The Toxic Allure of Tiger-Mothering (Part 2) Motivation

In her January 8th, Wall Street Journal essay, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, Amy Chua presents an all-too-familiar problem every parent faces. Kids left on their own lack the self-motivation to do anything beyond what comes naturally or with hardly any effort. The solution she claims is Tiger-Mothering, her version of how conventional Chinese mothers raise their children.

There are many aspects to Tiger-Mothering which Chua packs into her essay. Her memoir provides even more detail but also discloses how she does not always hold to her own ideal. Nonetheless, the Chua essay has generated a significant amount of debate. How much should parents permit their children to follow their natural impulses? How much pressure should responsible parents put on their children to overcome their inertia? And more importantly, what tactics should responsible parents use to ensure their children do not fall victim to their own lazy nature?

Chua accuses those she describes as conventional Western parents as being “lazy” whenever they do not push past their children’s resistance. While parents who never push their children are lazy, Chua and those who follow her Tiger-Mothering principles are also lazy. By creating a zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy, Chua and others like her bypass an uncountable number of interactions with their children that take time, thought and effort at the expense of their kids’ emotionally healthy development. In the most simple terms, an extremist position like the one Chua advocates takes very little thought and only occasional time and effort.

Additionally, Chua applies little to no moral or ethical compass when it comes to pursuing her narrow objectives. She threatens to take back gifts and cancel celebrations. She denies her daughters bathroom breaks and advocates any use of fear, shame, guilt or manipulation. She never appeals to her kids’ own sense of values. She simply stands upon her own totalitarian parental authority. Perhaps the only thing Chua does not do to achieve her ends is give her daughters physical beatings.

My own position is not the opposite, but relies heavily upon my own moral and ethical compass. So to begin with, fear, shame, guilt and manipulation are toxic. Leveraging these toxic drivers is a counterfeit producer of desired behavior because the desired behavior is either short-lived or soon joined by a different set of undesired behaviors that are the fallout of physical, emotional and psychological abuse. And this kind of abuse is generational. Adult children of such abuse are inclined to inflict the same kind of abuse on their own children, and justify that abuse to themselves and those around them by the subset of outcomes that are desirable.

But I do not advocate the opposite extreme. While I do not behave in a manipulative manner or manufacture fear, shame or guilt, I do not completely shelter my children from normal life situations in which these kinds of feelings could in theory come into play. A very emotionally healthy person can feel these emotions, especially guilt, when they violate their own moral or ethical compass. And while my kids are still living under my roof, I put a lot of effort into ensuring they build their own moral and ethical compass and have the tools to continue doing so long after they leave my home.

A key part of the equation is goals. Successful, emotionally healthy adults set challenging goals for themselves. Left on their own, kids won’t set challenging goals for themselves. But to merely set goals for them is a fallacy of Tiger-Mothering. This is where negotiation comes into play. Chua insists her kids play either the piano or the violin. In fact, it looks like she chose the piano for one and the violin for another. Either way with so few choices, Chua’s girls did not get to set or even negotiate their own goals. They had to either pick or have one chosen for them. The correct thing is to drill down into the actual objective. Perhaps Chua wanted her each of her girls to excel in something artistic that required physical action with concentration. If so, nearly any musical instrument except perhaps the kazoo would suffice. Certainly, it would be more than two. Once an instrument was selected the exact goals with that instrument in question could also be negotiated. These are the kinds of interactions lazy parents bypass.

In our family, sports was one such subject of negotiation. We wanted both Philip and Chloe to be physically active, to gain physical confidence and develop some team skills. When Philip got sick of baseball, we required him to find something else and we helped him find lacrosse. When Chloe got sick of soccer, we required her to continue with basketball and to find a replacement for soccer which turned out to be volleyball.

But once a goal is selected, kids will still resist whenever the going gets difficult. It is here where Chua is willing to use whatever means necessary to ensure her kids’ inertia gains no foothold. But is there another way that is better? I believe the answer lies in consequences. Consequences play a large role in how I have dealt with both goals and behavior. Because kids are naturally sheltered from nearly all of life’s consequences until they are adults, parents need to create consequences that are more immediate. The consequences must be situation-appropriate, be clearly stated in advance if at all possible, and most importantly the consequences must actually be carried out.

I am amazed at how many parents threaten huge consequences they would never deliver upon and for such a small infractions. Chua told her daughter that she would have “no birthday parties for … four years” if she did not learn how to play a piano piece called The Little White Donkey “perfect” by the next day. In my home, I deliver on all my threats and as a result I rarely need to deliver. I can only achieve this by making threats on which I would actually deliver. At one point before Philip was even ten years old he was fascinated by my grandfather’s fraternity paddle from the 1930s. As such when a particularly egregious behavior manifested I told Philip that if he ever did that again, he would get one firm slap on his bare buttocks with the fraternity paddle, and ensured he agreed in advance that it was an appropriate punishment. It turned out to be the biggest threat I have ever had to carry out. When the behavior repeated itself, I looked at him in astonishment. But I had meant what I said. I asked him if he wanted the punishment immediately and he did. It hurt. Philip cried and I held him and told him it was over. And it was over: On both sides. Philip never manifested that behavior ever again.

Working with your kids to set their own goals and to set consequences for failures and wrong behavior takes work and requires several adjustments as they age. It requires delivering on all threats when necessary and making sure every threat is something a responsible parent would actually deliver upon. It has taken a lot of work and we are still not done. Sometimes, I can see the appeal of the zero-tolerance zero-exceptions policy. But I’ve learned there is a better way and in this last stretch of parenting, I plan to stick to it.

Popular Teens: How Do They Gain and Maintain Their Status?

Now that my formal education is long since over, works published in academic journals do not normally catch my attention. The February 2011 issue of the American Sociological Review proved a very interesting exception. In it Professors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee of UC Davis empirically verified something we generally know about popular teenagers but also discovered some things we do not generally know.

Is anyone surprised to learn that popular teenagers are mean toward other teenagers? If we have somehow forgotten our own teen years, the entertainment industry is there to remind us with movies like Mean Girls, American Pie, The Clique and Odd Girl Out as well as television series like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, and Degrassi.

Faris and Felmlee use the word Aggression to describe three types of behaviors that increase among teens as they become progressively popular: physical aggression, direct verbal aggression and indirect verbal aggression (spreading gossip). These findings stand in sharp contrast to psychological research that attributes aggressive behavior to teens who are social outsiders, not social insiders. And then there is one finding that shatters the stereotype completely. Their research shows teens at the zenith of popularity (roughly the top 2%) are not mean or aggressive at all. If we think back hard to our own teen years, perhaps many of us can remember these kinder, gentler highly popular teens and anecdotally confirm what has only been recently documented empirically. I certainly can.

While I have not conducted any kind of study that would qualify as viable research, I believe my anecdotal observations can explain some of these findings, fill in some gaps, and paint a more complete picture. Most importantly, since being more popular in and of itself is desirable and as long as a teen does not attain his or her increased popularity through acts of cruelty or leverage his or her popularity for destructive ends, its pursuit should be encouraged.

While I agree that popular teens behave aggressively toward other teenagers according to the pattern Faris and Felmlee outline, it is not the first thing I have noticed about their social behavior. Instead what is most noticeable is how much effort they put into validating other teenagers. As teenagers become more popular, acts of validation become almost an obsession. They want to pair themselves off with nearly everyone in photographs. They post all kinds of warm, friendly messages to others on social networking sites like Facebook and Formspring. And regarding the school sports teams, they are the ones who provide constant praise to the high performers and constant encouragement to the under performers as both teammates and fans on the sidelines. When Philip’s birthday rolled around, the first two people to wish him “happy birthday” on Facebook were Noah (the most popular guy is his class) and Erica (the most popular girl in his class). Their posts both appeared before seven in the morning and were followed by scores of other birthday notes, most of which were from other very popular students. On the other side of the spectrum, when a man in the community died in a motorcycle accident, it was the popular kids like Noah who led the charge in showering his son (a junior at Hermes High School) with words and acts of love, kindness and support and who actively urged others to do likewise.

There are many factors that play into the equation to determine teenage popularity and obviously these differ between boys and girls. These include extroversion, mature youthful features, stature, muscular development, humor, friendliness, personal grooming, intelligence (but not actual academic performance), confidence, speaking skills, financial resources, athletic prowess, social ambition, and (perhaps not last) an adeptness at using aggressive behavior shrewdly.

Here in my mind is the difference between the aggressiveness popular teens exhibit and the aggressiveness marginal teens exhibit, and why Faris and Felmlee’s findings differ so radically from the findings of most psychological research. Put yourself in the shoes of an average teenager and ask yourself who’s aggression would make you feel more victimized: the crazy kid with no friends or the starting quarterback with a beautiful adoring girlfriend? A small public cutting remark from the quarterback would have far more impact than a tirade from the crazy kid.

In my observation, popular teens tend to use aggression with deliberate ends in mind more than they exhibit impulsive acts of aggression, though I have certainly observed the latter quite often. These deliberate ends include testing, self-defense, assertiveness, maintaining the social hierarchy, and (admittedly) entertainment. Here is one example of this kind of deliberateness that I observed from the bleachers. The Hermes lacrosse team was taking a water break. Philip had just finished drinking and was putting his gloves back on. A short distance from Philip, Conrad was holding one of those water bottles that let him squirt water into his mouth without needing to remove his helmet. After drinking up, Conrad aimed a quick squirt of water at Philip. Philip looked up, saw Conrad’s beaming confident smile, and gave Conrad a warm smile and quick laugh in response. Then Conrad squirted Philip a second time. Philip stared back at Conrad with an annoyed look of disapproval while Conrad continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat, and then squirted Philip a third time. Without hesitation, Philip used his lacrosse stick to knock the water bottle out of Conrad’s hand and deliver a few punishing jabs before Conrad got hold of his own stick and was able to successfully parry Philip’s stick-thrusts. Conrad made one attempt to jab Philip back and his attempt was likewise deflected before both smiled and halted their altercation.

It was a very telling exchange. Both Conrad and Philip are popular. Conrad is perhaps half a notch above Philip in the social hierarchy. Conrad’s initial actions served multiple purposes. They were a test, a way to maintain his social position relative to Philip’s and a means of entertainment. Philip’s initial self-restraint and subsequent aggression first validated Conrad and then asserted Philip’s own social position. By the end of the exchange both Conrad and Philip looked impressive to all observers and perhaps their joint status within the overall social order had increased.

Teenagers have varying social ambitions and varying means to achieve their social ambitions. While some things (like height) are completely out of their control, other things (like behavior) are very much within their control to the degree that their maturity can override their impulsiveness. The best steps a parent can take to help their children enjoy the social aspects of their teen years are encouraging their teens to be friendly and validating of others while simultaneously teaching their teens to be shrewdly assertive. Both will normally take effort because most teens are socially cautious by nature. But the effort will be well worth it.

The Toxic Allure of Tiger-Mothering (Part 1) Introduction

As a proactive parent, I pay attention to the ideas about parenting that garner a large following. Today, the descriptive phrase attracting both praise and vilification is Tiger-Mothering. It started this past January 8th when the Wall Street Journal published Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior by Amy Chua. The essay was excerpted from Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that was released just three days later and has been ranked in the top five in the non-fiction category by the New York Times for four consecutive weeks now.

I read Chua’s essay with fascination and awe. So many individual lines jumped out at me and inside I would respond with a resounding “Yes!” because her words resonated, especially when she challenged the Western parental tendency to accept mediocrity. I was eager to keep reading to see if I could learn anything I would want to apply and was very curious to understand why her strange-sounding parental rules like not permitting her daughters to ever be in a school play might have some merit.

Early in our parenting days, Amelia and I had found a gold mine of parenting wisdom reading about the parenting practices of another great ancient culture: The Jews*. Perhaps Chinese culture also offered values and practices Amelia and I would want to embrace. Philip’s first semester grades had been a disappointment and perhaps behaving more like Chinese parents was just what Amelia and I needed to reverse the situation.

While I understand that Chua’s complete memoir disclosed Chua questioning her conventional practices from time to time and even easing the pressure on her younger daughter, the essay—which is what everyone has read—yielded no ground. So despite Chua’s noble effort to defend the model she mostly embraces, I am disappointed to report that I found nothing of any true value in Chua’s essay. Instead what I found was what I would describe as counterfeit wisdom. It is counterfeit because it seems so very right unless examined critically. Chua’s so-called wisdom is like the most dangerous lies: the lies that contain a significant amount of truth. Each time a resounding “Yes!” bubbled up inside me when reading Chua’s essay, my passionate agreement was evoked because she was describing a real problem. And her general descriptions of her solution looked very promising. Consider the following paragraph from her essay.

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. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Standing alone, the above paragraph earns mostly high marks and nearly all parents would do well to heed Chua’s general counsel. The problem exists with what Chua actual means when she uses words like fortitude, properly, tenacious, excellence, excel and confidence. By the end of her essay, the reader knows what Chua actually means and many readers may wonder if Chua’s solution is the most guaranteed way to rise above mediocrity. Some might conclude that it would be better to accept mediocrity. Others might embrace Chua’s recommendations. And there are those already practicing what Chua advocates who will feel validated by her essay and redouble their efforts.

While I have many friends I like and professional colleagues I respect whose upbringing probably closely matches what Chua advocates and who are likewise either practicing or planning to practice these same techniques with their own children, I still can only conclude these practices are wrong. I am not going on the offensive to defend the mediocrity-enabling practices Chua sees as her lone alternative. Instead, I want to present superior solutions to the problems she correctly identifies. So let me begin as Chua herself began.

Chua began her essay by stating “A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.” While I neither like nor advocate the use of stereotypes, they can be useful in making a point. Chua wants her kids to be successful kids because she believes that successful kids become successful adults. So what is the stereotypical Chinese-parented adult? Is this adult stereotype the model of successful adulthood? Compare that stereotype to the stereotypical Jewish-parented adult. Without hesitation, I would say the latter is far more successful. With a world population that is roughly one percent of world’s Chinese, Jewish-parented adults emerge with greater frequency as leaders across a broad spectrum of professions than Chinese-parented adults.

If one is going to embrace the parenting practices of a distinct culture, Jewish parents run circles around Chinese parents. Ironically, Chua’s husband is Jewish and both have grown up to be successful professionals. The stereotypical Jewish parent is also strict with the goal of raising a successful adult, but it is a very different kind of strictness. Somehow in Chua’s household, two highly intelligent parents selected the conventional Chinese parenting over the conventional Jewish parenting. Clearly, the allure of Tiger-Mothering is high and its supporting arguments are ancient, deep-rooted and like all forms of abuse have great but subtle power.

I am neither Jewish, nor have I embraced all that I have learned about Jewish parenting practices, and I am certainly not trying to raise either Philip or Chloe to resemble a stereotypical Jewish-parented adult. That said, I have embraced many Jewish parenting practices and combined them with other successful parenting practices, common sense and a willingness to do things differently than all the other parents around me.

Unfortunately, a one thousand word rebuttal to Chua’s essay is insufficient, and I value excellence in parenting too much to tolerate such insufficiency. As such, this is the first in a series of rebuttals targeting Chua’s specifics. Beginning with the topic of Motivation, I will clearly state the problem, critique Chua’s proposed solution and propose a healthy effective alternative that any parent willing to put in the effort can implement. Stay tuned.


*The book in question was The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People by Steven Silbiger.