Amy Chua

If you like Arrested Development or Little Miss Sunshine, you will love this memoir whose ironic German title "The Mother of Success" captures the futility of controlling other people's lives. Contrary to the media reception, it is not about superior Chinese parenting techniques. During a visit to China, the Chinese they encounter, who might know something about what constitutes Chineseness, actively deny that the Chuas are truly Chinese and the treatment of China's little emperors couldn't show more be more different than what Chua's daughters had to endure. Amy Chua's parenting style resembles the training of Eastern European Communist sportsmen or circus artists. If Amy Chua had had a lower socio-economic background, she would have sent her daughters on to Beauty Contests. Instead, she drilled them into becoming piano and violin virtuosae. The currency of success is public acclamation and praise for which Amy Chua is willing to drive (and literally drive over) her children.

Most of the comedy gold develops out of the author's complete lack of self-awareness and understanding of irony. Any feedback is a call to double down, to increase effort, to attack the breach once more, which when she refuses her children rest and food borders on child abuse. The silence of her husband and his acceptance of her ventures and plans (of which he is usually informed post facto) displays the same pattern of meek conformity that is often exhibited by the complicit wives in sexual abuse cases. Why didn't he speak out? Why did he accept her ruining another vacation by throwing another tantrum?

She projects her misdirected narcissism onto her children. Similar to Leopold Mozart and John Neville Keynes, she is well aware of her own limitations, of truly reaching the top. This narcistic wound is overcompensated by her investment in her daughters' lives who are expected to deliver the success and fulfill the dreams she herself couldn't achieve. The first ones to escape this quandary (apart from her husband) are actually the family dogs that learn that not playing her game is the only way out. While the older daughter follows her father into passive acceptance, it is the younger daughter Lulu who has to endure the most (Perhaps it was not such a good idea of naming a child after a well known man-killing opera prostitute?). Her children had to grow up fast. It would be interesting to examine how this loss of childhood affects the daughters' lives. A perfect subject for Woody Allen.

A final note on the domains where such rote learning mechanisms are possible. Chess, tennis, piano, language and some fields of mathematics distinguish themselves from being complete within a paradigm (Kuhn's regular science): Progress is a process of small step local improvements to reach the next skill level. When matters of creativity, judgment and feeling are touched upon, the mechanistic approach fails. This is beautifully explained by one daughter's hard quest to develop a musical piece's temperament. To achieve mastery in a domain, one has to combine the technical skills (where rote learning is valuable) and a feeling when one has to break the rules. True progress requires shattering outdated paradigms. As a law professor, Chua should be well aware of how much her domain relies on breaking the law while following the letter of the law. Highly recommended to reassess one's assumptions about how and when to interfere in other people's life. show less

To say that Amy Chua is a devoted parent is like saying the Sun is a good source of light. HUGE understatement. And she can't help but clash with Americans who allow their children more personal freedoms, even if that means the child chooses arts and crafts over math and science. Welcome to Amy Chua's traditional Chinese parenting model.

What makes Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother so endearing, and worth reading, is watching Amy express just as much self-doubt as she does confidence. The show more Chinese method is superior—she's sure of it!—except when it doesn't work, and then she struggles with what to do next. These revelations connect her with the reader through a hint of sympathetic vulnerability. At one point she even admits that Chinese parents don't handle failure well, and experiencing failure is arguably the best teacher there is. show less

This is totally misrepresented by the media as a parenting how-to book. What it really seems to be is the memoir of a woman who is desperate not to lose control and finds herself losing it anyway. She never seems to come to any sort of decision whether or not she really succeeded with her daughters or not, even though they are both what most people would call highly successful children. I find it sort of sad and telling that she's becoming compulsive about owning dogs . . . since she can show more just let go of demanding things of them and simply love them. I think Mrs. Chua would have been happier if she could have found a way to form her children into prodigies while still being able to just . . . love them for who they were. Since that's a nearly impossible task, however, she's never quite satisfied. show less

The Most Important Parenting Book of the Decade

Amy Chua’s little memoire on parenting is both fascinating and controversial. I read the Time magazine article and immediately downloaded the book to the Kindle app on my iPhone. I then read the entire book in two evenings with rapt enthusiasm, as if it were the latest Tess Gerritsen or Michael Palmer thriller.

The fact that it is so well written, interesting, and easy to digest means it will be widely read. Most parenting books have a limited show more appeal, which stunts their impact. This book, however, will undoubtedly have a much bigger audience and a correspondingly larger influence.

The fact that it is so provocatively written ensures it will incite debate. The sides of the debate as defined by Ms. Chua are “Western” vs. “Chinese” ways of raising children. As in every dialectic of thesis vs. antithesis, the truth or synthesis is somewhere in the middle as Ms. Chua partially and reluctantly concedes by the end of the book.

What may be overlooked amidst all the hype are the many important concepts about raising successful children in a modern context that Ms. Chua highlights, sometimes inadvertently.

First, is that affluence can be a handicap when it comes to raising kids. This might seem counterintuitive while reading about all luxuries that Ms. Chua and her family enjoy. However, Ms. Chua knows how intoxicating and ambition-dulling the affects of wealth can be on the children of the very successful. This book is as much an antidote to second and third generation complacency as anything else. It’s an important concept even for those without an Ivy League pedigree.

Second, is that hard work and discipline are essential to success. This is true regardless of the venue. With books like Outliers and Game On touting the magic of ten thousand hours as the key to success, who can doubt the age-old adage of practice makes perfect.

Finally, is that children eventually have to take command of their own success. The goal of parenting is not to raise large children, but independent adults. This requires the gradual granting of autonomy. If autonomy isn’t carefully measured out, it will eventually be wrested away, or even worse never gained at all.

The biggest mistake anyone could make after reading this book is to get too fixated on the details of Ms. Chua’s child-rearing techniques. Every parent makes mistakes. It was brave of her to document her own for the world to read. In most cases, the opposite of parental love is not hate, but apathy. No one can accuse Ms. Chua of being apathetic.

Doug Flanders
author of THE PRODIGY PROJECT show less