You all may be familiar with the brouaha a few weeks ago when Yale Law professor Amy Chua released a book about how Chinese parents — Moms in particular — are superior to American parents. “Tiger Moms” she glossed it. Finally…. P.J. O’Rourke has gotten around to putting this issue in its proper perspective in The Weekly Standard:
I just wasn’t cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I’m more of an Irish Setter Dad. Here are some of the things my daughters, Muffin and Poppet, and my son, Buster, were never allowed to do:
• go to Mass naked
• attend a sleepover at Charlie Sheen’s house
• mix Daddy a martini using sweet vermouth
• play the violin within earshot of me
Have you ever heard a kid learning to play the violin? A cat in the microwave is nothing to it. And let me add an addendum to the things my children were never allowed to do?—?put a cat in the microwave. I’m not saying it didn’t happen; I’m just saying they weren’t allowed to do it.
Whose children are going to succeed in life, Amy Chua’s or mine? Her Lulu has that violin going for her?—?there’s hardly a Silicon Valley billionaire, Wall Street plutocrat, senator, four-star general, or pope who isn’t a violin virtuoso. And Sophia, who tickles the ivories, can always say, “Don’t tell Mom I work for Goldman Sachs, she thinks I play piano in a house of ill repute.” But my kids practice too, hour after hour every day. They practice being jerks. And since almost every boss I’ve ever had was a jerk, this gives them a leg up. Plus there’s the cat in the microwave. That shows an inquisitive, experimental turn of mind. You can see how electronic cat-zapping could lead directly to the invention of something like Facebook.
On the other hand, what with all the A-pluses and never being allowed to disagree with teachers, Chua’s kids are headed straight to the Ivy League. The more so since Chua is a Yale law professor. (Oooh, maybe she’s a Nazi and a Commie, making Battle Hymn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of parenting advice.) The Ivy League is supposed to be good for success. Barack Obama went to an Ivy League school, not that he’s doing very well in his career at the moment. Let’s check on the most successful people in America. Sarah Palin went to the University of Idaho. Warren Buffet went to Nebraska. John Boehner went to Xavier. Glenn Beck didn’t go to college at all. And I’m not sure whether Justin Bieber’s mother even finished high school. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did go to Harvard but?—?doubtless this is somewhere on the “never allowed to do” list?—?they dropped out.
When logic meets the paper machete head of someone who lives in the bubble of academic poo.
Well said. Tink, do you have a cookie for Steph?
Indeed I do, Kringle for her! (No chocolate until after Easter.)
Amen.I’d rather slit my throat with a broken Pepsi bottle than listen to a little Chinese girl saw a fiddle apart for 8 hours a day.Tiger Mom,my ass!
The whole tiger mom thing was really blown out of proportion. Apparently with book deals, you have very little control over how it gets promoted. I heard a couple of interviews with her, she seemed like a decent lady who honestly loves her kids. She’s changed a lot because her youngest rebelled. I get judged a lot for some of the choices we make with our family, and that’s one reason I’ll not write a book until I have great grandchildren, so I didn’t think much about what she had to say
Yeah but she said it. And from the excerpts I read she asked for this. You’re right… though never write a book like that.
(I’m not trying to toot my horn by bringing this up often but…seems to be a lot of Asian subjects coming up recently) My Taiwanese girl read that book and she said it made her sad to remember how she was raised in a similar way and has vowed that we WILL not raise our children in the traditional Chinese way.
Having lived over there and taught at the elementary, middle, high school and university levels, I can say Chinese kids are just as screwed up as American kids. In many cases even more.
You missed the best line.
“I loved Battle Hymn. Of course I couldn’t bear much of it. The prose, like the author, belongs in hell.”
The Atlantic, which O’Rourke noted, did a good job of destroying the book. A simple question was asked of this protean Tiger Mom: Name a great Chinese classical musician. You can’t, because there isn’t any. What makes you think your kid will do something 2 billion others haven’t been able to do.