Considering Amy Chua

If the name 'Amy Chua' doesn't resonate at all, then hopefully the words 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' will.

For anyone still scratching their head, Amy Chua is a Harvard law professor who has written a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It's caused a fair amount of controversy because, as this Guardian piece notes, it 'makes case [sic] for ultra-strict Chinese parenting':

The Tiger, Chua explains, is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. And as a "Tiger mother" herself, she assumed the absolute right to dictate her children's activities and demand rigorous academic standards of them at all times, ridiculing them if necessary to spur them on to greater efforts.

Except - as was quickly pointed out, but perhaps not quickly enough - the book is not actually a parenting guide, but a memoir. Even the article cited describes it as 'an autobiographical study of the failings of western parenting by Yale law professor Amy Chua'. Which is pretty objectionable since, as this interview with Chua and her family (three days after that article above) shows, the book could more accurately be described as being about the failure of Tiger parenting:

The book bares all about how the parenting model worked for her older daughter Sophia, now 17 and heading off to an Ivy League college, but backfired dramatically for her younger girl, Louisa, or Lulu, who is now 14.

Besides offering some important clarification, the interview also threw up some interesting points for consideration. Obviously, since the book hasn't even been published yet, I haven't read it - but on the basis of what I know so far, I'm-a get my lit-crit on. First off, QUOTES! We are told that:

At its heart, Battle Hymn is an account of the psychological warfare between a "Chinese" mother and her "western" daughter

Is it really that simple though? I'm going to follow the Golden Notebook method: mention a few other striking details, and then elaborate (super-striking bits in bold, of course):

"My husband kept warning me and my sisters kept warning me. But I guess it's part of my personality. A little bit rash. For me, so much of my book is making fun of myself through the words of my children. And some people get that. Other people read it straight. My older daughter said, 'Mummy, you put only the most extreme stories in. People don't realise how much fun we had'."

What Chua didn't put in the memoir, she says with a hint of regret, is all the good times. "All the way through, Jed was bringing balance to the family, insisting that we were going to go on family bike rides and to Yankees games and apple-picking and water slides and bowling and mini-golfing, so we socialised a lot actually …" ("My mum has a touch of the dramatic, and she's much nicer in real life," Sophia says to me later by email. "She lets me go to rap concerts with my friends and do archaeological digs in our backyard – not very 'Chinese' activities!")

Chua's description of her intentions certainly sounds more in keeping with the mode of writing a memoir - and acceptable - than what most people initially assumed. From the first article I linked to:

Chua argues that western parents. with their emphasis on nurturing their children's self-esteem and allowing free expression, have set their children up to accept mediocrity. "Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently," she says.

You might say 'On what basis do they assume strength? On the basis of projection?' This certainly seems supported by the claim that: 'The Tiger [...] is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. The 'Tiger mother' is strong, ergo their offspring must also be strong. All of which begs the question: why would a parent project? With due reference to the character of Erica Sayers - aka Natalie Portman's character's mum - in the just-released film Black Swan - parents often project because they see their child as an opportunity:

the heroine's mother (Barbara Hershey) is an ex-dancer who gave up a career to raise a daughter in whom all her hopes are invested.

Indeed, Chua describes childhood as "a training period, a time to build character and invest in the future." However, I couldn't help wondering if the culture clash with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is less to do with the cultural clash between Chua and her younger daughter, and more to do with the cultural clash within Chua herself. As Chua remarks in the interview: "When I show this book to immigrants and immigrants' kids, they were like, exactly, this is how it is. It's funny, they relate, it's not controversial for them." Indeed, I was alerted to the existence of a Tiger Mother meme generator via a Facebook link, which included comments from people on their 'Tiger' parenting experiences. I was also put in mind of how I related to my black and Asian secondary-school friends more than a white friend who complained about her parents setting a curfew for her to return from going out with her boyfriend - I wasn't allowed to date, let alone go out on my own after 8.30! There are groups on Facebook making fun of Punjabi, Nigerian and all number of strict (generally ethnic-minority) upbringings - but I would hesitate to describe such groups and their members as celebratory. Perhaps for some people there is a celebratory element, but I can't help thinking the key is in Chua's remark that 'it's funny, they relate'. We often need to relate, and to laugh about, certain experiences in order to create distance from them, and reassurance, for ourselves.

Indeed Chua talks of her own Chinese parenting:

"For my senior prom, my father finally said I could go – as long as I was home by 9pm! That was around the time that most people were heading out [...] When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules?"

It's worth noting also that Chua's husband, Jed Rubenfeld, is Jewish-American and that she 'grew up with her two sisters in the midwest, the daughter of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines.'

Now, only anyone who's from a diasporan background can really understand this - but first-generation immigrants (as I know all too well), classically, become stuck in the mindset of the country they left when they move. They will often see themselves as representative of that national community - e.g. 'We are Indian... This is how Indians behave' - when in actual fact they are simply representative of how that country was when they left it. The country itself will change - in the cases of India and China, that has been incredibly rapid, massive change - in their absence and if they are not aware of how time-specific their vision of it is, fail disastrously to live up to their expectations of it when/if they try to return. This 'dislocation' is a well-mined theme in literature (just consider Chanu in Brick Lane, who, once his ambitions fail to be realised, begins to retreat into and promulgate the superiority of Bengali culture to his family before actually 'going home' near the novel's end). How exactly diasporans come to be that way I can't say, but disappointment, disillusionment, racism, segregation and isolation are pretty big factors. All too often, feeling themselves cut off, immigrants want to create a 'home away from home' and the weight of representation of a distant, land, people, language and tradition is inevitably offloaded onto their children's shoulders.

I wonder if this is the hidden story in BHotTM. The point I was trying to make earlier (rather clumsily) is that Chua's book reaches for what is essentially a stereotype - both in the 'Tiger mother' symbolism, a stereotype of 'Chineseness' which sounds like it comes straight out of the corniest martial-arts flick and the stereotypical figure of the Strict, Non-white Immigrant Parent that is familiar to so many. In her own words, the book is a parody of herself, but it also seems to be a parody - and an interrogation - of what it means to be second-generation Chinese-American. Pressure is often piled on diasporan ethnic-minority women to be 'mothers of the nation' (i.e. marry within our own communities) because whilst the patriarchal beliefs that reduce a woman to being worth less than a man are still present in the US etc., the social structures are not in place for controlling women's access to men who value them differently (not necessarily always higher, unfortunately). You can't use shame, guilt and fear in the same way to police people's behaviour. Indian society, in contrast, is still effectively self-segregating on a gender basis in many areas and generally a man and woman are only seen together in public if they are married or related. Maybe Amy Chua's parents were didn't-bat-an-eyelid-fine with her marrying a Jewish whiteboy, but I would be very shocked if they were. 'Marrying out' as the very term itself implies, suggests an attempt to escape, or reject, the culture/community/whatever of the parents - whether that's actually intended or not.

Besides this, there is the interesting fact that Chua's parents are Chinese - but they moved to the US from the Philippines. Given that Chinese =/= Filipino, this means that they had either moved to the Philippines before Chua was born, or were themselves the children of Chinese immigrants to the Philippines. This would potentially put Chua not one, but two, removes from her 'Chinese heritage'. Those of us who are second-gens know personally how bizarrely the relation to the 'motherland' can impact our lives, and as I've said earlier, it's been a frequent theme in literature. The question of 'what it means to be Chinese/Indian/African/whatever' often creates a great deal of expectation and fear since we are expected to simultaneously perform the identity and make sense of it. Goodness Gracious Me offers a sublime (and hilarious) example of what I mean. I wonder if Chua's monstrous, ridiculous 'Chineseness' is the product of a double displacement - the further you are from the 'motherland', the more you must 'represent' so as not to lose your sense of self, which is often traumatised by the act of submerging oneself within a new, frequently hostile space - 'Chineseness'-as-parody. I would speculate that because the self is more 'socially formed' in India and China (many tend to grow up without the kind of time or space for introspection, which is essential for self-awareness, due to tradition and poverty among other things), immigrating to Western Europe or America is that much more traumatic than it would be for, say, an Australian making the same move. The conditions under which the self develops are no longer there, and so for identity to be maintained, you have to work that much harder - and thus you can become a parody. Hence the phenomenon of children of immigrants who are more conservative/bigoted than their parents - something I have personally experienced and is also apparently a factor in the emergence of 'home-grown terrorists'... This also used to be observable on a class scale in the UK and arguably still is, to some extent, though much less so.

The final point, which is both separate and related, is to do with birth order. A recent study, splashed all over the papers, added to a growing body of research on the effect of birth order on personality in finding that second-born children are more rebellious and adventurous than their older siblings:

"These findings are consistent with the idea that firstborns conform more, while second-borns are more likely to rebel."

It was Chua's second daughter who broke her Tiger resolve. In the interview, it is her eldest daughter who defends her, and who makes this comment:

"When we were younger, I thought my mum favoured Lulu, but as I've got older, we've become so close. It's not really the focus of the book, but my mum and I are incredibly similar. She understands me and always knows what I'm thinking."

The patient, obedient first-born, unable to rebel against the authoritarian parent due to having been made an example for the younger sibling... harbouring her own resentment about her mother, but wanting overwhelmingly to have her conformance to the established order rewarded, before finally having her conformance approved and rewarded... Funnily enough, this sounds not unlike what Chua said about her childhood:

"When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules? But looking back now, my parents gave me the foundation to have so many choices in life. After I left home I had a choice of who I could be, a choice of careers, a choice of schools, so I deeply believe in the model."

Chua, too, was an older sibling - she mentions a younger sister with Down's syndrome. She would therefore have been under the pressure to 'represent' that is unique for first-born children and her belief in the 'Tiger' parenting method (she is rather aptly described as having a 'missionary zeal' for it) comes quite naturally, as a result of her having accordingly been 'rewarded' as a dutiful oldest child with more intimacy and attention from her parents. I don't know if her younger sister is married, but assuming she's not - it's worth wondering what kind of pressure that might have created on Chua as a potential 'mother of the nation.' It seems as though the 'Tiger parenting' offered her a ready access of Chineseness - it must be mentioned also that in many Asian cultures (and I'm sure this is to some extent true for the Chinese) - motherhood is the only real source of power a woman has - which is why this kind of parenting may take on a certain glamour. It becomes a perversely macho act, because it enables a woman to stray from the path of pleasing femininity and be angry, vicious, violent and resentful - i.e. have the freedom to be a real, fallible person like a man - but directs all that energy towards a socially-sanctioned purpose and cages her in a domestic setting. There is also an oddly macho note to those who talk about 'surviving' upbringings like Chua's and the frequent one-upmanship as people compare stories.

Chua got to experience both the macho pleasure of enduring such a childhood - and the macho pleasure of being the matriarch - and what's truly significant is not her belief in the Tiger method, but the fact that it failed. I can't help being put in mind somewhat of the trend among young, predominantly white middle-class women for 1950s-style retro domesticity - but of course, often when they are actually living it, they get real quick. As Chua herself acknowledged, she was only really able to do the 'Tiger mother' thing because her husband acted as a balance, and then it became exhausting and alienating and she gave it up. If you aren't from a massively poor background, and you're not in an unequal relationship, being raised within a society that is relatively open, free and accepting... in short, if you're not particularly frustrated or thwarted in any way, the usual drivers for the Tiger model aren't really there. So why else might it appeal to somebody? One reason would be paying homage to one's own parents, acknowledging their sacrifices and honouring your relationship with them - which I think is what Chua, in dutiful-firstborn mode - was trying to do. When you strip away the motivating factors I've mentioned, it makes it hard for Tiger parenting to work - but it also exposes what I feel is the key reason that it is felt to work, which is devoted, full-on love and attention. First-borns, and only children, generally get that love and attention full-on, and so it's no wonder that Chua would turn to the way of the Tiger - but equally, love and attention don't need to be, and generally aren't expressed, brutally. As Chua herself says: "I have many regrets … I have a head full of regrets. I worry that by losing my temper so much and being so harsh and yelling so much that, by example, I will have taught my daughters to be that way, and I'm now constantly telling them not to do that." The interview describes the book as her 'atonement' and breaking the rule of silence that's all too common in Asian families to atone publicly is pretty significant. She describes the writing of the book as being like 'family therapy', but I wonder if it doesn't also serve as a sort of cathartic therapy for herself, allowing her to both pay tribute to her parents and assert herself as separate from them at last?

So there you go - discipline, sustained love and attention, good; pseudo-spiritual authoritarianism and all that that entails, not so good. There is a real, ambivalent person at the heart of the Tiger Mother after all - and that's enough Amy Chua!