Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

“Some Western parents are strict; others are lax. There are same-sex parents, Orthodox Jewish parents, single parents, ex-hippie parents, investment banker parents, and military parents. None of these ‘Western’ parents necessarily see eye to eye, so when I use the term ‘Western parents,’ of course I’m not referring to all Western parents—just as ‘Chinese mother’ doesn’t refer to all Chinese mothers.”

Chua frequently uses juxtaposition to highlight the differences between Western and Chinese parents. Through grammatical and rhetorical techniques, Chua creates long lists of examples that demonstrate her evidence. Abrupt punctuation, such as dashes, are then used to highlight a key point.

“As I watched American parents slathering praise on the kids for the lowest of tasks—drawing a squiggle or waving a stick—I came to see that Chinese parents have two things over their Western counterparts: 1) higher dreams for their children, and 2) higher regard for their children in knowing how much they can take.”

Here, parallelism, or the intentional repetition of words or syntax, creates emphasis on “dreams” and “regard,” showing that these are held in equal esteem. Chinese parents aggressively pursue what is best for their children because they believe their children deserve and are capable of the best.

“Speaking of personalities, I don’t believe in astrology—and I think people who do have serious problems—but the Chinese Zodiac describes Sophia and Lulu perfectly. Sophia was born in the Year of the Monkey, and Monkey people are curious, intellectual, and ‘generally can accomplish any task. They appreciate difficult or challenging work as it stimulates them.’ By contrast, people born into the Year of the Boar are ‘willful’ and ‘obstinate’ and often ‘fly into a rage,’ although they ‘never harbor a grudge,’ being fundamentally honest and warmhearted. That’s Lulu exactly.”

Chua, a lawyer, is used to presenting evidence clearly. Instances in which she makes an unsupported claim stand out from the rest of the text. Her suggestion that people who believe in astrology have serious problems invites the reader to make their own judgment. For her, a belief in the power of the Chinese Zodiac does not stand at odds with the power of self-determination, but rather helps the child understand their potential for self-determination.

“But Lulu had underestimated me. I was just rearming. The battle lines were drawn, and she didn’t even know it.”

Chua frequently uses the metaphor of battle to describe her relationship with her daughters, especially Lulu. This emphasizes not only Chua’s competitive nature, but also how dramatic she believes the stakes to be: any loss of a battle on her part could foreshadow surrendering the war of her children’s potential.

“Finally, I tried to demand as much respect from the girls as my parents did of me. This is where I was least successful. Growing up, I was terrified of my parents’ disapproval. Not so with Sophia and especially Lulu. America seems to convey something to kids that Chinese culture doesn’t. In Chinese culture, it just wouldn’t occur to children to question, disobey, or talk back to their parents. In American culture, kids in books, TV shows, and movies constantly score points with their snappy backtalk and independent streaks. Typically, it’s the parents who need to be taught a life lesson—by their children.”

Chua frequently employs grammar and punctuation to emphasize a point. Here, the teachers of a life lesson, “their children,” is underscored, demonstrating that she believes this to be an interesting and unusual claim. The set of sentences contrasts the differences between American and Chinese children.

“A key feature of the Suzuki approach is that a parent is expected to attend every music lesson and then to supervise practice sessions at home. What this meant was that every moment Sophia was at the piano, I was there with her, and I was being educated too.”

A considerable part of Chua’s transformation as a parent includes her balancing roles of both teacher and student. As she incorporates the Suzuki method into more aspects of her daughters’ education, she is presented with more opportunities to demonstrate humility rather than sheer confidence.

“What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun unless 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.”

A key tenet of Chua’s parenting philosophy requires that parents focus their own time and aspirations around those of their children. Chua shows that it is easy to give up, which separates her from her children and Western parents.

“I know now that parental favoritism is bad and poisonous. But in defense of the Chinese, I have two points. First, parental favoritism can be found in all cultures. In Genesis, Isaac favors Esau, whereas Rebekah loves Jacob better. In the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, there are always three siblings—and they are never treated equally. In The Five Chinese Brothers, there is no indication that the mother loves the son who swallows the sea any more than the son with the iron neck.”

Chua often uses dashes to emphasize a point. This assistance from punctuation is often used to establish the moral lesson of a story; here, the reader understands that “they are never treated equally” is the most important lesson.

“As I often said to the girls, ‘My goal as a parent is to prepare you for the future—not to make you like me.’”

One of the main differences Chua notes between Western and Chinese parenting is that Western parents often want to befriend, or at least be liked by, their children, whereas Chinese parents prioritize the role of disciplinarian. Chua understands that children will not find being disciplined pleasant and that will reflect on their attitude toward her.

“By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of ‘health’ and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her ‘beautiful and incredibly competent.’ She later told me that made her feel like garbage).”

Chua recalls a dinner party at which different cultural parenting methods were debated. She believes worrying about a child’s self-esteem negatively impacts their toughness and potential to handle future adversity. Her use of the word “garbage” here parallels an incident in which her father called her “garbage” when she was young. She juxtaposes these two incidents to show how her father really intended to scold her while the other woman’s father intended to compliment her.

“But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child’s self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there’s nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn’t.”

The word “you” functions ambiguously here, revealing that strict parenting affects both the parent and child. In the first sentence, “you” refers to parents, and in the second sentence, “you” is implied to refer to the child. However, in the second sentence, “you” could still refer to the parents, suggesting that confidence-building for parents is just as important as confidence-building for children.

“Coco was incredibly fast and agile, and I could tell that she had real potential. The more Jed gently pointed out that she did not have an overachieving personality, and that the point of a pet is not necessarily to take them to the highest level, the more I was convinced that Coco had hidden talent.”

The diction that Chua uses to characterize Jed often includes terms like “gentle,” which she also frequently uses to refer to parents and authority figures whose style differs from hers. For instance, the piano teacher of her sister Cynthia, who has Down Syndrome, “gently” told their mother that three hours a day of piano practice was Cynthia’s ceiling.

“I value cosmopolitanism, and to make sure the girls are exposed to different cultures, Jed and I have always taken them with us everywhere we traveled. […] As a result, by the time they were twelve and nine, the girls had been to London, Paris, Nice, Rome, Venice, Milan, Amsterdam, the Hague, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Munich, Dublin, Brussels, Bruges, Strasbourg, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cancun, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, La Paz, Sucre, Cochabamba, Jamaica, Tangier, Fez, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and the Rock of Gibraltar.”

The long list of destinations emphasizes both the family’s privilege and Chua’s intensive parenting style. It takes considerable resources to travel to these destinations, assuming that the family financed these trips themselves, and it shows a high level of commitment on Chua’s part to giving her daughters a cosmopolitan experience, as often, traveling with children is not easy.

“I don’t know how my daughters will look back on all this twenty years from now...Will Sophia recall with bitterness the time I laid into her at a piano in Barcelona because her fingers were not kicking high enough? If so, I hope she also remembers Rocquebrune, a village perched on a cliff in France, where the manager of our hotel heard Sophia practicing and invited her to perform for the entire restaurant that evening. In a glass-windowed room overlooking the Mediterranean, Sophia played Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, and got bravos and hugs from all the guests.”

In recollections of the family’s international excursions that were dominated by mandatory instrument practice, Chua balances moments of potential introspection with moments of confident pride. While the initial “I don’t know” of the passage suggests doubt, Chua uses this section to juxtapose moments of her discipline with moments of her daughters succeeding.

“Another thing Florence had definite taste about was childhood. She believed that childhood should be full of spontaneity, freedom, discovery, and experience…Florence saw childhood as something fleeting to be enjoyed. I saw childhood as a training period, a time to build character and invest in the future.”

Chua’s mother-in-law is one of the key figures with whom Chua has her most frequent disagreements. Descriptions of Florence’s experience at Crystal Lake are juxtaposed alongside those of Chua’s daughters, showing how Florence views free time as something to be enjoyed, while Chua views free time as additional time in which to succeed.

“There are all kinds of psychological disorders in the West that don’t exist in Asia.”

This observation is generated by a disagreement between Chua and her mother-in-law. Florence fears that Chua’s pushing Lulu into piano will generate tension between the sisters. Chua’s conviction that there are more childrearing problems in the West than there are in Asia suggests that Chua views lax parenting as directly related to the mental health conditions Westerners experiences.

“There’s one difference between a dog and a daughter, I thought to myself later. A dog can do something every dog can do—dog paddle, for example—and we applaud with pride and joy. Imagine how much easier it would be if we could do the same with daughters! But we can’t; that would be negligence.”

Chua often employs an ambiguous tone when making statements like “that would be negligence.” She views statements that are considered common-sensical and inarguable as ideas that should be critiqued; here, she invites the reader to scrutinize the idea that daughters should not be treated like dogs.

“As he helped Sophia bring the piece to life, adding layer upon layer of nuance, all I could think was, This man is a genius. I am a barbarian. Prokofiev is a genius. I am a cretin. Wei-Yi and Prokofiev are great. I am a cannibal.”

Here, the use of juxtaposition establishes a humorous contrast between Chua and the piano teacher. The contrast is underscored by the reader’s knowledge that Chua generally believes herself to be highly cultured and intelligent; here she is awed by musical skills that far exceed her own. The hyperbole she uses to express her (real or pretend) humility creates a comedic effect.

“Here’s a question I often get: ‘But Amy, let me ask you this. Who are you doing all this pushing for—your daughters’—and here always the cocked head, the knowing tone— ‘or yourself?’ I find this a very Western question to ask (because in Chinese thinking, the child is the extension of the self). But that doesn’t mean it’s not an important one.”

The perspective of the hypothetical questioner, who represents Western parents with whom Chua has conversed, underscores a fundamental difference in how cultures perceive children as either separate from or part of the parent. These beliefs have important implications for how parents from different cultures approach childrearing and explains why it is often so difficult to understand the logic of parenting techniques from other cultures.

“Tigers are capable of great love, but they become too intense about it. They are also territorial and possessive. Solitude is often the price Tigers pay for their position of authority.”

This interstitial description of Chua’s Chinese Zodiac sign foreshadows the tensions that will dominate Part 3. Chua’s emphasis on her Tiger personality is the origin of the phrase Tiger Mother that came to describe tough, Chinese-inspired parenting more generally.

“For one thing, dog raising is social. When you meet other dog owners, you have lots to talk about. By contrast, Chinese parenting is incredibly lonely—at least if you’re trying to do it in the West, where you’re on your own. You have to go up against an entire value system—rooted in the Enlightenment, individual autonomy, child development theory, and the Universal Declaration of Human rights—and there’s no one you can talk to honestly, not even people you like and deeply respect.”

This passage reveals some of the downsides Chua experiences as a result of her dedication to the Chinese parenting of her children. It also shows her growth, as she learns the difference between how one must approach training dogs and raising children. Chua is notably raising her daughters in a Western environment, which isolates her socially and personally as a parent. It also puts a strain on her daughters because their peers and environment contradict most of Chua’s messages.

“Most of all, the violin symbolized control. Over generational decline. Over birth order. Over one’s destiny. Over one’s children. Why should the grandchildren of immigrants only be able to play the guitar or drums? Why should second children so predictably be less rule-abiding, less successful at school, and ‘more social’ than eldest siblings? In short, the violin symbolized the success of the Chinese parenting model.”

The use of anaphora (successive sentences begin with the word “over”) emphasizes the role of the violin, showing its power over several entities. Following this emphasis with rhetorical questions shifts the reader’s position from receiving an immutable truth to being invited to ponder their own answers.

“I assured the girls that the dogs weren’t supposed to be metaphors for them. ‘So what purpose are they serving?’ Sophia asked, ever logical. ‘Why are they in the book?’ ‘I don’t know yet,’ I admitted. “But I know they’re important. There’s something inherently unstable about a Chinese mother raising dogs.’”

In the Coda, Chua acknowledges her daughters’ critical response to the text and shows that they also believed a conclusion that many readers will draw (that the dogs are stand-ins for the daughters). It is interesting to consider that this was included in the Coda rather than incorporated into the text since throughout the text, it may easily be assumed that the dogs are metaphors for the girls.