The woman gives new life to the term Hard-Ass Asian Parent through her own accounts of her parenting style. She weakly prefaces her discussion of the "Chinese Mother" and subsequent parenting style with the following:
"I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough."
So even the Western mothers that are considered "strict" evidently do not have the endurance to be a Chinese Mother. Nor do they have the guts to go the extra step to shame their children into obedience.
In another part of the article, Chua mentions that her father used to call her "garbage" when she was disrespectful - a tactic she says she used on her own daughter, in English and at a dinner party. Lovely. Had I been in that position (and I have been in similar situations), I would simply pocket that horrible memory, only to have it re-surface in a very self-destructive way.
This then brings up the point that many people have reacted to this article - including blogs such 8Asians and Racialicious - and brought up the fact that Asian Americans are more likely than those of any other racial group to fall into depression, attempt suicide, and resort to the multitude of self-destructive behaviors and disorders.
Chua claims that the article was a mishmash of different excerpts from her book, which she is currently schilling - Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Of course the editors at the WSJ did not consult her about the edits or the article title and of course they would choose some controversial sections! I'll take that statement as fair, since during my amateur dabblings in writing for my University's newspaper, it would be rare that I would be consulted for edits in my column or stories for the news section during the production process.
However, this anecdote is no better:
"My kids were maybe seven and four and my husband had forgotten my birthday so at the last minute we went to this mediocre Italian restaurant and he said “O.K., girls you both have a little surprise for mommy.” And my daughter Lulu pulls out a card, but the card was just a piece of paper folded crookedly in half with a big smiley face and it said Happy Birthday Mom. And I looked at it and I gave it back and I said 'This isn’t good enough. I want something that you put a little bit more time into.” So I rejected her birthday card. People can’t believe I rejected this handmade card. But she knew as well as I did that it took her about two seconds to do it. That’s the story that’s coming off as the most outrageous, which in our family is like a standing joke.
Clearly, I'm not in on the joke because I don't find it funny... Again, if I were in that situation, I would undoubted cry myself dehydrated and then some from the shame. I wonder if Chua's daughters will really turn out to be as happy as Chua claims herself to be.
And on another note, this is strike two for me personally from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the WSJ has it out for Asians/Culture, or for publicizing Chinese/Asian parenting in the most awful ways possible. Making the model minorities scary..again? The editors and the publication earned strike two with the 2005 article "The New White Flight", which insinuates that Asians and aspects of Asian culture, that promote extreme to impossible pressures on youth to academic success, is driving Caucasians out of Silicon Valley. My own high school was named as one of the sites that the writer cites as evidence to her thesis.
No bueno, WSJ, no bueno.
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