Daughter of Chinese immigrants who grew up to be a professor at Yale Law School, Amy Chua gives her account of raising two daughters according to what she calls "the Chinese way."
Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother A Memoir not a Parenting Guide Insists its Author
Amy Chua is not giving parenting advice in her book – Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother. As she writes in the opening of the book, "A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what Chinese parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family...."
Well, Amy can tell you, because as she says herself, "I’ve done it…"
A Book with Parenting Tips and Parenting Advice?
Even the publishers of Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother – the title itself is a dead giveaway – do not offer this as the 'Tiger' Mother's treatise on how to win friends and influence your children. The US publishers, Penguin Press, say Amy's book is "an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting – and the lessons parents and children everywhere teach one another." Amy's husband, also a professor at Yale, comes from a Jewish family and unlike his Chinese counterpart has a more Western view of rearing children. He takes the girls to baseball games.
Amy's Rules for Raising Successful Kids to Get A+ and Play in Carnegie Hall
These are some of the rules Amy employed in child rearing, although, since the book has come out she has done a bit of back pedaling and softened her approach. (Lulu, presently 15, is celebrating her birthday with eight friends on a sleepover in the city.) However, according to her memoir, she never let her two girls, Sophie and Lulu:
- Have a play date
- Participate in a school play
- Complain about not being in a school play
- Not be the #1 student in every subject excluding drama and gym
- Play/practice anything but the piano or violin
- Not play the piano or violin
Should Those Involved in Parent Education and Parenting Advice Read this Book?
Anyone interested in successful parenting could take a leaf from this self-professed Tiger Mother and examine it and add it to their own book on successful parenting. Chua makes some valid points about the Western upbringing of children where it's possible and not uncommon to get A++ and where everyone on the sports' field seems to be a MVP. She writes, “[A]s a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.” Good advice.
First Book of 2011 Published to Reap Massive Controversy
One of the first books of 2011 to have gathered so much critical attention, Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, is provocative and challenging. Blogs have sprung up about it. According to a New York Times article by Kate Zernike, Chua has even received death threats. The controversy around this book has renewed the debate about Western child-rearing practices versus the 'Chinese' way and has drawn attention to the complacency that is sometimes found in modern parenting.
Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother by Amy Chua is published by The Penguin Press; 256 pages;
ISBN 9781594292841
Christine Breen-Williams - Writer, Homeopath, Gardener Christine has a MA in Literature from University College, Dublin and is a published writer.
