Thoughts on Tiger Mothers

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until 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.

- Amy Chua

This, right here, is something that Westerners are really bad at remembering.  I wouldn’t say that it’s absolutely true; there are some things that are fun for amateurs.  It is true of almost anything that’s worth doing, though.

The reviews for this woman’s book on Amazon are unbelievably mixed.  As of this writing, it’s 33 five star reviews and 33 one star reviews, with about twenty spread between 2, 3 and 4.

The people who hate the book are really bad at saying why they hate it.  A lot of the reviews paint her style of parenting with the broad brush of “emotional abuse” and leave it at that.  Of course, they’re absolutely right.  Many of the anecdotes she relates could be case studies of emotional abuse.  That’s not the point.  The point is that we should step back for a minute and re-evaluate our opinions about and labeling of this type of behavior, because they’re getting us nowhere.