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by Rodel Rodis
January 21, 2011
The most hated author in America today is not Sarah Palin but Amy Chua, a Filipino-Chinese American whose controversial best-selling book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” has ignited a firestorm of controversy about how she raised her kids.
“Amy Chua is a Wimp!” sneered New York Times columnist David Brooks in his January 17, 2011 column where he announced that “a large slice of educated America decided that Amy Chua is a menace to society (for her) bracing critique of what she considers the weak, cuddling American parenting style.”
Brooks denounced Chua’s book for delivering “a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities.”
The Chua brouhaha began on January 8, 2011 when the Wall Street Journal published Amy Chua’s essay “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” where she describes the “Chinese” way she raised her two daughters, Sophia and Louisa.
Chua unapologetically admitted that she did not allow her children to “attend a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama, not play any instrument other than piano and violin.”
Chua describes the difference: “Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.”
Chua observed three fundamental differences in the outlook of Chinese and Western parents. First, “Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem… concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.”
“Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything…By contrast, I don’t think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents”, describing her Jewish-American husband’s view that “kids don’t owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids.”
Third, “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.”
A week after Chua’s Wall Street Journal article appeared, her Battle Hymn book was published and it immediately shot up in the best-seller list earning every cent of the “high six-figure advance” she received from Penguin Books. (I went to several Borders bookstores in San Francisco to purchase the book and they were all sold out.)
But the downside is that since her article appeared, Chua has received death threats and thousands of emails. The Wall Street Journal article alone generated more than 5,000 comments on the newspaper’s website with most deriding her as “nuts” and a few praising her as a “very savvy provocateur”.
Chua is a Chi-Nay (Chinese Pinay) because her parents were citizens of the Philippines when they immigrated to the US the year before her birth 48 years ago. She went on to graduate from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, where she was an executive editor of the Harvard Law Review. After passing the bar, she worked as a corporate law associate, taught at Duke Law School, and currently is a distinguished professor of law at Yale Law School.
In his New York Times column, Brooks explains that his problem with Chua is that by demanding that her kids spend four hours practicing the piano or violin instead of going out on sleepovers, “she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.”
“Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale,” Brooks asserts.
But Leon Breaux, an American teacher in Beijing who taught high school in three US states and in three Asian countries, disputes Brooks’ critique of Chua. “Here’s an intelligent, accomplished man comparing structured intellectual activity and training to socializing, and proclaiming socializing the winner. My question is this: If you don’t know anything, what good is your socializing?”
“Knowing something takes learning. Learning is generally hard work. Children often don’t want to do it. Trying to brush this away as something inconsequential and not as important as socialization or achievement of status is a great recipe for stagnation or worse,” Breaux argues.
The debate rages on.
(Please send your comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 41.5.334.7800).