Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Mar. 9th, 2011 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupJust finished Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. First thought? Too soon. Her younger daughter hasn't even finished high school yet; there's no way we can know the long term effects of her parenting. More than that, her writing feels like someone who has learned something but doesn't fully understand it yet. As an example: having a pet is very much against her style of child rearing. She gets a puppy to bribe her youngest into learning a violin piece, then obsesses about making the puppy learn tricks so she can impress people (in a fight with her husband, she accuses him of not caring about anyone, that the kids and the dog would never reach their potential if it were up to him. He assume the fight is over because she's making funny jokes about bettering the dog). At some point, she calms down about this enough to stop attempting to teach the dog complicated tricks. Then she calms down enough to get a second dog for no real reason. But she's unable to explain why or how any of that happened. This is third hand, but a friend of mine read a number of reviewers who said the same pattern applied to her historical/economic scholarly articles: she records data without synthesizing or drawing conclusions.
Which brings me to another point: she's not just a practitioner of Chinese Parenting, she's a product of it. And she is not a rousing endorsement. She says she pushes her kids because "nothing is any fun until you're good at it." This is a terrible thing to teach your children for a number of reasons, but three of them are: many things continue to not be fun even when you're good at them, and by then you've wasted a bunch of time on it, and jesus christ, they're four, they don't need to do *anything* for six hours a day except sleep. And if you look at Chua as an adult, you see someone who never developed internal motivation, who drifted into a career in which she's technically competent but has no passion for and derives little enjoyment from, because it was prestigious, and wouldn't know where to start changing things to make herself happy.* At some point, someone needed to teach her how to assess whether you're in a temporary frustration or genuinely don't enjoy a thing.
When called on her atrocious behavior, she has claimed that 1. the stories are exaggerated for effect and 2. the book is about her learning not to do that. The first claim seems weakened by the fact that when pressed for specifics, she stands by every thing she wrote (on the other hand, the ending does seem more or less made up). As for the second, it's hard to tell because the book is so devoid of introspection and analysis, but she looks a lot more like someone who failed and gave up than someone who learned and grew. She finally gives her daughter the option to quit violin (she chooses to continue but at a less intense level) and take up an activity of her choice (Tennis), but, against her daughter's desire to just do tennis without intervention, screams criticism at her and keeps looking for better coaching for her. Nor does she express any regret about anything she did up to that point. She talks about other people thinking she did the wrong thing, but still maintains she was correct, or at worst following the right ideology in a world that didn't appreciate it.
She also never drops her belief that she's doing this "for the kids." From my perspective, that's physically impossible: the kids didn't enjoy it, it won't benefit them later in life**, and the opportunity costs were enormous***. Her counterargument that she was miserable too doesn't impress me: if she was truly miserable, she could have stopped doing it, a choice she didn't give her children. She is also clearly getting off on the accolades her children receive.**** What I found most disturbing was the pride she took when adults complimented the children's love of music -"Wow, that piece was so her", "She must really love music to play so well"- when she's the one providing all the motivation to play (and in the first case, enforcing it by denying the child water and bathroom privileges). That's not evidence of success, it's evidence that adults are imperceptive.
So this book certainly isn't a helpful parenting model, and the author has not succeeded in her stated purpose of demonstrating her own personal growth. It is, however, a very quick read and extremely interesting. And educational as hell, if you're willing to put some time into reading between the lines.
*She does talk about shifting from corporate law to academia because she doesn't enjoy corporate law, but I still think this assessment is solid. Among other things, she doesn't talk about enjoying academia, and whenever she has some success, it "just happened," rather than being something *she did*.
**Even if they become classical musicians, it's not like that's a career with a lot of external rewards.
***See: never being allowed to socialize, ever.
****And in general was extremely concerned with how her children were perceived. They should eat caviar not because it's delicious, or even an interesting experience, but because if they don't then people will think they're uncultured. They shouldn't make fun of foreign names not because it's mean, but because, again, it makes them look uncultured.
Which brings me to another point: she's not just a practitioner of Chinese Parenting, she's a product of it. And she is not a rousing endorsement. She says she pushes her kids because "nothing is any fun until you're good at it." This is a terrible thing to teach your children for a number of reasons, but three of them are: many things continue to not be fun even when you're good at them, and by then you've wasted a bunch of time on it, and jesus christ, they're four, they don't need to do *anything* for six hours a day except sleep. And if you look at Chua as an adult, you see someone who never developed internal motivation, who drifted into a career in which she's technically competent but has no passion for and derives little enjoyment from, because it was prestigious, and wouldn't know where to start changing things to make herself happy.* At some point, someone needed to teach her how to assess whether you're in a temporary frustration or genuinely don't enjoy a thing.
When called on her atrocious behavior, she has claimed that 1. the stories are exaggerated for effect and 2. the book is about her learning not to do that. The first claim seems weakened by the fact that when pressed for specifics, she stands by every thing she wrote (on the other hand, the ending does seem more or less made up). As for the second, it's hard to tell because the book is so devoid of introspection and analysis, but she looks a lot more like someone who failed and gave up than someone who learned and grew. She finally gives her daughter the option to quit violin (she chooses to continue but at a less intense level) and take up an activity of her choice (Tennis), but, against her daughter's desire to just do tennis without intervention, screams criticism at her and keeps looking for better coaching for her. Nor does she express any regret about anything she did up to that point. She talks about other people thinking she did the wrong thing, but still maintains she was correct, or at worst following the right ideology in a world that didn't appreciate it.
She also never drops her belief that she's doing this "for the kids." From my perspective, that's physically impossible: the kids didn't enjoy it, it won't benefit them later in life**, and the opportunity costs were enormous***. Her counterargument that she was miserable too doesn't impress me: if she was truly miserable, she could have stopped doing it, a choice she didn't give her children. She is also clearly getting off on the accolades her children receive.**** What I found most disturbing was the pride she took when adults complimented the children's love of music -"Wow, that piece was so her", "She must really love music to play so well"- when she's the one providing all the motivation to play (and in the first case, enforcing it by denying the child water and bathroom privileges). That's not evidence of success, it's evidence that adults are imperceptive.
So this book certainly isn't a helpful parenting model, and the author has not succeeded in her stated purpose of demonstrating her own personal growth. It is, however, a very quick read and extremely interesting. And educational as hell, if you're willing to put some time into reading between the lines.
*She does talk about shifting from corporate law to academia because she doesn't enjoy corporate law, but I still think this assessment is solid. Among other things, she doesn't talk about enjoying academia, and whenever she has some success, it "just happened," rather than being something *she did*.
**Even if they become classical musicians, it's not like that's a career with a lot of external rewards.
***See: never being allowed to socialize, ever.
****And in general was extremely concerned with how her children were perceived. They should eat caviar not because it's delicious, or even an interesting experience, but because if they don't then people will think they're uncultured. They shouldn't make fun of foreign names not because it's mean, but because, again, it makes them look uncultured.
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Date: 2011-03-10 07:27 pm (UTC)BAM, you nailed it: everything she does for them is for her. She can't succeed, so they have to. (This book could also be titled Battle Hymn of the Vicarious Mother or Battle Hymn of the Helicopter Parent.)
Kids who grow up under those conditions never end up well-adjusted, as she herself can attest to if she ever were to look at herself honestly.
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Date: 2011-03-12 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 01:14 am (UTC)