Mother, superior?

Amy Chua, author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." Amy Chua, author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." Photo: Courtesy Of Penguin Press Photo: Courtesy Of Penguin Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Mother, superior? 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom" has set off a fiery debate over the merits of Western versus Asian parenting styles. Jeff Yang jumps into the flames -- and talks to the author who ignited them

If you're Asian American -- or if you have close Asian friends -- you know that a staple of Asian American humor is stories about over-the-top maternal expectations and demands. Black folks tell "yo momma" jokes; Asian folks tell "my momma" jokes.

That's because for many Asian Americans, the path to adulthood is a sustained, multi-decade-long three-legged race, in which mom drags offspring through a furious gauntlet of piano lessons and college prep, violin lessons and more college prep, disappointment and anger and blowups and reconciliation and then more college prep.

We survivors commonly call this the "Crazy Asian Mom" phenomenon.

Always lovingly, of course. And never to her face.

I was reminded of my own archive of Crazy Asian Mom stories last Saturday, when the Wall Street Journal published a purported excerpt from the book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," by Yale law professor Amy Chua. (I'll explain the "purported" part later.)

The resulting essay, provocatively titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," reads like a strident assertion of the benefits of Crazy Asian Mom parenting -- and a blunt indictment of Western childrearing ideals. In it, Chua suggests that Chinese parents are able to raise "stereotypically successful" kids -- math whizzes and music prodigies -- by following a regimen that includes banning social interaction (playdates, sleepovers) and nonessential activities (TV, videogames, sports, arts other than music, music other than piano or violin). She asserts the value of rote repetition and strict discipline; dismisses concepts like fun, self-actualization and self-esteem as fraudulent distractions; and advocates absolute and unilateral parental control, without concern over whether kids are happy in the here and now (because true happiness only comes when one has accomplished long-term goals and achieved lasting success).

As you might imagine, the essay has become the Andromeda Strain of viral memes, proliferating wildly across the blogosphere, Twitscape and Facespace. It has blazed a particularly fiery path across the extended network of digital Asian America, where it's been forwarded and reforwarded again and again, consuming all other conversation in its wake.

And the reaction from Asian Americans who've read it has been surprisingly uniform: Disbelief and rage, punctuated by blinding flashbacks to their own repressed, oppressive youth.

"A+" is for Asian

"I received a thousand e-mails about the article, and when I finally read it, I went through a brief episode of PTSD," says Lac Su, whose memoir of his own tormented Asian American childhood, "I Love Yous Are for White People," was published to broad acclaim in 2009. In his case, PTSD, which stands for post-traumatic stress disorder, could easily mean "parental trauma stress disorder." His parents, thinking he was "slow," subjected him to hours of supplemental tutoring -- and when he still failed to meet their standards, tried a different kind of intellectual supplement, making him eat an entire cow brain every Saturday until he was eight years old.

Su compares the passing down of Crazy Asian Mom -- er, Tiger Mother -- techniques to the cycle of child violence. "When kids are abused by their parents, they pass that abusive behavior down to their own kids without knowing," he says -- adding that he has vowed never to spank or even to get angry at his own two kids as a result (and also noting that he showers them with "I love yous," belying the title of his book).

Su isn't alone in accusing Chua of "child abuse." The charge has been made both by those who experienced similar parenting firsthand and those who didn't but find the notion of requiring perfection from children and forcing them to drill for hours at a time to be barbaric -- even sadistic.

Journalism teacher and single mom Betty Liu Ebron calls Chua a "narrow-minded, joyless bigot," and notes that she herself "sucked at piano, which my mother made me study because she had been too poor as a child for lessons."

Her reaction to parental standards she considered abusive was outright rebellion. "Screwing up academically was the only power I had," she says. "My grades in college were so bad that one semester, I had a straight 'D' average."

Other Asian American parents express concerns that Chua's claims reinforce existing misperceptions about Asian students and families.

"It's one thing to say, 'This is my particular hardcore way of parenting, take it or leave it, do whatever you want,'" says Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, a mother of four who writes the syndicated column, Adventures in Multicultural Living. "But the article is saying, 'This is how Chinese people do it' -- implying that we all treat our kids this way. You spend so much time trying to break down racial stereotypes and after something like this, it all goes out the window."

Jason Sperber, father of two and coordinator of the Asian American daddyblog RiceDaddies, agrees. "I feel like this is just another repackaging of the model minority myth-as-parenting lesson," he says. "My reaction was, 'Oh no, not again!'"

Tough love

And yet, it's hard to deny the value of, well, the values that Chua espouses -- even if one disagrees with the method by which she's instilled them in her kids.

Jonathan Liu, father of two and blogger for Wired.com's "GeekDad" blog, admits that strict parenting paid off in his case: "I tell people that the reason I did well in school was because I did my homework -- and not a lot of other things."

It did for Aisha Sultan as well; now an editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the writer of its parenting column, "Dirty Laundry," she ascribes her personal and professional success to the Tiger-esque ways of her parents. "I'm not Chinese, but I relate to what Chua wrote as an Asian American mom, and as the product of Asian parents who were strict and had very high expectations," she says. "And if being a 'Tiger Mom' means placing lot of emphasis on goals, achievement and academics, then I'd say I'm a Tiger Mom."

Sultan admits to being rigorous with her kids when it comes to education. "No screens of any kind on school days, Monday through Thursday," she says. "We make them do piano, even though they're not that into it. And we make them do Arabic, even though they're not that into that, either."

On the other hand, she's much more socially liberal than Chua -- or her own parents. "That's what I really missed out on in my childhood, and that's what I found alienating," she says. "As a Muslim and as a child of Pakistani immigrants, I was already an outsider in my predominantly white community. And the rhetoric of difference these days is so hateful that I don't want my kids to not be happy or comfortable in their identity. So they do go to parties. They go on playdates. They'll go on real dates, too -- someday. But first, I want them to internalize our values."

What values? Basically, the same ones that glimmer between the provocative lines of Chua's article: The desire for excellence. The need for delayed gratification. The direct connection between hard work and positive results.

Good old-fashioned Asian values. And American ones, too.

Tiger, tiger roar

The more I re-read the Wall Street Journal article, the more I felt like I wasn't getting the whole story. The "excerpt" made the book seem like a harsh diatribe against American parenting standards and a handbook of Ancient Chinese Secrets for fixing your lazy, sullen, Wii-addicted kids.

And yet, pictures of the actual book on Amazon clearly showed a coverline that seemed to directly contradict that impression: "This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old."

There was little, if any humility in the Journal piece. Something was definitely missing.

Then I saw a tweet by Jen Wang, who blogs at Disgrasian about her own "hardass Asian mom," in which she also noted a disconnect between the Journal story and the book from which it was supposedly excerpted. When I reached out to her for details, she explained, "The book isn't a how-to manual, as the Journal excerpt would have you believe -- it's a memoir. As such, you'll see some truth in it, and you'll also see glaring blind spots and a sometimes-woeful lack of self-examination. That truth, instead of making you hate Chua, will cause you to reflect on your own upbringing -- and your own parenting style, good and bad. And I think this is especially important for Asian Americans who feel that they were parented Chua-style, and are bitter about it -- that is to say, most of us."

I consumed "Battle Hymn" in a single sitting, and Wang is absolutely right. It's a riveting read, and nothing like what the Journal "excerpt" suggests. There's still plenty to be horrified by at in the actual book, but even more, as Wang noted, to think about -- and laugh at, as odd as that may seem to those who haven't yet read it: Far from being strident, the book's tone is slightly rueful, frequently self-deprecating and entirely aware of its author's enormities. It's a little, but not quite, like a Chelsea Handler book -- if Chelsea Handler were a Chinese American law professor and Momzilla of two.

I decided I had to connect with Chua herself to learn firsthand what she was really trying to say through her book -- and why that message ended up getting lost in its newsprint translation.

Chua responded to a brief message I sent her introducing myself and asking for an interview bysaying that she was glad to hear from me, as she'd been looking for a way to discuss her misgivings about the Journal article. Apparently, it had been edited without her input, and by the time she saw the version they intended to run, she was limited in what she could do to alter it.

"I was very surprised," she says. "The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they'd put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn't even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model."

While the Journal article was unquestionably good for sales and awareness of the book, which has already hit #7 on Amazon and is only headed upward, it has been painful for Chua. "I've gotten scary messages. Death threats. All from people who haven't yet read the book," she says. "And while it's ultimately my responsibility -- my strict Chinese mom told me 'never blame other people for your problems!' -- the one-sided nature of the excerpt has really led to some major misconceptions about what the book says, and about what I really believe."

She points out that while she uses the term "Chinese motherhood" as shorthand for her neotraditionalist style of parenting, she states early on that many people of Chinese background don't subscribe to such methods, and many non-Chinese do. She also asserts that this is meant to be her own tragicomic story, and not a recipe for others to follow.

"I don't think people pick up on this enough, but I'm an unreliable narrator!" she laughs. "My daughters kept telling me, 'You're exaggerating this, Mom. People are going to think you're so harsh!' But the truth is, even though I was maniacal about music, I did actually let my kids go on playdates. And I say in the book that 'I don't care if my kids hate me,' but if you read on you'll realize, that's not how I actually feel. Who wants their kids to hate them? I'm very close to my daughters, and I wouldn't trade that for the world."

That's what leads to the "humbling" mentioned in the coverline: The book climaxes with a wrenching confrontation between Chua and her indomitable younger daughter, Lulu, who has resisted Tiger Parenting throughout her childhood. It's she who ultimately makes Chua accept that she's gone too far, and vow to change. And, as it turns out, letting Lulu make her own choices doesn't prove to be the disaster that Chua fears.

Which is why if "Battle Hymn" is supposed to be anything, it's a "coming of age book for parents," says Chua. "I'm not going to retract my statements about Chinese parenting. But I'd also note that I'm aware now of the limitations of that model -- that it doesn't incorporate enough choice, that it doesn't account for kids' individual personalities. And yet, I would never go all the way to the Western ideal of unlimited choice. Give 10-year-olds total freedom, and they'll be playing computer games eight hours a day. I now believe there's a hybrid way of parenting that combines the two paradigms, but it took me making a lot of mistakes along the way to get there."

Love or hate her (or both), Chua's story is far more complicated and interesting than what you've heard to date -- and well worth picking up. While I don't endorse all of her beliefs, I guarantee that if you read the book, there'll undoubtedly be places where you'll cringe in recognition, and others where you'll tear up in empathy.

And if you consider the counterexamples of the most famous non-Chinese moms in America, you might even end up predisposed to some of Chua's ideas after all. Let's put it this way: If Tiger Moms produce smart, well-spoken piano prodigies and Mama Grizzlies produce tabloid stars and reality show contestants -- put me down for Tiger every time.