In recent history, there have been a few things I’d have liked to spit on. In order of largest spit wad:
#1 = a tie between the Bush-Cheney cadre and the Catholic Church
#2 = Amy Chua
#3 = Big Banks/Big Finance/Big Biz
#4 =a tie between politicians/political operatives and housework/grocery shopping
Thursday night my #2 spit-wad recipient, Amy Chua, the controversial author of The Tiger Mother Book of Child Torturing, appeared at a book signing in Berkeley, CA. I had contemplated going because I wanted to see for myself what’s up with this Dragon Lady. Freak shows can be interesting.
But I figured my presence would support her book. The best thing to do with someone you want to go away is to ignore him or her—even though I wanted to tell her that she gave tigers a bad rap. They don’t eat their young like she did—metaphorically speaking—chewing up her daughters’ individuality and mentally beating them into submission. Rrrowww!
This topic hits a nerve with me. As a result I have read many book reviews (two in the NY Times, the Washington Post, SF Chronicle, USA Today, Fresh Air, etc. and about 100 comments on Amazon.com).
Some people praise the Dragon Lady’s parenting style because her methods work: she has produced “accomplished” daughters—even though it was done through mental abuse.
At the Berkeley book signing she is quoted on the Berkeleyside website as having said she was “compulsively cruel” with “brutal demands, verbal abuse, and disrespect for their desires.”
And this is OK because your kid can now play the piano like Rachmaninoff? (Oh wait, that can’t be possible. “Back to the piano, Sophie, you LOSER piece of garbage!”)
I have found no reviewers who have said that THE ENDS DON’T JUSTIFY THE MEANS.
Why is it NOT OK for kids to bully each other on the playground and call each other names, but it’s OK for a mother to do so?
I would like to see reputable members from the psychological community weigh in on the long-range ramifications of being raised using the Dragon Lady’s sadistic methods. Where is the voice of reason speaking up for children?
Some adults who were bullied as children say they have been scarred for life—they still feel the shame and humiliation. Are Dragon Lady’s daughters immune from this psychological response? As a mother, would you even want to take a chance?
And what kind of mother tries to make a buck exploiting the misery of her children? (Oh wait, she didn’t know she was inflicting pain and suffering—she thought she was inflicting “love”—until the American reading public told her she was.) What kind of father allowed this mother to torture his children for 15 years?
As far as producing “successful” children, where is the discussion of character? Is a child with a kind, generous, or compassionate nature but a “B” average a LOSER? Which is more valuable: personal integrity or an “A”?
Where is the discussion of the value of intra/interpersonal skills? All the brilliance in the world will not compensate for lousy people skills. Anyone who has ever had a job or been in a relationship of any kind can tell you that.
Maybe the Dragon Lady is not rearing her daughter to participate in the real world, but instead sit in a glass bubble all day playing the piano/violin while astonished people walk by and marvel—or walk by and don’t give a crap.
The tragic part of this story is the long-lasting effects on the daughters—in particular, when they raise their own children. There’s an excellent book (IMHO) titled: Family Secrets: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You (the original subtitle) by John Bradshaw who posits the theory that families repeat detrimental patterns of behavior from generation to generation.
There has been other research in “family systems theory” that corroborates Bradshaw’s ideas. That does not bode well for the Chua daughters. Who care what happens to the Dragon Lady? But at ages 15 and 18, it is too soon to tell the long-lasting negative effects of a “Chinese tiger mother.” (No matter how many smiling photos are published in People magazine.)
P.S. I prefer this method of parenting by Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother.
