The memoir chronicles Chua's successes and failures and the high cost of both, with one daughter suited to her brutally honest, highly expectant parenting style and the other much less so. We might choose different battles and different instances in which to push our children, but we do fight those battles.

Most of us have shades of a Tiger Mother in us. Chua's insistence on her children spending hours practicing their instruments in order to be pre-eminent may strike people as excessive but how many parents of any stripe have spent hours standing over their children fighting the homework battle? Or have driven a child to a practice when said child whines that s/he doesn't want to go today? Or chosen a sport or an instrument for the child rather than allowing him/her a choice? Or pushed tutoring on a child? And the list goes on and on. She compares what she sees as a 'Western' laxity with her regimented 'Chinese' methods and certainly the parenting method she didn't choose herself does come off poorly in some cases.īut Chua does have some legitimate points about the pervading culture which deems mere proficieny to be good enough instead of demanding exellence. She holds her children to almost impossible standards and trusts that they are strong enough to hear about it when they have not met these lofty expectations. And she attributes much of their exceptional academic and musical success to her insistence on routine, complete and expected obedience, and hours of repetitious drill. As a parent, she makes the conscious decision to raise her children in accordance with the strict, demanding, and frequently unbending manner in which she was raised. She is also a second generation Chinese-American who was herself pushed to excel as a child. Certainly Chua stands by her parenting techniques but she isn't afraid to show her failures and the way in which she second guesses herself for not tailoring her parenting to better fit each of her daughters.Ĭhua is a high-achieving law professor at Yale.

And I am forced to come to the conclusion that some of the loudest voices of dissent can't possibly have read the same book I did.

This whole hue and cry made me incredibly interested in reading the book. People are outraged that she touts the strict 'Chinese' parenting model, denigrates the much more laissez-faire 'Western' parenting model, and holds her own very successful children up as proof that her conclusions and techniques are the 'right' ones. If you have even a marginal interest in what books are generating conversation both inside and outside the publishing world, you've likely heard of Chua's controversial parenting memoir.

Tiger parent book