Ms. Chua has received an extraordinary amount of criticism for Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother which is both a memoir and a statement on good parenting. Some of this she welcomed; after all, screaming at your kids, threatening to burn their stuffed animals, and pushing them so hard they resent you is not exactly standard tactics in the Western parent's field manual. But these critics of Ms. Chua have not only missed the point here, they, like the overzealous defense lawyer who uses every sleazy tactic in the book to smear the victim, have only succeeded in making it less likely that anyone who writes a book like this in the future will be as honest and as forthright as Ms. Chua has been. Some may publicly insist otherwise, but no one wants, or is ready for, the kind of criticism this book attracted. And it's a shame because lost in the cacophony is the truth that this is a personal and sincere effort that is worthy of praise.
Ms. Chua, a professor of law at Yale University, has a beef with Western parents who, she believes, have reduced themselves to playing the role of recreational coordinators for their children. They have, she argues, substituted actual parenting for something much less useful, a kind of shepherding of their children to adulthood, at which point they happily turn over their parenting responsibilities to their kids' universities, or employers, or girlfriends. Ms. Chua wants her kids to have and aspire to much more than this aimless, floating existence. And so, even though she's firmly ensconced in enemy territory, surrounded by American adolescents and their Western parents, she elects to become a tiger (read Asian) mother, drumming into her two daughters a relentlessness which sees both of them achieve remarkable musical feats before they are even 16. But while her tiger mother gameplan works well with her eldest daughter, the youngest rebels and, soon enough, tiger mother and American daughter are locked in a furious and, at times, hate-filled back and forth which puts tremendous strain on most of the family's internal relationships.
This is a well-composed memoir which does everything it ought to do. It exposes us to an interesting and dynamic family, it engages us in a meaningful debate about parenting, and it offers us the conflict of the mother/daughter discord and the resolution of their finding, eventually, a workable compromise. Its honesty is admirable and its bravery is considerable; this is all we can ask for. And yet, it does seem like Ms. Chua, in insisting her piece is just a memoir, is denying the fact that she is making the case for tiger mothers. She clearly believes that success is measured by achievement and, therefore, Western parents should adopt some of the tiger mother philosophies that worked so well for her and her eldest daughter. It'd be dishonest of Ms. Chua to claim otherwise. And so, in that vein...
Success shouldn't be measured by achievement. Success should be measured by joy. Yes, we ought to instill in our children a desire to be productive citizens, but we shouldn't infect them with our ideas of how that productivity should be realized. Parenting cannot be the systematic creation of children in our own image. It isn't a vanity project. They have free will. We should present to them an opportunity to explore their own interests, to achieve their own dreams. To do otherwise is to force upon them a life they may not want. Yes, Ms. Chua's argument here has merit, but it's just too black and white and that's evident even within her own family. Joy has to matter. If joy comes from striving to play at Carnegie Hall, great! If it comes from working in a corner store, great! It's not for parents to impose their own standards upon their kids. We all have agency.
Fascinating and compelling work. (4/5 Stars)
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