FASHION & STYLE | CULTURAL STUDIES

Retreat of the Tiger Mother

By KATE ZERNIKE JAN. 14, 2011
TRY this at a dinner party in one of the hothouses of Ivy League aspiration
Cambridge, Scarsdale, Evanston, Marin County:

Declare that the way Asian-American parents succeed in raising such

successful children is by denying them play dates and sleepovers, and demanding
that they bring home straight As.

Note that you once told your own hyper-successful Asian-American daughter
that she was garbage. That you threatened to throw out your other daughters
dollhouse and refused to let her go to the bathroom one evening until she
mastered a difficult piano composition. That you threw the homemade birthday
cards they gave you as 7- and 4-year-olds back in their faces, saying you expected
more effort.

Better yet, write a book about it.

What kind of reaction might you get?

In the week since The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt of the new
book by Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, under the headline Why Chinese
Mothers Are Superior, Ms. Chua has received death threats, she says, and
hundreds, hundreds of e-mails. The excerpt generated more than 5,000
comments on the newspapers Web site, and countless blog entries referring in
shorthand to that Tiger Mother. Some argued that the parents of all those
Asians among Harvards chosen few must be doing something right; many called
Ms. Chua a monster or nuts and a very savvy provocateur.
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 A law blog suggested a Mommie Dearest element to her tale (No. Wire.
Hangers! Ever!!). Another post was titled Parents like Amy Chua are the reason
Asian-Americans like me are in therapy. A Taiwanese video circulating on
YouTube (subtitled in English) concluded that Ms. Chua would not mind if her
children grew up disturbed and rebellious, as long as she sold more books.

Its been a little surprising, and a little bit intense, definitely, Ms. Chua said in a
phone interview on Thursday, between what she called a 24/7 effort to clarify
some misunderstandings. Her narration, she said, was meant to be ironic and
self-mocking I find it very funny, almost obtuse.

But reading the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, it can be hard to
tell when she is kidding.

In retrospect, these coaching suggestions seem a bit extreme, she writes in

the book after describing how she once threatened to burn her daughters stuffed
animals if she did not play a piano composition perfectly. On the other hand,
they were highly effective.

In interviews, she comes off as unresolved. I think I pulled back at the right
time, she said. I do not think there was anything abusive in my house. Yet, she
added, I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think theres a lot
of questions about how you instill true self-esteem.

Her real crime, she said, may have been telling the truth. I sort of feel like
people are not that honest about their own parenting, she said. Take any
teenage household, tell me there is not yelling and conflict.

Ms. Chua is one half of the kind of Asian-Jewish academic power couple that,
as she notes, populates many university towns. Her husband is Jed Rubenfeld,
also a Yale law professor, and the author of two successful mystery novels. Ms.
Chua, herself the author of two previous books, was reported to have received an
advance in the high six figures for Tiger Mother.

If she has one regret, she said, it is that the Journal excerpt, and particularly
the headline, did not reflect the full arc of her story.

Her book is a memoir that ends with her relenting (sort of) when the younger
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 Ms. Chua uses to prevent the kind of decline that she thinks makes some third-
generation Asian-Americans as soft and entitled as their teammates on suburban
soccer teams where every child is declared Most Valuable Player.

Ive been forced to answer questions about a book I didnt write, she said.
Its not saying what people should do, its saying, Heres what I did, and boy did
I learn a lesson. All this is captured, she said, in the books three-paragraph
subtitle, which concludes with the words, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-
year-old.

Born to Chinese parents who were raised in the Philippines and attended the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ms. Chua, 48, graduated from Harvard
and Harvard Law, where she was an executive editor of the Law Review. She
confesses in her book that she is not good at enjoying life, and that she wasnt
naturally curious or skeptical like other law students. I just wanted to write down
everything the professor said and memorize it.

She was determined to raise her daughters the way she and her three sisters
had been raised which, she said, left them adoring their parents. By her
account, her elder daughter, Sophia, complied, excelled and played piano at
Carnegie Hall. But the younger, Lulu, rebelled. At the turning point of the
memoir, Lulu, then 13, begins smashing glasses in a Moscow restaurant and
yelling at her mother, I HATE my life, I HATE you.

Ms. Chuas husband appears only peripherally in Tiger Mother though

there is one battle in which she lashes out at him after he worries that she is
pushing their daughters to the point that there is no breathing room in their
home.

All you do is think about writing your own books and your own future, she
says to him. What dreams do you have for Sophia or for Lulu? Do you ever think
about that? What dreams do you have for Coco? He bursts out laughing Coco
is their dog.

She concludes, I didnt understand what was so funny, but I was glad our
fight was over.

8 Initially, Ms. Chua said, she wrote large chunks about her husband and their
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conflicts over child rearing. But she gave him approval on every page, and when
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 he kept insisting she was putting words in his mouth, it became easier to leave
him out.

Its more my story, she said. I was the one that in a very overconfident
immigrant way thought I knew exactly how to raise my kids. My husband was
much more typical. He had a lot of anxiety, he didnt think he knew all the right
choices. And, she said, I was the one willing to put in the hours.

Still, she said, her children got pancakes and trips to water parks because of
their father, the son of parents more inclined to encourage self-discovery.

The reaction to the book was particularly anguished among those who are
products of extreme Asian parents. Im horrified that shes American-born and
hanging on to this, when most of us are trying to escape it, said Betty Ming Liu,
the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Vietnam and author of one of the many
blog posts about the book. A California woman recalled how her sister became the
perfect Asian daughter Ms. Chua aspires to produce, only to kill herself because
she was afraid to tell anyone she suffered from depression.

Ann Hulbert, the author of Raising America, a history of a centurys worth

of conflicting child-rearing advice, who is writing a book about child prodigies,
notes that it is not hard to reignite the Mommy Wars.

There is a kind of utter certainty in her writing, she said of Ms. Chua, and
that confidence goes so against the underlying grain of American parenting and
child-rearing expertise that it immediately elicits a response that then suggests a
kind of certainty on the other side that isnt there, either.

Friends describe Ms. Chua as self-deprecating and a dry wit, her children as
happy, and their home as humming with music and activity and, yes, love.

Not that shes without opinion, but shes writing a memoir, not a parenting
guide, said Alexis Contant, who describes Ms. Chua as her closest friend for 20
years. She will say sleepovers are overrated, but I have never heard her say, I
cant believe so-and-so let their kid do it.

Ms. Chua said that her daughters have been eager to speak out in favor of the
book; she is shielding them from the publicity. She said, however, that they did
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 to music practice. Sophia, now 18, has a boyfriend, she told me. My kids have
whatever those things are called iPods, she said. They have iTunes accounts.

Ms. Chua wrote most of the book in eight weeks, yet struggled with the end,
she said, reflecting the East-West tug on her parenting. Its a work in progress,
she said. On bad days I would say this method is terrible. I just need to give them
freedom and choice. On good days, when Lulu would say: Im so glad you made
me write that second draft of my essay. My teacher read it out loud, I think, Ive
got to stick to my guns.

This week, her book tour will take her to the places where she has surely
sparked the most debate: the Bay Area, Cambridge and the northwest quadrant of
Washington.

But first, the family was planning to celebrate Lulus 15th birthday. They
were taking her and eight of her friends to New York City. For a sleepover.

AversionofthisarticleappearsinprintonJanuary16,2011,onPageST1oftheNewYorkedition
withtheheadline:RetreatoftheTigerMother.

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