TIGER MOTHER

Tiger Mother

There is one reason why parents with children under 10 years of age should read the recently published book by Amy Chua, professor of law at Yale University, USA. The title is Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). The reason is this: parents are constantly underestimating the almost total and extremely powerful influence they have on their children when they grow up. Even under parenting with the pretense of giving “free education” children are completely vulnerable to their surrounding and that surrounding is basically the home that the parents provide whether they like it or not. It is with this understanding that young parents should read this book, not in order to find solutions to how one should educate one’s child but in order to find out how a balance could be found between giving the child a certain freedom and at the same time have the courage to be specific on certain moral codes and a basic world view. Again I like to state that this minimum requirement is there whether you like it or not. Nobody can start from a clean slate, especially not human off-spring. But there is also a good sense in being vulnerable: with a lot of love the children will appreciate what they get and what they learn and will still be able to form their lives, even in opposition to things they have learnt. My advice is even to say, be specific rather than unspecific, as the child only will be bewildered when no clear word is said on anything.

The book is really a rather detailed account about how Amy Chua, as a mother, coached her two daughters into becoming top musicians on piano and violin, at leading institutions in the US before they were even teenagers. The amount of practice they had to undergo, the mother always being present, is staggering. Much of what is in the book I disagree with and it is also hastily written, even though it is intelligently written all the same. It starts off rather well though when she discusses the need for excellence vis-à-vis that which is only mediocre. I agree with her here. Western societies nowadays (she says the US, I would say Sweden) tend to accept the very mediocre. Whatever the child achieves the parent is tempted to say, “well done my boy, well done my girl”, while in fact what they have done is worth nothing and is rather characterized by sloppiness, carelessness and neglect. A telling example is when Amy Chua has her birthday and the girls had in a rush made a congratulation card each (p 102ff). The mother said to them, “I don’t accept this as a gift but see it as an insult, because I know you can do much better”. Believe it or not, the girls went back to their rooms and made something very pretty for their mum. A proposition that may sound elitist and abhorrent to many a Western ear, but which is provocatively helpful to those who want to get somewhere is the following: “What the Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you are good at it” (p 29). She also gives a background to why immigrant parents may be nervous about the risk for degradation through the generations. The immigrant generation is the hardest working and will be extremely strict with their children ensuring that they perform well. The next generation (to which Amy Chua belongs) the first to be born in the US, is also typically high-achieving, but they will be less frugal than their parents and are gradually learning to enjoy the luxuries of the country and will be less strict with their children. The third generation (Amy Chua’s daughters), thanks to the hard work of their parents and grandparents, will live a very comfortable life and will take many things for granted. Making incredible efforts in order to achieve certain goals may not be the first priority any longer. The book is about Amy Chua’s efforts to make sure that her daughters would not degenerate.

She concedes that all parents want to do their best for their children, but the way to do it is so different. The Chinese way is more strict, and if you wish, more authoritarian. She sums up the difference in this way: “Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits, and inner confidence that no one can ever take away” (p 63). She also feels she has a good reason for choosing classical music as a means to achieve excellence (it is very common that Asian parents in America and out of America send their children to classical competitions in the USA) but here she also contradicts herself, in fact confessing to buying into what is thoroughly traditional (even stereotypical) Western culture: “But I could make sure that Sophia and Lulu were deeper and more cultivated than my parents and I were. Classical music was the opposite of decline, the opposite of laziness, vulgarity, and spoiledness. It was a way for my children to achieve something I hadn’t. But it was also a tie-in to the high cultural tradition of my ancient ancestors” (p 22f).

There are a number of flaws, the main of which is the following: she claims to be living up to Chinese standards and proudly purports being in the lineage of more than 4000 years of solid Chinese civilization with strict laws regarding how children are reared. I will not try to assess the extent of “Chineseness” that could be dissected from what she writes, but what is true is that basically she rather comes through as being over the board American: she lives a very stressful life, modern, Western style, traveling the world over, having fairly recently become upper middle class, manages to have an academic career, and tries in all this to be more competitive through her daughters than anybody else. So, she claims to be Chinese, but to me she comes through much stronger as typically American, newly having made it, living the American dream, newly become fairly rich type of thing. And all indications in the book are that she also wants her daughters to be such American achievers of success.

Secondly, it could probably be quite disastrous to coach small children into the intricate techniques of classical music. Mozart was a “Wunderkind”, but not coached in that way. You may achieve amazing results, but at what cost? You force a child to follow a very thin stream of life and all the other discoveries along the way during childhood would be pushed aside very brusquely.

In a way she appears to be somewhat confused regarding who she is. Born to Chinese parents who immigrated to the US when she was little, she is a first generation Chinese American. She also seems to have inherited the restlessness of her intelligent father, a professor in mathematics. Her own thinking about who she is has not matured and she is constantly contradicting herself. She claims to be a strong Chinese tiger mother and yet what she tells is far more a typical American mother who is extremely concerned about having successful children. She feels that the term choice is a Western notion not existing in Chinese culture at least not in terms of educating children. Here I think she has struck a raw nerve of Western society and has no doubt enraged a number of readers already. In terms of evolutionary psychology she may be right. One’s upbringing is not one of a lot of choices; others choose for you, but there is a limit also for this. My ideal of upbringing is something like this (and it may be far from what I have managed to do myself): you must be acutely aware of your own ideals and values and openly take your children with you on such a journey, you must give your children a sense of direction, but you must also create a space of freedom for them, and I doubt whether Amy Chua was able to create that for her daughters (just read how their daily schedule was).

What I particularly like with the book are the following things: the fact that you must love your children above all else and show it in practice, that you must spend time with them (perhaps a cruel reminder that you should have a check on your children at all times, in the aftermath of Swedish athlete Patrick Sjöberg’s recent confession that his trainer and step father abused him sexually for many years), that you sometimes have to be tough on them, having the courage to show parental authority over against any tendency of being laissez faire, which may be the worst form of education and probably not very loving, and also that you have the discernment to show your children their potential, without immediately forcing them into classical music or anything else that you as a parent feel is the right thing to do.

Read the book and you will be challenged, I tell you, even if you like me is a grandparent. My father should have been stricter on me regarding my music lessons and I regret this; at the same time I treasure the space of freedom that always was there in our house, and I wandered into jazz, but not thoroughly enough to become a musician. You will be challenged because millions of parents do not have the time to reflect on their status as parents and what it in fact entails. Millions of parents end up in a laissez faire kind of upbringing, knowing that this is a result of stress and too little time for the kids but also because they have not thought through the situation, namely the truth that the first ten years (and more) of a child’s life you are extremely influential whether you like it or not. You better face up to that fact, while you can. Amy Chua has courageously stated her path with her daughter and we can take some learnings from her, not necessarily by copying her way of raising her daughters.