The eye of the tiger

        

    Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is quite the talking point on both sides of the Atlantic just now and it's not hard to see why. The author is Chinese American, the daughter of immigrant parents, and a professor of Law at Yale. Clearly an intensely driven person, she has channelled this powerful combination of high ambition and relentless hard work into the upbringing of her own two daughters, believing that "...Chinese parents have two things over their Western counterparts: (1) higher dreams for their children and (2) higher regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they can take."

    Contentious? Yes. Opinionated? Without doubt. Respectful and tactful when it comes to other ways, other views? No.

    Amy Chua and her much more liberal, 'Western', husband Jed Rubenfeld decided to use the Chinese model of parenting for their daughters Sophia and Lulu. This requires absolute obedience and intense application from the child, their natural preferences ignored and over-ridden at every stage, and enormous involvement on the part of the parent. Schoolwork comes first with no grade lower than an A being acceptable and any slippage bringing disgrace on the family - to avoid this, tests are prepared for by long hours of rote learning, drilling and repetition. Sleepovers and play dates do not figure in the child's life, nor do computer games and after-school activities, but music does and Prof. Chua's daughters learn the piano and the violin in part to prevent them becoming "soft" and to guard against "decline...laziness and ... spoiledness". But this is no ordinary pattern of weekly lesson and daily practice with a view to sitting a few exams and playing in the school orchestra; the Chua/Rubenfeld family do things at another level. Top-class teachers are sought, involving whole weekends driving long distances to attend lessons. To support this, practice takes many hours a day, often going on into the night to prepare for an audition or recital, and there's no downtime on holidays as every vacation sees the violin being taken as hand luggage and arrangements made for the use of a piano at every hotel.  

     There are pay-offs, of course, but pitfalls, too, and what works well for one child does not necessarily suit another, and so while Sophia is mainly acquiescent, Lulu is not, and it is with her that the Chinese method's weaknesses are evident, and Chua must question what she is doing.

    I found this book fascinating and compelling. There were passages at which I gasped, so extreme are the lengths to which Amy Chua goes to 'ensure' success for her daughters. She is candid, self-aware and admits to a tendency to show off and overdo things (a little understatement there), and she strays into self-parody when she realises that - never mind the daughters for a moment - her dogs will only ever be 'ordinary' pets: "it is perfectly fine for most dogs not to have a profession or even any special skills", she says [do you hear that Mollie and Pippin? You're off the hook!]. That gives you a taste of the standards she sets for herself and her family - there is no let up, no lax behaviour, no taking things easy or accepting second best; achievement is all. What this says for the health of family life as a whole, for the emotional well-being of the girls, for the well-rounded upbringing we Westerners tend to believe is good is up for debate, and that debate will inevitably be a heated one. If you're looking for a provocative book, here it is!