The Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother Essay

Submitted By Alanababy
Words: 956
Pages: 4

The Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother
Is this a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones? Is this a story of how a mother is humbled by a thirteen-year-old? But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures and a fleeting taste of glory. This is a warm story about a mother, two daughter, and two dogs.
Why was the book named as The Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother? Instead of describing the cruelty or some other bad personalities, The Tiger is the symbol of strength and power, generally inspires fear and respect. I still remembered the article published under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal on January 8, 2011, contained excerpts from her book, in which Chua describes her efforts to give her children what she describes as a traditional, strict “Chinese” upbringing. I can feel the smell of the tiger. She never allowed her two daughters Sophia and Louisa to do the last 10 things, including: attend a sleepover, a play date and even in a school play. She even doesn't allow them to watch TV, which I think can relax students sometimes. They are requested to get any grade less than an A, however, not everybody can do every subject also well. What surprised me is much greater than what I wonder.
In my opinion, these pieces were controversial. Many readers missed the supposed irony and self-deprecating humor in the title and the piece itself and instead believed that Chua was advocating the “superiority” of a particular, very strict, ethnically defined approach to parenting. A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereo-typically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it is like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. In fact Chua has stated that the book was not a "how-to" manual but a self-mocking memoir. In any case, Chua defines “Chinese mother” loosely to include parents of other ethnicities who practice traditional, strict child-rearing, while also acknowledging that “Western parents come in all varieties,” and not all ethnically Chinese parents practice strict child-rearing.
Chua also reported that in one study of 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, the vast majority said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job."' Chua contrasts them with the view she labels “Western” – that a child’s self-esteem is paramount.
In one extreme example, Chua mentioned that she had called one of her children “garbage,” a translation of a term her own father called her on occasion in her family’s native Hokkien dialect. Particularly controversial was the ‘Little White Donkey’ anecdote, where Chua described how she got her unwilling younger daughter to learn a very difficult piano piece. In Chua’s words, “… I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no the Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into the frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.” They then “work right through dinner” without letting her daughter