The Tiger Mum
publication date: Feb 23, 2011
Author, academic and mother-of-two daughters Amy Chau has come to this country from the USA trailing controversy in her wake. Her book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which she reveals her draconian style of Chinese-model of parenting, is about to be released here and this is her first interview.
‘I know people have struggled with my book,’ she says. ‘It’s supposed to be a self-parody but some people haven’t seen the funny side of it. In fact, I have had so much anger directed at me, it surprised me.’
Yet, despite that fact that she has received countless hate mails, mostly from outraged mothers, she seems surprisingly upbeat. For someone who made her two children, Sophia and Lulu, start learning the piano and the violin from the age of three, who had them practicing for hours every day, who banned sleepovers, told them an A-minus is a bad grade, who took her children to 26 countries before they were ten years old and still had them practicing ever day, who refused to ever compliment them in public and threatened to burn their cuddly toys if they did not practice hard enough, why on earth is she surprised at people’s reactions?
‘I knew the book was provocative,’ she says, ‘but it’s about a journey. Yes I prefer discipline and ambition over happiness but I am not saying you cannot attain both at the same time. My voice changes as the book goes on. I start out so sure of myself and my parenting techniques but I hardly end up triumphant. I nearly lose my second daughter Lulu. I had to change my behaviour. I know it’s shocking but I’ve nothing to be ashamed about. Yes there are many moments that I regret going so far with Lulu. But I am a very loving mother. I did a lot of snuggling and hugging with my daughters.’
This, maybe unfortunately for Chua, does not come over in the book. Instead, 46 year-old Chau, who is a Professor of Law at Yale School, portrays her family life warts and all. The person who comes out by far the worst is herself. Her husband Jed Rubenfeld, a 51 year-old Law Professor at Yale, a Jewish-American academic and an author, is a silent presence. ‘He knew people would react this way to the book so I didn’t put him in it much because this is not his story.’ But didn’t he mind her extreme pushing of her children? ‘No,’ she says defensively. ‘He actually think he should have been pushed more as a child. Now he sees the achievements the girls have made, he wishes his parents had made him learn a second language. He is very proud of the girls and he knows the mother I have been.’
That, in itself, sounds terrifying. In the book she relates how she rails at her children constantly. She refuses to let them be in school plays, go on the computer, watch television, choose their own extra curricular activities or get anything other than an A. Did they bake cakes? ‘Not with me,’ says Chua. Run on the beach? Hang out watching television and munching popcorn? ‘No,’ says Chua. ‘That’s not my style.’ Then she says, ‘we did play board games though. I won’t have it that I was a bad mother. I am not. I am very close to my children.’ She cites a letter her daughter Sophie, now 18, wrote to the New York Times defending her mother’s actions saying her upbringing has made her more independent-minded. ‘She knew everyone would take the book the wrong way,’ says Chua. ‘But I wrote it in a dark place. It had to come out.’
What had to come out? ‘How wrong it all went,’ she says simply. ‘How much self doubt I now have. I am not the only parent who raised my children in a strict environment. I am not a permissive parent. I don’t apologise for that but I tell my children I love them every day. Love was not a word used when I was growing up.’
Despite this, as a young child Sophie ends up gnawing the piano she is forced to practice so much. Chua’s younger daughter Lulu, who is now 15, is more feisty. ‘Yes, she is so like me. She put me in a state of trauma. She became very cold towards me, very angry. I had to let her go her own way. I was losing her. It has been heartbreaking. In many ways, it’s a cautionary tale. I am the mad woman in it. My children are always shown to be getting the better of me.’
The book is full of Chau and Lulu’s fallings out. The four year-old Lulu makes her mother a birthday card for her birthday. Her mother throws it back, telling her it is a disgraceful attempt. ‘
This isn’t even the worst incidence. Lulu, aged seven, is not allowed to go to the loo until she gets a piece on the piano correct. She is called ‘lazy, cowardly, self-induglent and pathetic,’ by her mother. I am not surprised that, when she turns 13, Lulu starts to rebel. She wants to have sleepovers but her mother says sleepovers are a no-go area. ‘They are romanticized,’ she tells me. ‘Most of the time the children just sit there on the internet. They don’t even talk to each other. What’s the point of that?’
By the end of the book, Amy Chau’s life has imploded. Her younger beloved sister has cancer. Lulu has rebelled and is refusing to play the violin at all. She has hacked off her hair. Sophia is still playing the piano but is unhappy in the household. Chua’s husband Jed tells his wife she’s gone too far. ‘He told me things had to change.’ This was after mother and daughter had such a row in a restaurant in Moscow that Lulu smashes a glass on the floor.
Why didn’t he tell her that before? I ask her.
Chua bridles. ‘It wasn’t all awful,’ she says. ‘I know it looks that way but..we did have fun. There was a balance between my style of parenting and Jed’s more liberal approach. I felt the children should do as I asked and be respectful. That’s how I was brought up, you owe your parents that debt. Jed believes children don’t ask to be born so we should make sure they are happy.’ Then she pauses. ‘Actually, the girls really did fun things with Jed. He’d take them out to a game or to the beach. Sometimes they’d make pancakes but I never liked that because I find it hard to be in the moment. All that time they were making pancakes all I could think was ‘why is it taking so long to make those pancakes? This is a waste of good practicing time!’
She did, however, clash with her now deceased mother-in-law. ‘In many ways, we were the opposite of each other. Jed’s mother was very liberal and yes I think she thought I was too strict with the girls. I never confronted her but I did used to clash with Jed about it.’ But then her mother-in-law became very ill. ‘She moved in with us and I think we grew to really respect each other then. The children loved the way she would take them to an art gallery and they’d look at just one picture and chat away.’
Chua’s own family were equally as harsh on her as she has been on her own children. ‘This is what people have to understand. My parents came to the US on a boat. They worked so hard to give us everything. My father wore the same shoes for eight years and what he asked for in return was for us to be good hard-working children and that’s what I have been.’
And yet she says her family’s story is one of rebellion. ‘I went away to University when my father wanted me to stay at home. I married a Jewish man, not someone Chinese. Our story is a story of immigration but I can’t play that card with my children because I am relatively affluent and for that I have to thank my parents and the way they brought me up.’
Chua admits that maybe she didn’t get it all right but she goes on to say that she believes many children brought up in a ‘Westernised’ fashion just get depressed. ‘Look at the levels of drug abuse, depression, neurosis – all that going on in teenagers. That’s not free thinking. They have not benefited from their parents wanting to be friends with them. The Chinese way is to be tough on their children. Do you think I liked to do things to my children that meant they hated me? Of course I didn’t! But the solution, for me, to a substandard performance was to excoriate, punish and shame them in to doing better. It’s a harsh world out there.’
She says that, as soon as the children turned teenagers, she let them become more independent. ‘Lulu even had a slumber party for her 15th birthday!’ And Sophie has a boyfriend. ‘We like him very much,’ she says. Neither girl still plays music professionally. Lulu has taken up tennis and Sophie is about to go to an Ivy League University to study Liberal Arts. ‘She still practices the piano for two hours a day though,’ says Chua. ‘Lulu only does 15 minutes on the violin and it’s not good really. Her technique has gone. That will always be a source of heartbreak for me but, ultimately, I’m glad I listened to her.’
At the end of the day though, given the controversy she has stirred up, does she wish she had never written the book?
‘No,’ she says. ‘I think my family was in crisis and it was a form of therapy. My only regret is how ridiculous it all looks now. I ask myself why I was driving myself in to the ground? Was I trying to over-compensate for something? I don’t know. All I know is, by the end of writing it, I realized even I was starting to hate the violin as much as Lulu, and that’s saying something!’
Amy Chua’s book ‘The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’ is published by Bloomsbury
Copyright The Contemporary Women Writers' Club 2011
