Asian daughter and now an Asian mother, I have perspective from both sides – as child and parent.

I can say that I’m at peace knowing that I do not “owe” my parents beyond courtesy and basic human respect that all people deserve. I feel more compassion and understanding over why they did what they did, but it does not change my behavior or action toward them. It certainly does not mean I become an emotional prisoner to them. Then it becomes a master-servant/slave relationship.

When she has a child she will realize that SHE IS OBLIGATED TO THE CHILD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Asian culture is screwed up this way – by manipulating the child into believing that they owe their life to their parents.

Yet I can tell you that I’ve met many Asian parents who think the world of their children and do everything for them WITHOUT expecting the same in return. That is the kind of parent I am to my son and want to continue to be for him. I do not believe that he is obligated to my livelihood or mental health or emotional fulfillment. THAT IS MY OWN JOB AS A HUMAN BEING, not the job of another human being (this includes my husband, by the way, I don’t expect him to come rescue me from my life).

The reason why I was determined to “unscrew” myself in this convoluted cultural shadow is because I looked at how I felt and how I grew up, and I asked myself if that is the kind of mother I want to be, if that is the kind of parent I want to be. And I don’t.

My biggest expectation of my child is that he learns self reliance, critical thinking, and courage as a self-directed compassionate human being. His job is to make sure that when he is ‘released’ to the world as an independent adult, that he does something valuable with his life and that he is content. That is the greatest honor he can give to my name and our relationship – not by living a life that I have written for him.

Filial piety only works when your parents treat you like a human being and a child that came from them, it does not work in cases of emotional and physical abuse or with prisoners of an kind. Unfortunately, most children who are abused are loyal to their abusers because they have been brainwashed to believe that their whole identity is based on ‘whether mom or dad is happy with me’.

It becomes a waste of one’s gift of life, it enables the abuser by teaching her that ‘if you keep doing this, it will work and you will get what you want’, and in fact it is harmful to that person because you continue to enable the abusive behavior. I can even say that if your girlfriend wants to honor her mother, she should leave and learn how to be an independent thinker and do something honorable with her life and be the break in the chain of psychological abuse.

You may want to share with her Kalil Gibran’s poem about children in his book The Prophet, where he talks about children coming “through” parents – they do not come ‘from’ parents.

I view it is my privilege that I have my son in my life, it is a huge responsibility when a human soul trusts itself to your care, and allow you to guide it through the human experience. I would be criminal to abuse this trust by making this soul “my property” and my prisoner.

[If anything, I should be the one to encourage my son to go out into the world and be the true author of his life, and do himself proud, and know how to pass this onto his children. I give value to whatever suffering I had experienced as a child when I spare my own child from this same suffering – and it requires me to work on myself. Not the other person, whom you should never hope to change, because it is not your job.]

I broke this chain of psychological abuse within my family, and whatever I give to my parents now, it is only because I want to, not because I feel guilty or owe them or because of filial piety. In my opinion, giving of my own free will is the greatest sign of respect I can give to my parents, whether they understand it or not. I am treating them like a whole person whom I believe can do better and know better, and I am giving them their right to live the life they have chosen to live.

I’m 38, and have processed this for many years, to get to where I am, I know it is not easy and takes tremendous self-work and soul searching.

COMMENTS

Compassionate says:

Jane, thanks for this article! It is quite rare to find an Asian adult writing about her experiences with “filial piety”. As an Asian-American woman with immigrant parents, I realize now what a challenge it was for my parents to come to terms with raising their children in the independent style of American culture, while trying to preserve the filial piety traditions of their Asian culture.

From both personal and professional experience, I absolutely agree with you that “giving of my own free will is the greatest sign of respect I can give to my parents”, and that our children our NOT obligated to us. And yes, counseling DOES help, because it takes a long time to process and heal from a childhood where we have been taught that we “owe” our entire lives to our parents.

Jane says:

Thanks for your comment. I think filial piety is a virtue, but virtue is valued only by the virtuous, and wasted on those who do not practice it. On the one hand, I can recount many stories of people whose virtues move those who are not virtuous so that they become virtuous. One the other hand, I also know there are many people whose virtues are squandered by those who abuse their trust and frankly do not deserve virtue!

I’m glad that you are serving the Asian community with counseling services. I know that in the Asian culture, mental illness is still seen as a personal weakness or a character flaw. As a result, people do not seek help when there is help available, and they do not take steps to improve their own lives.

People need to seek help so that they will “be better” for their family or loved ones – if those serve as motivators to get help – that’s wonderful. I believe that people need to seek help because they have decided that they DO deserve better, and that they do not have to accept a painful life when there is help available. When they improve their lives by seeking help for their mental illness, they will automatically become a “better” friend/spouse/parent/employee.

I think it was the Dalai Lama who said that Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Mental illness is a pain that for some of us born with that genetic disposition, is inevitable. But we are fortunate that we live in a time when suffering CAN be optional, because we have come a long way in the treatment and awareness of mental illness.

Ann says:

WOW! I am not an Asian American…..but your article spoke to my heart! I grew up as a 2nd generation american, the culture of the family was laced with guilt and manipulation, I felt like the property of my mother, not a whole person. The quote ” When she has a child she will realize that SHE IS OBLIGATED TO THE CHILD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.” sums it up! Having my own children I certainly understand better the love my parents must have for me (healthy) but I have also been shocked at many of their choices. I remember when I moved away at 20 years old my parents called me to tell me how to vote in the next election! Independant fostering relationship? Not at all!

Asian (American) Students, Depression, and Suicide

I love my parents, as I know many of my Asian American friends love their parents. But I am not joking when I say the main driver of how dysfunctional and “screwed up” we have learned to think about our roles in life comes from our parents. Our parents in turn, learned from their parents, and so on.

Cultural and Social Issue

This goes back to many thousands of years ago, when the main ticket out of poverty in ancient China is to become a politician. You can become a politician by passing a rigorous exam and scoring the highest score. (This tradition is alive in well in Taiwan, at least back in the 70’s and 80’s.) If you don’t get the highest score, and you don’t become a politician, well, I guess you’re off to be a butcher or a coffin-maker or some manual laborer that will not bring fame and glory to uplift the “face” of your family.

And it’s all about “Face.” I’d explain this concept to my Western counterparts as “the pride of your parents, your immediate relatives, your extended relatives, and all your dead ancestors rolled up into this brand you will forever bear on your forehead for the rest of your life.” Essentially, if you don’t excel (we’ll go into that in a minute), then you will “lose face” and bring shame not just to yourself, but more importantly your parents, your relatives, your ancestors, and any being dead-or-alive that would bear the same last name as you.

If that kind of pressure applied day after day and year after year – doesn’t make a person mentally crack – I don’t know what will.

Doing Your Best Means Being Better Than Someone Else

Asian American students are expected to excel. More accurately, “be better than.” Excelling in our culture is based squarely on “being better than someone else, preferably someone whose parents your parents can’t stand.” I grew up being constantly compared and contrasted with other kids. Why couldn’t I play the piano and the violin and be the first seed on the Tennis team like so-and-so’s kid? Why couldn’t I speak three languages (Chinese doesn’t count) like so-and-so’s son? Oh- why didn’t I score a perfect 1600 on the SATs and get early admission with full scholarship into Harvard, Yale, and Princeton like those twins? And my favorites: “You scored a 99% on your test? Why didn’t you get 100%” and “You scored 100%? How many more students scored 100% in the class?” We’re just never good enough.

When you are brought up to think of yourself mainly in reference to someone else, you aren’t sure exactly what to think of yourself, or how to see yourself. For most of my life, I saw myself as a portfolio of academic grades, scholarly achievements (or lack thereof), SAT scores (and it was nowhere near 1600), what schools I got into, and whether my chosen vocation would bring pride to my ancestors.

I haven’t even gotten into the subject of emotional abuse in the Asian household. That would be a whole website in itself.

Is it any wonder that I suffered from depression most of my childhood, adolescent, and adult life?

Here, in a separate article, are some of the ways Asian American students could approach these issues, or more accurately, how I personally “overcame”…. sort of.

Tiger Mothers: An Asian Adult Child’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Self

I actually wrote this article in 2006 when I titled it, “An Asian Adult Child’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Own Mind”. In light of the recent “Chinese Mothers are Superior” article, I thought I’d share how ANY adult children who have been programmed for self-hatred can begin to reclaim themselves as human beings.

If you are like how I used to be, you have the mind of a well-trained, obedient Asian child trapped in the body of an adult (“Adult Child”).

You probably did really well in school and/or went to a really great college and/or have a respectable career (Traditional Asian favorites: Doctor, Lawyer, or Engineer.) You also have lived a good miserable decade – if not more – of your adult life. You look very successful on the outside and feel empty on the inside. You make good money and a live a poor life. You are connected to the right answers to all the test questions and disconnected from the real answers in your heart.

I thought it would be helpful to introduce a short guide for the Asian Adult Child to try something different. As you would expect from me, this is a practical guide, with real tips that you can use immediately. This is also a short guide, because 1) of my short attention span and 2) stuff that works usually doesn’t get too complicated.

Tip #1 – Practice Saying “No” to the Following:

• When a parent asks, “What are you going to be when you grow up? A Doctor? Lawyer? Engineer?” (assuming your passion is to build houses)

• When a parent asks, “Why don’t you just try doing this job / marrying this person for a few years and you may grow into it / him or her?” (assuming you don’t like the arranged marriage or an arranged career)

Caution: Some of us may come from families where slapping us in the face is common, normal, or even celebrated. If this is the case, say "I feel sorry about this situation."

Tip #2 – Practice Saying “Yes” to the Following:

• When a parent asks, “Don’t you know how much we have sacrificed for you, by bringing you to/giving birth to you here in America?” (especially if your answer is the silent retreat to guilt)

• When a parent says, “Are you out to …break my heart / disappoint our ancestors / give your mother a heart attack / make us lose face with our friends?” (especially if your answer is the silent retreat to guilt)

Caution: Some of us may come from families where slapping us in the face is common, normal, or even celebrated. If this is the case, say "I feel sorry about this situation."

Tip #3 – Practice Saying “I don’t know” to the Following:

• When a parent asks, “How are you going to make a living doing that?” (even if you do know and are dying to justify the question with your answer)

• When a parent asks, “How can you waste all those years we / you invested in your education by doing something completely unrelated?”

Caution: Some of us may come from families where slapping us in the face is common, normal, or even celebrated. If this is the case, say "I feel sorry about this situation."

Bonus Tip – Practice Agreeing to the Following:

• “You are an embarrassment to the {insert surname} family!”

• “Why can’t you be more like {someone else’s name, usually an annoying sibling or relative}?” (bite your tongue from responding with, “because I’ve got parents like you.”)

• “If I had known you’d turn out like this, I’d have never brought you to America / given birth to you!” (remember, your empathy is very important for this agreement, therefore, show empathy)

There you have it. Practical advice to help your parents lower their expectations, give up on you as a means to live their unfulfilled dreams, thereby freeing you to explore what you really want out of your own life.

Now, go live the life you want to live.

COMMENTS

Joe says:

I saw that vile Chinese Mothers article a week or two back. It made me so much more grateful for having mediocre English parents and teachers over the years. Despite the drawbacks, they really gave me the courage to realise that when they were unhappy with my performance, the fault was plainly with them. Perhaps the problem with Chinese parenting and its underlying assumptions is that at least a part of it is actually quite legitimate and useful, which makes people more hesitant to go against the grain even when there’s a clear case for doing so.

The points the article made about playing the piano and violin seem to demonstrate the failing in the Chinese attitude perfectly. Last time I checked Western music mas more popular in China than Chinese music in the West, and neither seems to involve much of a purist obsession with any particular instrument. Even the dullest American Idol contender seems to display more creativity, if not always talent, than the stereotypical schoolkid ‘perfect’ performer.

Disclaimer: I’ve had a few beers.

Jane says:

Thanks Joe! You did really well even with a few bears 😉

I was just about to share an answer to a question I saw on Quora that followed the Chua brouhaha:

“Does excessive parental involvement and a perceived emphasis on unearned rewards in the public school system lead to children unable to cope with modern society?”

My answer:

It depends. Remember: modern society is a product of humans receiving current and past parenting methods.

There is no such thing as “excessive parental involvement” – but there is such a thing as “parents unwilling to let their children develop self reliance” and “parents using their children as instruments for fulfilling parents’ own unrealized dreams or frustrated emotions” and “parents using children as a means of competing and keeping up with the Jones’ children” (I suppose in Chinese society it would be “keeping up with the Chang’s children”?)

You can be an involved parent to the extent of responsible stewardship, guiding your children as part of preparing them to navigate the rules of society, but also observing them to see how their personality develops and what you can do to help them gain self-awareness.

Unfortunately parents can confuse “being” with “behavior”. Just because you make a mistake doesn’t make you trash. It means you didn’t know you were making a mistake or you made a poor choice. You can focus on the action and behaviors and teach/guide children on these – because they will actually have control over their actions and behaviors.

By making it about “them” (i.e. “you’re trash, you’re garbage, you’re worthless), you are training them for learned helplessness, because they have no control over their interpretation that “they’re worthless as human beings”.

This is why it’s NOT about self-esteem, and parents who coddle are negatively impacting their kids’ self-esteem: the message these parents send out becomes “I just don’t believe you have the inner strength to deal with this,” or “I don’t think you are able to learn how to deal with this”. This parenting method can foster just as much rebellion as the other extreme of parenting.

I’ve thought about these now as a parent to a young child (toddler) and I’m constantly faced with these choices. And I know first-hand that this is one tough juggle! I hope I get to make more good choices than poor choices in the final analysis. The rest, I count on my child’s resilience.

Sophia says:

This is brilliant, as is the article on responding to comparisons. I don’t know why Asian parents make their children’s lives so hard – lives so hard for everyone around. I think i found your blog a while ago and have refound it again just in time.

My mom has learned to be more sneaky about it – getting extended family members to invite me to church so I can be around “decent people” and telling me how worried she is about my finances and how I’m almost middle-aged. How do I respond to the more underhanded tactics? Our relationship was going really well (for the first time in 30 years) when I was dating someone she approved of, but now that that has changed, I’m getting regular emails with more subtle criticisms. It’s enough to make me want to be estranged again.

Jane says:

It depends on how you have been responding to it when mom was obvious about it, and how you have responded when she used less obvious approaches, and how you responded to her “guilt by proxy” methods by getting other people to goad you about certain things about your life.

Maybe one of the ways is to let her worry without offering anything other than acceptance.

• “Yes, I’m almost middle aged. You’re right, mom.”

• “I’m seeing (or hearing) you say that you are worried about my finances. OK.”

The relationship you thought was going well but changed – it really hasn’t changed. It was going well because you dated someone she approved of. This meant if you hadn’t been dating someone she approved of, then it wouldn’t have gone well.

So let her be who she is, but free yourself of her “being who she is”, but acknowledging that you have heard her opinions and that is all you need to acknowledge. You keep on living your life the way you believe is true to why and how you are here to “be”.

It takes practice but it is doable.

LR says:

My Asian parents told me I would be able to be into my Asian husband for a few years but I’m really not. My husband and I have been married for three and a half years and I can’t leave him for someone non-Asian because he, my Asian in-laws, and my parents have me tied up to him. And my husband is pressuring me into having kids with him in addition to that.

Finally, a Review of that Tiger Mother Book

I have put this off as long as I can bear, but it’s finally time to spill my review of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

Chua admits her own fanaticism and insanity continually in her book. She seems to have a mental image of how her daughters should grow and then mold them to that precise image.

I realize she said she was trying to write like David Sedaris and Dave Eggers. I’ve read both Sedaris (not the book she mentions; I read Me Talk Pretty One Day) and Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). The real irony here is that she means to poke fun at her own parenting method but then she continually buffers her claim-to-crazy with all the achievements and praises her daughters received *because* of her parenting method.

I think she got very lucky in the children department.

This book speaks more to her children’s innate psychological response toward her mothering, than any merits however ironic of her “mothering method”.

Her older daughter listened to and did everything she said with tremendous grace. If I had a kid like that, I can get comparable results without resorting to verbal abuse.

Her younger daughter on the other hand had the wiles and the will to beat Chua at her own game. But not many kids have that personality or the luxury to have death-threat-screaming matches with their moms.

Many kids whose parents dole out physical, verbal, and psychological abuse in the name of toughening them up and securing their futures, do not end up cuddling together in bed talking like the best of friends.

Are we talking about Chinese mothers? Wait — Chinese mothers HUG? and say “I LOVE YOU” to their kids? — Again, are we talking about Chinese mothers?

[I am, of course, playing up the stereotype, but since the basis for Chua’s book is irony and stereotype, I guess we’re going there.]

I found interesting how she didn’t make the cut the first time around for Yale faculty, where her husband held tenure, then later she describes how she was Tiger-parented and her husband had parents who valued him as a free-willed individual.

She wrote a section that I found eerily similar to my own experience about fumbling around not knowing what the hell to do other than “what was expected”, like she had little sense of self until much later into adulthood when she ultimately stumbled into the right legal niche.

Her husband on the other hand, seemed to know what he loved (law) and achieved some amazing feats like getting published in a prestigious law review without being faculty. His parents also did typical “western” stuff like caring about art & culture, and traveling without their kids, and having their own social life apart from what should benefit their kids’ academics. Oh, and the husband got into the elite drama program at Julliard and got expelled for speaking his mind, so he figured he’d pursue law and got into Harvard law school.

Frankly, I want HIS parents to write a parenting book! (Unfortunately, mother-in-law passed away)

It took me less than 24 hours to finish reading this book.

How I feel when I closed the book: UGH and YUCK.

She makes Chinese parents sound like totalitarian, completely self-unaware, utterly self-centered, and self-righteous my-way-or-highway-I-abuse-you-for-your-own-good Tyrants by equating her approach with “Chinese parents” approach. That really pisses me off.

At one point when Chua is having scream-fests with her younger daughter she says to her daughter “You’ve been given every opportunity, every privilege!”

Most children will do well receiving every opportunity and every privilege, only not all parents have the means to make this happen, including many Asian parents. Ugh.

Then second to last page of the book: “And Alexander Hamilton said, ‘Don’t be a whiner.’ That’s a totally Chinese way of thinking.” (page 228 — the book ends on page 229)

Really? I see this thinking as, “the way persistent tenacious people think, regardless of culture or nationality.” Yuck.

Chua makes valiant effort in self-deprecation, which should make her character more likeable because I am supposed to be laughing “at” her. I kept chanting “this is satire this is satire” during the more disturbing parts with her second daughter —

— But there is a bigger part of me that realizes that throughout it all, she continues to uphold a facade, that Chinese 面子, that in the final analysis, even if she concedes about being “right”, she is still justified.

Because of this, instead of laughing, I have this uneasy smile in anticipating the next tense moment that she creates, knowing I’m supposed to laugh but finding it not funny at all.

While she claimed she never thought Chinese mothers are superior and that Wall Street Journal made her out to say as much, the tone of her book came across to me as indeed her belief: a sort of, my parenting method is over the top and I joke about acting insane, but look what my daughters achieved because of me.

In the interest of fair-balance: I have listened to a podcast on parenting, leading with Amy Chua, whose statements are quite sane and fair. Additionally, Chua has also acknowledged a poignant response on Quora re: whether children of such Tiger Parents have benefited. The response shared the experience of a sibling who was raised by her Tiger Mother and the sibling ended up committing suicide. The responder has since moved her sister's story to Quora topics on Suicide and Mental Health, but I always remembered where this response first appeared -- it made such a deep impression on me. While I understand the reason(s) for moving this topic uncoupling it from "Tiger Mothers", I cannot ignore the original motivation that prompted sharing this experience on parental emotional abuse.