Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
16 Jan 2018
The author: In high school, the author Amy Chua forged her dad’s signature to apply Harvard secretly (instead of following his dad’s wish, stay home & go to Berkeley). She went to Harvard Law School, then worked on Wall Street, taught at Duke Law School, then got tenured at Yale Law School.
Although Amy “succeeds” in every step, she said she “got the good results with the wrong intentions”. She said her undergraduate thesis in economics is the most boring topic she ever had, she couldn’t remember any details. She wasn’t really passionate about studying laws either, her Wall Street attorney job wasn’t excited, she applied for Yale Law School faculty job simply because her husband got a tenure-track position there. When Yale faculty asked her what topics she wants to focus in Yale, she embarrassingly had no idea (Therefore, during her interview, her interviewer only showed her the campus and told her Yale history). Like a tiger, Amy can almost always achieve her goals by working hard. Raising excellent children like herself shouldn’t be more difficult than getting into Harvard, Amy promises herself her daughters won’t become mediocre.
Parenting: Amy treats her daughters Sophia and Lulu like her parents did - tough and strict. Her main parenting philosophy is “Parents’ duty is to help children survive when they grow up, not to give them a happy childhood.”, “Let children find their own passion meaning letting them eat junk foods, play video games, sleep all days”. She cannot be an irresponsible parent. In order to survive, kids had better be disciplined, be tough, always achieve every goal perfectly. In practice, her daughters always got As, if they didn’t earn extra credits in homework or exams, Amy would scorn them like a garbage. Sophia and Lulu practiced at least 4 hours violin/ piano a day under her supervision; piano lessons from Julliard tutors (from New Haven to NYC every weekend) + homework after the music classes are just routine. She once left her few years old daughter Lulu outside on a snow day because Lulu refused to stop hitting the piano angrily (well, she was just 3yrs). She almost never compliments her children, but she did “award” them if they perform well in the concerts.
Her daughters cannot stop practicing even during family trips. The difficulty of finding a piano in London or Rome never bothered Amy, she reserved hotel ballrooms with piano beforehand. They missed many museums, tourist spots and fun family times when she fought with her daughters. They yelled at each other that everyone in the hotel/ restaurant heard, Lulu once threw glasses when Amy insisted her to eat Russian cuisine. Fights and arguments between Amy and her daughters never stop, these make her husband tired (who thinks childhoods should be happy, playful and enjoyable) and embarrassed Amy’s parents when they waited for hours until the fights were over.
Now: Both of her daughters went to Harvard, both of them also gave up the career in classical music that Amy was hoping they both go to Juilliard and become a professional concert pianist/ violinist. She found best teachers at Yale music department and Julliard for her daughters, she bought extremely expensive violins with her pension funds. Both Lulu and Sophia said they love Amy and appreciate her endeavor during the interview.
In some sense, Amy replicates the same parenting methods as her parents provided, and reproduces excellent, successful and rebellious generation. Her children now like her are highly disciplined, determined adults, they both achieved high in academic and music. Being tiger parents are now common in the US and not just in Asian families - as more and more middle-class parents want their children entering Ivy League, the obvious rewards from Amy’s parenting philosophy fulfills this goal. (To be continued - Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life).