Amy Chua: "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-01-12/amy-chua-battle-hymn-tiger-mother
Author Amy Chua and family
Courtesy Amy Chua and Penguin Press
The story of a mother who sets out to raise her children in the strict Chinese way she was brought up in hopes of preparing them for the future. Though her methods are intended to arm her daughters with skills, strong work habits and inner confidence, she also finds herself in a bitter clash of cultures and having to adapt to the needs of a different generation.
Guests
Amy Chua
author and law professor at Yale University
Comments
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Regarding a "good job" for just doing what's expected, I think a fidelity to truth and substance is paramount. There is a time to celebrate. There is a time for comfort. The best example to show children, is that you can have self esteem while embracing the truth.
I've gone to international competitions in music and never placed (so I know what it is to both win and not win) but I can appreciate the marvelous music of my fellow musicians and revel in the moments of beauty I've created for others in my own modest way.
Self esteem that comes from awards, praise, and accomplishments is fleeting. Self esteem that comes from acknowledgment of the truth is generous, and it cannot be taken away from you.
Hi Diane,
I am an immigrant mom. I am learning everyday to balance my own upbringing with how I raise my own kids in this country and can somewhat relate to what Amy is saying. I have a couple of comments to make:
1) to let a child quit something that she might have great potential in, are we not endorsing that quitting is OK. Where will the kids learn perseverence from?
2) I would love my kids to grow up to be confident individuals. But, to say "great job" to anything your child does, I worry that I might send my kids out into the world with a false sense of self esteem?
Your thoughts?
I detect Mommy Dearest. Her over the top all is GREAT attitude and her nervous laugh before commenting on anything made me doubt her true feelings of needing perfect children and struggling with being an overbearing mother. I didn't care for her, her book and felt the other side of the matter wasn't addressed. The fact that she was border line emotionally abusive on her daughters.
Interesting how the author states late in the interview how it was a job her "father really wanted her to get" ...
I am an immigrant mom too. But not like her!
I am Native American and African American. I was born to a Family that had both first hand racially oppressive experiences as well as anecdotal ancestral experiences that all but eviscerated their dreams of long term survival, let alone any hope of individual or Family prosperity. They were determined to push me and my siblings to embrace and utilize every opportunity public education offered. They were very strict and completely uncompromising regarding grades and work responsibilities around the house. I feel very fortunate that they carried this much passion and were devoted to investing it completely in our futures. As constricting as it sometimes seemed when we were children, I would only wish their approach to parenting on every child in the world.
as I listen to Amy Chua's upbringing, her positive upbringing is due to the communication of her parents. If you have someone in your corner, telling you that you are accomplishing something because they know you are able to do it or can be great at it, you would be positively motivated. In our country, we have so many coaches doing this to create great athletes. All of us can accomplish so many things but it really helps when you have someone rooting for you, keeping you motivated and not bossing you around. It all in the delivery!
Although I do not completely disagree with Amy Chua, I wonder if she has considered the following: Does the ideology that her parents were using while raising their children come from a totalitarian mindset? And so, is the totalitarianism and non-democratic way of living implicitly present in her philosophy of child upbringing? How does a non-democratic government affect our parenting and how do we ourselves cause the creation of such governments by the way we raise our children. I am thinking especially about how the author was saying that it was not permissible for a child to disagree with a teacher and ever question his/her authority.
Amy,
I greatly appreciate your comments and opinions. As someone who raised a wonderful child to young adulthood and has endured endless judgement from people in my community about not bending to the ridiculous societal trends of entitlement and lack of boundaries, I want to encourage you. Every family is different. Every child is different. No person should ever pass judgement on a parent. You clearly love your children and all the hard work you've done raising them will serve them (and our society) well during their adult life. Unfortunately, I fear they may be leaders among a generation of mostly over-entitled, self-indulgent, and dysfunctional people. More parents like you and more children like yours would serve us well.
My daughter is adopted Chinese. We enrolled her in the local Chinese school to learn language and dance.
Her Chinese teachers always told her she was "very good, very good",
and then expected her to take a leadership position and help to bring her classmates along. The others were told to try and be like her.
One day she said to her her American preschool teacher "I am smart!"
The teacher did not know how to respond. She stayed silent.
I thought this was sad.
I have learned from this to try and temper her gifts with a sense of responsibilty to others.
She is a great kid, loved by friends of all ages.
I think our schools would benefit from developing leadership responsibilities as reward in itself rather than bestowing medals, priveleges and prizes.
Listtening to Mrs. Chua's interview she sounds very grounded, her main point was that you must KNOW your childeren, and that there is a give and take in all relationships.
Removed
I am a child of immigrants -- from Eastern Europe -- and was raised very similarly to the way in which Ms. Chua is raising her daughters. My sister and I were first expected to excel in academics, behavior and looks -- which we did -- and then in our professions and choice of spouses. Nothing less than perfection was acceptable. The result, four decades later, is that she and I spent most of our adult lives searching for the one thing our childhood was missing: a sense of unconditional love. I have finally made peace in my relationship with my parents, but my sister has not. The physical distance we have from our parents is emblematic of an emotional one.
I am now a full-time mother of three young children, and my goal in raising them is to do my utmost to develop warm, close relationships with them that will last for decades. And to make clear that I love them simply for who they are, regardless of their accomplishments.
I thought the same thing! Are these types of values perpetuating the totalitarian government in China.
I for sure now this is not the way you raise artists (aside from classical music performers).
i can always appreciate a sincere discussion concerning the care of children.
but i have to say, i find Ms. Chua represents a specific class of Chinese, with a stereo typing of striving values. i am Chinese, and i would not want to be identified by her description. i was raised by my grandpa to value education, but to distrust the conceit of competition ...
one of the most valuable quotes i learned during my American college education, is by a native American elder, and in reference to the competitive educational system, he said something along the lines of: "when are the modern adults going to stop lying to their children, to pit them against one another, when are they going to tell the children the truth, that they are all equally important!"
there are many things Ms. Chua have said that i do appreciate, and find it valuable, but when she painted the picture of the 'real world' as a competitive place that children must learn to get ahead of others in, i feel sad that she is just one of the many competitive adults who is creating a world that is full of pretty, smart, self satisfied people, capable of writing a sensationally smart book in 2 months, publish, and raise competitive lawyers in addition to her own children, but really, your child is just 14, it's not over yet, your reflection, healing and process has at least another 4 years! and i still have hope that such privileged young adults like your kids, may yet to discover Chinese and other Old world values, that is a bit further than making their own reality a success.
What a great review and report. As a parent of 4, I have seen and felt the joys and pains of parenthood.
Allowing our children to explore and discover only comes when we provide the tools and experiences-as they grow and development then they take on their own selves-
In the end, I am grateful to have let my kids raise me! Can't wait to see what being a grandparent will be like!
I enjoyed Amy's story. I believe it takes a lot to be a mother and well she was open and honest about what she's done in the past and how she has grown. Most of those listener's that phoned in need therapy. At the end of the day Amy is trying to make a profit from her book based on her life experiences thus far. Worry about how you are raising your child/ren. What worked for her might not work for you, maybe it does.
I noticed that the author is in an interracial marriage and has biracial children. I'd be interested to know if she ever viewed her strict Chinese way of child rearing as a way to keep her daughters connected to a sense of Chinese heritage/identity.
(Ok, the picture? "I'm the mother! I'm the daughter!" Seriously. Who's who here?)
Moving on. I've just been a snippet reader and media consumer. Haven't read the book, but I L-O-V-E what I've heard so far. What I love is the exhilaration of being able to just cut your kids like that because there is so much love. I'm not really expressing myself well, but I just think this woman is hilarious, great, and DIFFERENT. She does what we all have wanted to do, and she can. She can because she's committed and emotionally secure in her love. I just loved it and her. You go girl.
I think a very interesting pairing for a book club might be this book with one called "Teaching the Restless" about a non Ritalin approach to ADD. It almost seems to preach the opposite of what Chua was saying because the author says "high energy kids need a learning environment that is as active as they are," and that they do NOT need to be coerced. Not sure Amy Chua would agree!
Discuss.
It was very hard to listen to this interview.
Abusive parenting isn't okay as long as you write a book about it.
When she was asked about some of the horrible things she did to her children
• calling her daughter "garbage",
• telling her daughters that the birthday card they made for her wasn't good enough and she was "rejecting" it!
she laughs and says "Yeah, I did do that, ha!".
What despicable acts this person chose to inflict upon two children. Love for your young children should never be conditional!
In the interview she says that she wanted to "help" her children "do their best"
—NO, she FORCED her children to do what she WANTED; their best be damned, they are momma's little trophies, and they better bring home gold medals or else!
And heaven forbid one of their teachers or coaches abuses them, because these girls know that their mother will always side with the adult.
Bad, bad, horrible, detestable parenting—
Not letting a child eat or go to the bathroom until they get a certain piece right on the piano?
Threatening to burn a child's stuffed animals! (probably the closest proxies these kids had to unconditional love in the house)
When Diane asked her if she hit her children she replied "Not really"....what does the qualifier "really" mean in that answer? It's a YES or a NO question.
"Not really" sounds to me like "Yes, occasionally, but not too often".
How are these "adults" not facing charges!
This mother and the seemingly absent role of the father remind me a little of New York's infamous Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani.
Not since Diane's interview with Stephen Marks ("Confessions of a Political Hitman") has the interviewee come across as so unapologetically contemptible.
And yes, I do think Ms. Chua spent the last few days retooling to try to come off better than she made herself look in her disgustingly incriminating (yet insanely boastful) WSJ article.
Diane, I love your show, but please no more interviews with people who treat their children abusively.
As an American living for the last several years in Beijing, I can state from first-hand knowledge that this system of parenting is destructive and usually counter-productive to the children it touches. The entire Chinese education system is founded on these kinds of ideals--obsessive pursuit of "perfection," memorization and input-output based learning, and the amount of pressure placed on these children is profound. Not only their future, but that of their parents, two sets of grandparens and often great-grandparents is riding on their performance, and boy do those children know it.
My children have classmates who spend 9 hours a day in school, three hours in tutoring or extra classes and four hours doing homework. They get only two hours of "free time" per WEEK, and are usually required by their parents to spend it reading or exercising.
Many of my children's teachers are deeply concerned by the way chinese culture is pushing its children and one even confided to me that she fully expects a mass, country-wide nervous breakdown when this generation of children reaches adulthood. They have no decision making skills, no creative thinking skills, to ability to problem solve and very little awareness that they have any worth other than their abiliity to do schoolwork "perfectly."
Although I see great value in most aspects of Chinese culture and indeed strive to help my children embrace most aspects of their adopted country, the Chinese system of education and child rearing is not one I can admire or recommend.
Kudos to Amy Chua. My mother (not Chinese) had the same question when I got an A-, which was: why not an A. Her reasoning - I know you are smart and can do it. Parents who are strict HAVE to convey the confidence they have in their children. Maybe the people who were damaged by strict parents never got that message.
Another key aspect: time. Amy Chua is willing to put in the time it takes to work with her children. Today there are so many other distractions -work, the internet, TV, etc.
The New York Times had an article on Ms. Chua in Fridays paper
that other commenters might find interesting:
Retreat of the ‘Tiger Mother’
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/fashion/16Cultural.html
And another good link on the New York Times parenting blog:
The ‘Tiger Mother’ Speaks
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/the-tiger-mother-speaks/
The final gist of the article:
"I have reread the book in the past few days, and while it’s true that the story unfolds in a way that shows Ms. Chua having some second thoughts, they are not nearly as profound as the ones she purports to have in the aftermath of the publicity. And I have also reread the Journal’s excerpt, and there are still some actions she describes that are simply unforgivable.
Read the entire article, Retreat of the ‘Tiger Mother’, and post your comments below. If the message of her book was really meant to be that you can go too far with any parenting doctrine, then I wholeheartedly agree.
But while I think that might be her point now, I am not convinced it was her point when she wrote it."
I personally welcome any provocative book that elicits strong feelings, prompting conversation about raising our children. As a college consultant, I wouldn’t mind a judicious sprinkling of the Eastern approach in raising American high school students.
Parental involvement varies across the board in our society, from abject neglect to hypermanaging. Ironically, helicoptering in our culture seems more about micromanaging a kid’s resume and decisions than being engaged with the substance of learning.
By contrast, I was struck by Chua’s description of Tiger Moms’ hands-on role in their children’s academics from Day One: “It’s true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring…” We’ve all known parents who attend every soccer game, but have no idea what their student is studying in history, or what he got on the last test.
Some parents are so long on self-esteem (or ego) and so short on drive to build their child’s competencies, that they unwittingly create unrealistic expectations for college admission. The child is given a sense of entitlement to be accepted at an elite college, without the qualifications for today’s competitive college marketplace.
I could do without the harsh, in-your-face style, but Chua's belief in her children and her "get in the trenches" approach to help them build competencies can teach American parents a great deal.
I have a mildly autistic child who I have had a battle with constantly over doing his homework. Dispite my efforts of helping him he was flunking spelling and having trouble reading. After reading about the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom I tried being stricter to my son by getting rid of the TV and kept drilling him on his academics. It has worked wonders he is now making A's in subjects where he was making Fs. I also let him know I had high expectations for him. After his father and I getting divorced and me having to raise him on my own it has been tough on him and me. I regret not getting enough of an education because it is a tougher world out there than I expected and I want him to know that. You have to work harder out there to compete in today's job market exspecially if your background doesn't provide you with many advantages
Read the Roar of the Tigercubs written by Estephe and Perrine Corlin twins aged 10 with their mum HK Tigermum Rosalind Corlin following their success in a Cambridge University math exams for 16 year old.
For more information see facebook page The ROar of the Tiger cubs to be released 5th March.
I loved this book. I read it in 4 days and could not put it down. You have to accept this book for what it is- hilarious, surprising, and though provoking.