battle hymn of the tiger mother
today i read battle hymn of the tiger mother by yale law professor amy chua about chinese mothers and parenting. maybe, i thought, after reading this my relationship with my mother will somehow miraculously improve.
i’ll admit i was a bit disappointed. at times i related so much to chua’s daughters sophia and lulu (who i “know” through a couple degrees of separation), and at other sections i completely understood the relationship author amy chua had with her own parents (indeed once upon a time my father also claimed if we lived in california i would attend berkeley - since replaced with the idea that stanford and ivies would override a cal degree as of my junior year of high school). it wasn’t that i couldn’t relate to what chua was saying - perhaps it is the fact that i could relate all too well as i tried at each moment to pinpoint if i were most similar to the sophia or lulu or chua herself (my conclusion is something i’ll cover later). regardless, the reason why i wasn’t thrilled was not because of the content or because i felt disconnected from the central ideas, it’s because i thought that at the end of reading this text, i would have an undeniable sense of conclusion - that somehow i would suddenly understand my mother, that novel ideas would be presented and my newfound knowledge would make my relationship with my mother infinitely better. in reality, it was much of what i knew, articulated by chua in a way that made sense. overall, it was lovely to read, but it wasn’t the overwhelming sense of completion that i, perhaps foolishly, expected.
but clearly the ideas resonated with me. as i ran my usual 3.5 miles today, i remembered a few of the passages where chua said she pushed her daughters and sometimes put them down - not because she thought they were truly failures, but because she believed they could do better (one idea i never had truly thought about). she refused anything less than their best efforts, even in birthday cards. and when i came to that stretch, about 2 miles in, where i usually started to power walk for probably about 1/8th of a mile, i kept running despite the humid air and burning black road beneath my feet. i kept running faster than usual, determined to beat my pace - determined to try my best, to keep running rather than slow down because i could do better. my parents taught me that.
and when i got up the end of that hill right before the turn to my house, i saw the time - more than 3 minutes faster total, and 1 minute off my usual per mile pace. results, right there.
…
chua mentions three generations. the first is the generation of her parents - immigrants who came as scholars; the second is chua - attended an ivy, professionals who surpass their parents due to the fact that the started off with more, and the third is the generation of daughters - those who buy hardcover books, who have friends paid for b-plusses, who rebel against their parents and lack the respect so ingrained in chinese and other asian cultures. my immediate conclusion was that i was the second generation and oh so envious of members of the third - their generation is settled in american society, with parents who had few struggles to overcome and backgrounds of solid upper middle class. plus, many in this third generation were my age - i was behind. after thinking about it more, i’ve come to the conclusion that i’m a mix of the second and third. my parents, as they once told me, did what it usually took two generations to accomplish. i like to think they did the 1.75 generation job, and i’m the 1.25 generation left of this 3 generation equation. in a sense i’m undoubtedly third - i seek praise and question why i seemingly didn’t get any positive feedback for what i thought was a good job, but alas a straight A report card at the best school in the nation isn’t as much of an amazing feat as one that should have been accomplished long ago. i’ve had many friends who were paid for those b-plusses, and i rebelled in my teenage years, indeed i still do. i follow my parents advice usually only after i tried my way and failed. i lack the reverence and obedience expected of chinese children to their parents. not all nice qualities, i’ll admit. but there are those differences - after all, i never got those new hardcover books.
one last note - greatly impressed by chua’s daughter sophia’s writing. i wish i could write so well.
