Recently author Amy Chua caused controversy with her book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and subsequent column in the Wall Street Journal: “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”.  Much of the backlash stems from Ms. Chua’s statements regarding the treatment of her daughters: calling them “garbage”, not allowing sleepovers or sleep-away camps, etc. and from the arrogant, elitist tone of the column, as when Ms. Chua says:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

Or when she claims:

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

She also claims that instead of studying or doing rote academic drills, Western kids are more likely to be involved in sports.  This might be true, however, Ms. Chua insinuates that being involved in sports is a bad thing and beneath the traditional Chinese families’ values.  Or that being involved in sports somehow is less important than learning to play an instrument perfectly.   In her column, Ms. Chua discusses the Chinese children being forced to practice an instrument for three hours a day, when Western children are only required to practice 30 minutes a day – and the Western mom is exhilarated when her child manages just to do that.

Well, Ms. Chua, your children may be straight-A students, fluent in multiple languages, music-prodigies and accepted into all the top schools in the country, but if they’ve never had to cross the minefield that is a locker room full of 14 and 15 year old boys or deal with the politics that surround a sports’ team try-out process, how do you expect them to know how to effectively use all the book-knowledge you’ve crammed into their brains for the past 18+ years?

As most sports parents understand, raising a child who excels in their sport also requires raising that child to excel in all the other areas of life as well.  It may actually be easier to be a child of Chinese-descent than a Western child – if your mama is forcing you to do your homework and forgo all the extracurriculars available, that Chinese-descended child never has to learn time-management – mom is doing it for him/her.  That child also never has to learn what it is like to rely upon a whole team of individuals to win a game or a meet, never has to feel the disappointment that comes when one gives 100% but his/her teammates do not, nor does that Chinese-parented child ever get to feel the joy that comes when a team takes 3rd place after fighting through a multiple-penalty, 4 on 4 overtime followed by a shoot-out hockey game against a team that’s made it no secret that they’re gunning for each player on the opposing team.

The child of a “Tiger Mom” also never has to deal with the peer pressure and tormenting that can occur in any locker room nor does that child get to develop the life-long friendships that naturally happen during hours spent on the ice, on the court, in a pool or on a field, or the bonding that happens when a team gels so well that each player can almost read his/her teammates’ minds.

Tiger Mom’s children may ace the ACT exam, but what else will they be able to put on a college application?  What happens to Tiger Mom’s children when they finally claw their way out of the den  into the bright light of freedom in college?  If they’ve spent most of their lives being told what to do, when to do it, how long to do something, etc., how will they deal with the challenge of managing their time and learning the social and decision-making skills necessary to navigate a college campus and later deal with office politics?

Ms. Chua throws around statistics from studies comparing Western and Chinese parents, but she doesn’t mention that according to the Department of Health and Human Services, “Asian American women ages 15 to 24 lead in the highest suicide rate amongst all ethnic groups”.  The “whys” behind this high rate of depression and suicide are multiple and mixed, but some have argued that it is from trying to live up to the “Model Minority” stereotype – a stereotype that is essentially exactly the type of parenting model Ms. Chua proclaims as “Superior” to the Western model of parenting.  If the Chinese  Mother parenting model is so superior, why are so many Asian-American girls depressed to the point of suicide?

That American or Western students are falling behind much of the rest of the world academically is indisputable; however, is it parenting methods causing this drop in academic performance or is it the fact that American schools have been straying further and further away from basic education – math, reading, vocabulary, science, etc. – in order t o make room for anti-bullying workshops (which rarely work), sex education and foreign-language immersion programs to name a few?  Is it possible that in the years since the 1960′s Progressive Movement, instead of being rooted in basic education, our school system and children have become pawns for the large and powerful Teachers’ Unions and their never-ending need for more money to feed the pensions of teachers, many of whom have lost any classroom efficacy?

Ms. Chua’s daughters may dominate my kids academically and musically, but the experiences my own kids have had on the ice and in the pool weigh heavier than anything they ever learned from a book.  Those lessons are persistence, competition, tenacity, teamwork, time-management, split-second decision-making and hard work.  No compliment from me can ever fulfill my child more than the feeling of euphoria when all their hard work pays off in that perfect goal or record-setting swim combined with the friendships of the teammates celebrating those achievements beside them.