readers and opinionizers in an uproar. In case you've not seen it, Chua's January 8 Wall Street Journal piece, an excerpt from her new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is her first-person account of her use of brutal child-rearing tactics in ensuring that her two daughters would grow into trophy offspring – as in fact they have. In the section of the book excerpted by the WSJ, Chua, a Yale law professor, argues that her methods (including calling her children "garbage" and furiously holding her traumatized 7-year-old daughter captive in a piano practice marathon without water or meal or bathroom breaks until the child perfected a difficult piece for a recital) constitute what Chua calls the Chinese approach to child-rearing, which, she says, is far better for kids in the long run than the squishy, permissive customs of Western parenting.
As you'd imagine, the main response to Chua's manifesto has been horror and rage at such treatment of children and at the be-the-best-or-be-worthless values implicit in this.
My take after reading her piece:
– Chua's claim to cultural authority in representing "Chinese parenting" is as phony as that of anyone who presumes to explain how "their people" behave. Although she may be referring to actual Chinese cultural trends, what Chua is really writing about is herself: a child of Chinese parents who was raised in America, is married to a Jewish Yale law professor, and is inevitably influenced by the mores of the prosperous, high-achieving group of Americans to which she has chosen to belong.
– The truth about raising healthy, happy, successful children is somewhere between – and I mean way between – Chua's extreme of an achievement-obsessed parental reign of terror and the opposite extreme of lax child-rearing devoid of expectation or discipline.
– This entire thing looks to be more a commercial than culturally revelatory project. The Wall Street Journal is flacking Chua's inflammatory "Tiger Mother" shtick for everything it's worth. The article's title, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," is guaranteed to both offend and stereotype. Chua's embedded reply to reader comments in the online WSJ piece is titled, "The Tiger Mother Responds to Readers." WSJ ran the piece four days before Chua's Tiger Mother book's scheduled release. Can you smell the franchise? Chua was reportedly taken aback by WSJ's sensationalist headline and its choice to excerpt the book's most outrageous section, and also displeased with the WSJ excerpt's failure to show how her thinking had shifted somewhat by the end of her book. If so, I feel compassion for her naivete, but I am not convinced that the self-titled "Tiger Mother" will be crying en route to the bank.
At any rate, if you read Chua's piece, I strongly suggest you also read this fierce rebuttal.
Thanks to Herschel and Sandy.
An interesting response to M's Chua and her metholody, courtesy of the NYT opinion pages:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
However you look at it, one must wonder if any love is involved in Chua's heart. My own Jewish mother did just fine, for the 15 years I had her, because I never felt imperfect or flawed in her eyes, no matter how flawed or imperfect she knew I was. That's mothering. Not creating a delusion for us as we find our way in the world, but allowing us our failures and mistakes and all the things that help us grow into loving adults.
Posted by: twelvebargirl | January 18, 2011 at 06:41 PM