Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua--8/10

When Mike saw that I had checked this out, he asked me what I thought about the Chinese style of parenting, and if I agreed with it. I told him absolutely not, but I thought the book would be really interesting to read. It was--and even more interestingly, I found that there are some aspects of Chinese parenting I do agree with. 


This book is the story of the author and how she raised her two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, while also teaching law at Yale. On the back of the book, and in the first chapter, there is a list of things that her girls (like most Chinese American children) were not allowed to do:

• 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 #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

If we're talking specific techniques, there aren't very many Chinese practices that I would consider adopting with my own children--from that list, for example, I disagree with almost everything. The only ones I partially agree with are the sleepovers and TV/gaming. (In case you're wondering, the reason they can't have playdates is because they are literally too busy; their days are scheduled hour by hour, and are completely full with school, practicing violin or piano for at least two or three hours, doing homework, and family activities--optional, depending on whether or not they finished their practicing.)

As a general philosophy, though, there are points that I do agree with. For one thing, Chinese parenting assumes strength rather than assuming fragility (which, according to Amy Chua, is something that Western parenting has a tendency to do). Rather than always worrying about a child's self-esteem and whether some kind of discipline is going to damage it, a Chinese parent knows that their child is strong and teaches them how to handle things. 

This is why they freak out when a child comes home with a bad grade; what the parent is teaching them is that they got a bad grade only because they didn't work hard enough, and that they are fully capable of excelling in everything they do. Then the parent makes the child practice over and over again, so the next time they go back to school, they are ready to do things the right way. Again, in specific techniques, I would do it differently--I would never tell my child that he or she was a "disgrace" for getting an A- on an assignment. But I think the principle is a great one.

As far as the instruments and extracurricular activities go, I have mixed thoughts. On the one hand, I think it's ridiculous to make those choices for your children (to that intense extent, anyway). I think it's important to let children try different things, find out what they like, and have lots of different experiences. But on the other hand, I think it's often a good idea for parents to force their children on some things, like taking music lessons, which they might not want to do as a kid. If a parent gives a child the choice to quit those lessons, the child almost always chooses to quit--and as an adult, almost always regrets that choice. (I really regret quitting the violin in fourth grade.) To me, this is one of those situations where the parent obviously knows better than the child, and sometimes it's just necessary to make a child do something they don't want to do. From Amy Chua's interview with NPR, a section I liked: 

I've seen this track where people will start with a hard instrument, and three months later maybe one will say, oh gosh, the violin was hard, I'm switching to the oboe. But three months later you'll discover the oboe's hard, too, so I'm going to the guitar. And sometimes I just worry that what we're calling, oh, it's my child's choices, is really just kind of letting them take the easy way out.

Once when my daughter Lulu did poorly on a math test, I think she was about 10, she came home and she said, I hate math, I'm bad at math. Well, I went the quote-unquote "Chinese way," I made tons of practice tests. We drilled. I had a stopwatch. And guess what? A week later she did really well on her math test and she came home and she liked math. So I think in some ways a part of the parent's job is to help their child see what they're capable of.

This philosophy makes a lot of sense to me. There is so much more I want to talk about, but there's just far too much in this book for me to address it all in this post. I absolutely recommend reading it (and if you do, we can talk more about it in the comments!). Even if you sit there the whole time thinking "Wow, what a lunatic"--which I did plenty of the time--Amy Chua brings up a lot of really excellent questions to think about. It was so interesting to me that I ended up reading the whole book in about four hours, most of it in one sitting. I hope you get as much out of it.