Are you a Tiger Mom?

By Ranjan Yumnam *

First, I think, a disclosure is in order : I am not a father of any kid and this column will be about different parenting styles. You may think, it's like a beggar lecturing on how to become a millionaire. So what? There are examples of even bankrupt paupers writing manuals on getting rich, which turned out to be bestsellers, and redeeming themselves ultimately. Writing this also serves a personal purpose : it is my self-primer for future parenting roles that I might shoulder, and in that sense I acquit myself of any intellectual dishonesty, of course with a kiddish smiley.

Rich or poor, parenting is such a universally complex job that all moms and dads can relate to. Parenting style of people varies but it is shaped to a large extent by the parenting approaches and methods favoured by the culture one is born into, and significantly by individual preferences. These cultural differences and individual inclinations are what Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", a parenting memoir, has highlighted and brought into sharp relief the differences between what she thinks is the lax parenting style of the Western moms and the tough Chinese moms. According to Amy, a Yale University's law professor, Western parents are too indulgent of their kids, believing blindly that children should be raised through carrots and carrots only, while hiding the stick or throwing it away never to be used. Parents in the western societies, because of this deep entrenched parenting myth, encourage, pat and celebrate their kids even when the little ones underperform, act idiotic, fumble and bumble - in other words, even for being good-for-nothing-losers. Americans hardly use harsh words and call their kids names for they think such a retributive approach would hurt the self esteem of the young ones, undermine their abilities and stifle their confidence in the long run.

I agree with Amy Chua to some extent. Children of the western affluent societies, at least as perceived from their popular representation in the Hollywood and literature, are a pampered lot. In their overzeal to be agreeable with their wards, Western parents stonewall all forms of pejorative and negative judgment about their kids. So when an American teen falters at any activity, his parents would praise him like he is the next Al Gore or a child prodigy, who lost by a whisker - even if it means saying such an absurdity like "what a lovely poop!". Yes, I am exaggerating a bit here but I hope you get the point.

The point is Amy Chua did not acquire her parenting ethics and philosophy out of a vacuum. She is an American born of Chinese immigrant parents of humble background. Being minority in United States, Chinese Americans (and so are other expatriates like Indian Americans, Jews, etc) are known for traditionally excelling in academics and are very industrious, partly as a result of ethos developed to overcome their numerical disadvantage, carve out a distinct identity for themselves and stand out in the astonishing mélange of immigrants, that America is. Amy herself is now a successful law professor at Yale and a published author, a testimony to her spirit of doggedness and excellence. Amy hates mediocrity and there is no place for second fiddlers in her world which she perceives as unkind and fiercely competitive. Both as a professional and as a mother, the petite Yale professor seeks to live by the tenet of grit and merit and she tries to infuse the same abundantly into her parenting style which she calls "tough love" so that her kids - when they grow up - are prepared for the challenges that the cruel world would hurl at them.

Amy's parenting style is similar to the strict regime of some our own parents. The battle hymn of this Tiger Mom is captured by some of her restrictions she imposes on her two daughters. These are some of the things Amy never allows her two daughters such as : to attend a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A (like 1st division in our case), among others. This is like a Manipuri mother forbidding her daughters to go out for a picnic with friends, attend thabal chongbas, watch sumang leela, compete in a beauty pageant, act in a Manipuri music video album, take part in a school drama, meet boys, wear jean trousers, come home late in the evening, so on and so forth.

Amy even called her daughter "garbage" (an unthinkable for the American parents) when she could not accomplish a thing like learning a difficult musical score on piano, denied her entry to bathroom unless a homework was completed, declined a handmade birthday card from her daughter because she thought it was not good enough and made them undergo so many unpleasant drills until perfection was achieved. And her justification : Nothing is fun until you are 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," the tiger mom writes in her memoir.

So here we have two options of parenting : a laissez faire parenting in which parents mollycoddle and encourage their children to perform better - and if they fail, to praise their efforts. The other style is of strict authoritarian parenting embraced by the likes of Amy Chua, who pushed their kids to extreme to get the best out of them, even to the point of physically and emotionally threatening them.

Daggers have been drawn between the two types of moms. Western parents say their permissive - often ambivalent - parenting methods have produced well-rounded, independent, confident and creative adults, and to prove this contention they have cited the high proportion of westerners among the Nobel Prize winners, Silicon Valley czars and scientists. Though Chinese and other Asians have thronged Harvard and many other prestigious institutions in the world, westerners claim, Asians have remained more or less crowd followers ending up mostly as genius computer programmers but rarely as innovative and creative people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

As far as I understand that western edge is waning. Chinese and Indians are catching up in all areas of human endeavours breaking racial glass ceilings with the most shrilling sound. In education, particularly in Science and Mathematics, western kids are falling behind as revealed by the results of a recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardised international exam, in which Shanghai students outscored their counterparts from all major developed countries in reading, math and science. Thomas Freidman, a New York Times columnist wrote pithily, "When we were young kids growing up in America, we were told to eat our vegetables at dinner and not leave them. Mothers said, 'think of the starving children in India and finish the dinner.' And now I tell my children : 'Finish your maths homework. Think of the children in India who would make you starve, if you don't.'"

The global economic order has changed and the Forbes Magazine recently echoed that change in its list of the most powerful people on Earth - Hu Jintao, President of China, is the most powerful person in the world, dethroning America by placing Barack Obama at 2nd place. America is rattled by the mercurial rise of China and in this atmosphere of fear of the dragons, came Amy Chua's memoir that scoffed at the parenting methods of westerners. No wonder, Amy Chua has as many detractors as the Talibans do.

If you ask me which type of parenting would suit our society, I will definitely prefer the whittled down version of Chua's parenting tactics - love driven assertive parenting. Today, our society has plunged into a chaos with no conscientious leadership and everyone seems to be captains of their own ships sans a compass and a map. We need a strong leadership and that can as well begin from home. Parents need to reign in their kids from straying into wrong ways - and there are many pitfalls in Manipur - and keep a strict lease on them with an iron hand but with love and heart of velvet. In the absence of right opportunities, the carefree American style of parenting won't produce a Mark Zuckerberg here; it will only give birth to another extortionist. And he/she could be your child. In Manipur you raise either Mama's boys or Yama's boys. The parenting menu is very limited - it's the choice between tough parenting and freewheeling parenting.

I am lucky I was raised in a tough way. In my younger years, my parents called me all kinds of names imaginable, worst than 'garbage', when I underperformed and goofed up but it only strengthened my resolve to work harder and prove myself. I am confident and I didn't grow up to be a timid paranoid adult as the western psychologists fear such tough parenting would end up producing. So my question to Amy Chua is this : Am I a Tiger Son then?

(Views expressed are personal and do not represent official position)

Ranjan Yumnam

* Ranjan Yumnam, presently an MCS probationer, is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com. This article was posted on February 06, 2011.