My family and I were enjoying a nice family lunch in the house. We hardly ever see each other, so we cherish every minute of it. My mom decided to start off with an interesting topic that one of her customers asked her. She ask if I have heard about the Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother, I nodded my head and laughed really loud. I reassure my mom that despite how chaotic and unethical my family is towards me, they were by far better parents than tiger mother, no offense to Amy Chua.
For those of you who have never heard of this book, I will give you the basic synopsis here. Amy Chua, a Harvard law alumni is a law professor at Yale University. She have successfully wrote other books about the economy and other intellectual stuff that I probably wouldn't understand. One of her books The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother became an instant hit, but it had a lot of critics chasing after her. The book is about parenthood, strict discipline to the max. She has these set of rules that her two lovely daughters must obey or else serious consequences will happen to them.Here are the deadly rules from wikipedia:
1)You may not attend sleepovers
2)You may not have play dates
3)You may not be in school play
4)You may not complain about not being in the school play
5)You may not watch tv or play computer games
6)You may not choose your own extracurricular activity
7)You may not get anything less than an A
8) You must always be the number 1 student in all your subjects except for gym and drama
9)You can only play the violin or the piano, and nothing else
10) You were not allow to not play the piano or violin
Basically, the children are force to succeed academically and to succeed in things that will make them appear like a woman of high status ( ex: piano and violin). The level of success these children must obtain is not of good, great, or decent. It must be perfect or else they don't get birthday presents, toys, celebrate holidays, hannukha presents, lunch, dinner,etc. They were not allow to have a social life because it could be a distraction from perfection. These poor girls were constantly being told that they were garbage, useless, and nothing. Well I have to admit as much as people say that it's borderline abuse, one of her daughters received acceptance to both Harvard and Yale. Despite her successful outcome, I still have to say the tiger mom method is the worse method ever.
It's pathetic that the only way for Amy Chua's daughters to succeed was to constantly have their tiger mom write to do lists, commanding, forcing, and ruling in their lives. Plus the fact that Amy and her husband are both Ivy leaguers, definitely have a big weight on how their daughter got into a top school. On top of that, Tiger mom married a caucasian man giving their daughter the best physical features. Status is earned, not given, and from reading the book it seems like tiger mom gave her daughters their academic success, they didn't earn squat. I find that the author does a bad job teaching her child about society, human experience, relationships, people skills, and all the necessarily component for a child to grow and develop. I have friends who have parents that abide by the tiger mom method and the outcome is horrendous. Once their child steps foot in college and experience the first breath of freedom without understanding that freedom requires great responsibility, their perfect little status will be crushed in no time. A lot of my friends end up failing classes, kicked out of college, or doing something weird and outrageous with their lives. And these were once straight A's, top of the class students in high school with tiger moms behind their backs 24/7. Tiger mom, wait till your daughter experience their first set backs, their first relationship break up, their first mistakes, and their first everything that they never experience in high school. Usually the first cut is the deepest, and it would really suck to experience that while juggling Harvard courses and everything.
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