That Tiger Mother

Dear Gretchen  I’ve just read that Tiger Mother article and I’m so angry I could spit.  Before I go off the deep end, please give me your take on it.

Answer:  For those who don’t know what we’re talking about, Amy Chua has a recent book out, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , which is a memoir of her life as a mother with a specific ethinc background.  It is not a myth that children of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. are more successful academically, and she explores possible reasons for this with her memoir.   Then the Wall Street Journal took the most explosive passages from the book and reprinted it for review.  And boy, has it been reviewed!

Take a deep breath and do not think of this book as a challenge to your own parenting style.  There is nothing that you need to defend.  If you have happy, healthy children, you’ve done a good job.  Every parent has some self doubt, wondering if they could have done better, and the Tiger Mom book has really triggered that feeling of self doubt along with a feeling that people need to defend themselves and their parenting style… there is no need for that.  Let’s take this book for what it is:  It’s Amy Chua’s exploration of her own self doubt, and conclusion that her own parenting style is, like yours, not evil. 

And her style was on the extremely strict side of the strict-permissive scale, so it is worth examining, particularly since there are documented differences in the scholastic outcome.  And I have to say that every parent hopes their own way is best, and every parent has experienced a moment where their child blames them for all the problems and disappointments of the world.  You cannot help but wonder, at these moments, whether you made mistakes.  Don’t worry about it, you did make mistakes.  Everyone does.  Perfection in parenting is not possible.  Even Jesus parents lost track of him and let him wander around, teaching.  Imagine a family today who were on a journey and took different routes, forgetting their teen for long enough that it was noticeable?  It would probably start a firestorm of controversy over how old a kid should be before you let them travel alone.  CPS would be called, and someone would have to decide whether to prosecute the parents for leaving the child alone. 

EVERYONE makes mistakes.  Amy Chua examines her mistakes and comes to the realization that her parenting style, taken as a whole, gave her daughters the kind of leg up in life that she wanted them to have, so she is satisfied at the results.  For other parents, the highest priority goal might not be academic achievement, and for them, a different parenting style is appropriate. 

Chua also explores her mistakes from the point of view of understanding and defending them.  I suspect this is where she offended most people, because defense of her methods ends up in some instances as a criticism of other methods, and if you have already chosen a different path, one of the other methods, it feels bad to hear this.  You have an emotional commitment to your choices, and to hear someone else criticize your choices creates anger (and sometimes, self-doubt).  So for a minute please put away the anger and self doubt and let’s look at a few main concepts.  It’s hard to do, because it feels like listening to this is an admission that your own style was not good and perhaps that your own children are not perfect.  Let me reassure you, your children are no less perfect now than they were before this book was published.  But for those moments when you worry that you maybe made a mistake, it would not hurt to open your mind to consider incorporating some of these methods into their repertoire, while not necessarily changing your entire lifestyle to fit the Tiger Mom style, and while not changing your goals to the Tiger Mom goals. 

Ms. Chua says the Chinese child-rearing method is autocratic, more concerned about pushing the kids to achievement with the goal that accomplishment would be its own reward and self-esteem was not necessarily something to teach, as it would follow from accomplishment.  She demonstrates her belief that this is a harder path to follow, as a parent, as it requires hyper-attention to the child, and requires the parent to stand in the background, pushing and demanding more work.  This is not a parent who could come home from work and ask, “honey, did you finish your homework”, and simply believe the child’s report.  This parent will have checked with the teacher about what homework was in the lineup, and will review the child’s work after school to make sure it was done.  And if this child has successfully completed today’s assignments, this parent will insist that the child work ahead, or do extra credit.  And if there is idle time after this is done, there are other self-improvement and learning activities to attend to.  No television, texting, or excessive phone time allowed for these children, which means the parents, likewise, have no free time to sit & watch Top Chef.  I do not know that I would want to be this intense, intrusive of a parent in my child’s life. 

Tiger Moms are less interested in the social development of their children than in the academic development, and less interested in supporting self esteem for the sake of self esteem, than they are in demonstrating that satisfaction in one’s self is a natural response to achievement of a difficult goal.  This strikes a chord with me.  For years, I’ve been concerned that our western society has been promoting pride without accomplishment, “attitude” without justification.  Being a “diva” is something to take pride in.  Self-love is more important than achievement, and “I deserve it”, means that “because I am a human being, I deserve it”, rather than “I earned it by working hard at something that would justify it” (whatever, “it” is.)

Chua’s report of Western parenting suggested that we permitted failure and would not punish it for fear of damaging a child’s fragile psyche and self esteem.  She speculates that perhaps the difference is that Chinese mothers believe their children to have high talent and inner strength and simply need to be pushed to achieve, while American parents start from the premise that children are fragile and must be coddled and enticed to achievement. American parents whose children do not achieve, express doubt in the children’s basic abilities, and rather than push the child to improve their performance, will accept that this is as good as the child can do and divert the child to some other activity.

Our education system has encouraged this doubt in our children’s abilities.  Somewhere along the line, we started rigging classrooms so that there were no more failing grades and students could get passed along to eventually get their diplomas, whether or not they had learned anything.  There are occasional scandals where someone who has been passed up the ladder at school without ever learning basic math or reading skills, where children made it to and through high school with severe learning disabilities that could have been resolved if recognized and addressed.  But for the most part, these things go on every day without causing a scandal.  The parents are abdicating their responsibility to raise the kids to the schools, and the schools are assuming that if the kids were capable, they’d be performing, and the schools will not become Tiger Mom to their students.  The parents will not push.    The teachers will not push.  And the kids miss getting the work ethic that made our country so successful. 

I think the lessons from Tiger Moms might be that we need to pay more attention to the academics, trust that the kids are capable of performing and not allow failure.  We might not want to re-define failure as anything less than an A+, because that kind of attitude results in grade inflation.  Not everyone can get an A, some people will get a C, and we need to stop considering average performance to be defined as a “failure”, but I agree with her idea that maybe American parents are focused on the wrong things. 

Self esteem is so much truer when it comes through real accomplishment, than when it comes from Mom telling the school that she’s going to sue them if they don’t pass the child along despite failing grades.  Perhaps it would be good for us to return the focus to achievement and to spend a little less time supporting feelings of self worth that are not backed by achievement.