tiger mom

A few weeks ago I saw an interview on television with the author Amy Chua. Chua’s autobiography, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, attacks the principles of Western parenting. To be completely honest, I’ve personally only read reviews and excerpts from the book, so I’ve only had a taste of its biting juices, but that’s been enough to leave a very definite impression on me.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, Chua is a Yale law professor who advocates for what she sees as Chinese parenting, but is actually an extreme stereotypical version of a Chinese mother gone mad. Chua did not allow her two daughters to have play dates or sleepovers, and she did not allow them to watch TV or play video games. They were forced to practice their musical instruments, piano and violin, for at least two hours a day. When they didn’t play a piano piece to her liking, her children were subjected to all kinds of verbal abuse:

“I threatened [Lulu] no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas and Hanukkah gifts, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she was still playing [her piano piece] wrong, I told him he was purposely pushing himself into a frenzy because he was secretly afraid he couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.”

Once, when they made her birthday cards that she found unacceptable, she asked them to make new ones for her. “I spend half my salary on stupid stickers and eraser gifts” for her birthday “I deserve better than this.” When her daughter came second to a Korean boy in a math competition, she forced her to solve 2,000 math problems a night until her daughter reclaimed her supremacy in the classroom.

Chua insists that Western parenting fails children by praising mediocrity. She believes that Western parents are so concerned about their children’s self-esteem that we don’t push them hard enough. In the so-called “Chinese” system that Ms. Chua advocates, imperfection is simply not an option for children. This is clearly the way we can get the most out of our children.

David Brooks in the opinion pages of the New York Times brilliantly challenges this idea. He writes that “practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but is not as cognitively demanding as a slumber party with 14-year-old girls.” Chua has indeed made life too simple for her two daughters, according to Brooks. Eliminating playdates and sleepovers, in what social context do these girls need to function? What group dynamics do they need to learn to manipulate? And yet, most people function in groups, Brooks points out. And functioning in a group is a difficult and much-needed skill to master.

But Brooks very cleverly aside, what does eliminating playdates and sleepovers and even a little television have to do with academic excellence? Can we not demand excellence from our children and also allow them a social life? My kids are doing great in school and they still stay over and have play dates and even watch some TV. Why do we need to go to these ridiculous extremes in life to feel like we are succeeding? And what’s wrong with praising a child, making him feel good about himself if you know he tried hard, even if he didn’t get 100% on a test? And why is success on a test more important than making a child feel good about himself? What we really have here is a clash of values, not just parenting styles. What we have here are two different ways of defining success, two different ways that we want our children to define success. Ms. Chua’s method involves an acceptance letter from an Ivy League school. The western approach implies self-acceptance. It’s up to you.