Tiger Mother

I originally wrote this in February 2011.

Much as I hoped to dodge Amy Chua and her controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, I ultimately decided that in a column where I often talk about parenting, I had to tackle Chua’s philosophy.  If nothing else, Chua certainly knows how to attract press, and I imagine everyone reading this has heard or read something about Tiger Mothers and Chinese parenting in the last several weeks. 

The media, beginning with a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” whose publication predated the release of the book, has focused on Chua’s more incendiary prescriptions such as:

Never

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

The story about her calling her daughter garbage when she was disrespectful is frequently repeated. Another featured episode involves her younger daughter Lulu’s attempts to learn a difficult piano piece, “The Little White Donkey.“  Chua made Lulu keep playing, through dinner and without bathroom breaks, until midnight.  She took her dollhouse out to the car threatening to donate it to the Salvation Army.  Lulu eventually got it.  That night, she and her mother snuggled together.   Lulu played the piece beautifully at her recital, thus justifying Chua’s seemingly unreasonable demands.

However, I think Chua is trying to deliver a more complex – perhaps even conflicted -- message than simply the superiority of her parenting methods.  Indeed, the cover of the book and the frontispiece represent her story much better:

This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.

But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

Reading that, I thought, this is a very different story – “bitter clash” and “humbled” are not words of triumph.  The book is very readable, and certainly as parents, her story draws us in, whether to quote ABC reporter Juju Chang, we are “repulsed or completely jealous.”[1]  While I felt conflicting emotions, I mostly wanted to know whether she was trying to be funny and self-deprecating or whether she was serious.  In every interview, she insists that she meant to be funny and the book is a “self-parody.” She repeatedly maintains that her book is a memoir, not a parenting how-to guide.  Read that way, the book is funny and quite touching. 

Amy Chua herself is an enormously accomplished person.  She graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School where she made the Law Review.  After law school, she went to work for a Wall Street firm but hated it.  She angled for some time to get an academic job (she is married to a law school classmate who is a Yale Law School professor).  Eventually, she landed a position at Duke and then joined her husband at Yale Law School.  She wrote two books prior to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, one on law and ethnicity in the developing world entitled World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, a New York Times bestseller, and Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall.

But she’s not remotely arrogant about her academic and professional success; indeed, her priority is her role as a parent.  This how she describes her life:

I would . . . spend half my day writing and acting like a Yale law professor, then rush back home for my daily practice sessions with my two daughters, which in Lulu’s case always involved mutual threats, blackmail, and extortion.[2]

These practice sessions lasted hours and took place every day, even while the family was on vacation. 

In fact, it’s awe inspiring all that Chua accomplishes.  For example, in addition to her professional responsibilities, she studied all her girls’ music so she could coach them, leaving them detailed daily notes with measure by measure instructions. 

Some people have questioned whether Chua actually pushes her daughters for them or for herself.  She responds emphatically, “everything I do is unequivocally 100% for my daughters.  My main evidence is that so much of what I do with Sophia and Lulu is miserable, exhausting, and not remotely fun for me.”[3] 

Indeed, Chua determined to write her book after a particularly explosive scene at a café in Moscow, when thirteen-year-old Lulu got so angry she threw a glass on the floor in front of all the other customers.  After running across Red Square enraged and embarrassed, Chua returned to tell Lulu she could give up the violin if she wanted.  Lulu had become so intransigent that Chua was genuinely worried she was going to lose her.   Lulu had won; Chinese parenting had lost. 

So granting that in fact, Chua’s parenting methods yield mixed success and  that she really meant her book to amuse not to instruct, what can we learn from her? 

I think the most applicable lesson is her belief that her children can do anything.  In the now infamous “Little White Donkey” incident, Chua’s husband suggests that perhaps Lulu simply can’t play the difficult piece.  Chua never accepts that.  She has unswerving faith in Lulu, and she proves right.  Lulu does master the piece.  As she says, “Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them.  If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough.”[4]  It’s not because their child isn’t innately good at something, or because the teacher is poor, or because the assessments are flawed. 

You may recall Carol Dweck’s work in which she identified “fixed” and “growth” mindsets.  In a fixed mindset, if you do something well, you attribute your success to natural talent.  In a growth mindset, you believe that being good at something depends on effort.  When those with a fixed mindset encounter a difficult task, they often give up: if you can’t do something easily, it must be because you don’t have that innate ability.  By contrast, those with a growth mindset see difficulties as a challenge to overcome.  Chua clearly has a growth mindset.  Despite all the pressure she puts on her children to achieve, she never doubts that if they apply the proper effort they will succeed. 

Chua makes an important observation:

. . . as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child’s self-esteem is to let them give up.  On the flip side, there’s nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn’t.[5]

Chua never expects achievement to be handed to her children; they have to work for it.  Getting to Carnegie Hall, which Sophia ultimately does, takes hours and hours and hours of practice.  Which brings us to another interesting point: you may remember Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, where he argues that people who are hugely successful (outliers like Bill Gates and the Beatles) actually achieve that success because they devote at least 10,000 hours to whatever it is they do.  Chua expects over the top achievement and knows meeting that goal requires thousands of hours of effort.

At the point that Chua relents and lets Lulu give up the violin, Lulu had already achieved a lot – studying with one of the most revered teachers in the nation and concertmaster of a competitive orchestra.  When, after pulling back on her violin commitments, Lulu takes up tennis, Chua doesn’t pay much attention at first.  Before long, though, Lulu was winning tournaments and moving up the ranks.  Her coach observes that Lulu “has an unbelievable work ethic – I’ve never seen anyone improve so fast. . . .  She never settles for less than 110 percent.”[6]  Obviously, some of the Chinese parenting rubbed off.  Lulu was applying almost the same intensity to tennis that her mother taught her to apply to the violin. 

In the end, at least now, Sophia and Lulu seem pretty well adjusted.  They have lots of friends, and Lulu even professes appreciation for all the hours her mother made her practice the violin.  Their hard work and resulting success will give them many choices in life, and as Lulu’s tennis demonstrates, they will be able to transfer focus and commitment to other aspects of their lives. 

I don’t condone the way Chua has treated her children.  Calling them garbage and threatening to burn their stuffed animals is simply poor parenting.  The amount of yelling that occurred in that household could only have created a very tense environment, uncomfortable at best and unhealthy at worst.  In addition, contrary to what Chua originally asserts, not all children are the same.  She had to treat Lulu differently from Sophia.  Moreover, I don’t believe that all children would bear up emotionally under her parenting approach. 

That said, I think we often make excuses for our children when we shouldn’t; we don’t always give them a chance to build confidence by overcoming challenges; and some of us could do a better job of instilling the value of hard work.  There are times when, as parents, we should be making decisions for our children when we abdicate, either because we believe prematurely that they are ready to make such decisions or because we lack confidence in our own judgment. 

If Sophia and Lulu really are the reasonably well adjusted girls they appear it is because they know their mother loves them deeply; they know that the energy she expends on their behalf is for them.  Sophia and Lulu understand that she always puts them first. 

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[1] Juju Chang interview with Amy Chua, ABC’s “Good Morning America,”

[2] Chua, 38-39

[3] Chua, 148

[4] Chua, 52

[5] Chua, 62

[6] Chua, 220

Lincoln's Leadership

Last week I talked about George Washington, and it only seems fair that Abraham Lincoln should also get his due. A masterful story teller with a legendary sense of humor, Lincoln, despite probably being depressed a great deal of the time, easily enters our imagination. Like Washington, he stands out as a great leader who carried our nation through the greatest test since its founding. Although the country had just survived the searing experience of an awful civil war, characterized by horrendous casualties and intense partisanship, by the time he was assassinated, Lincoln had forged a strong new definition of the union and had finally brought about the abolition of slavery, an achievement of such magnitude it’s hard to measure.

Several qualities define Lincoln’s leadership: integrity, compassion, resoluteness, self-confidence, and single-mindedness along with unparalleled political skills.

Lincoln’s life story is the stuff of myth: the self-educated, self-made man who rose from a log cabin on the frontier to President of the United States by dint of hard work, a commitment to self-improvement, and common sense. While not entirely true, the general outlines are. Lincoln married well and developed a successful law practice doing what today we would call corporate law, much of it for railroads. A convivial person and effective communicator, he began his political career as a Whig in the Illinois legislature and then served one term in Congress in the 1840s. Having joined the newly created Republican Party, he ran for the Senate against Stephen Douglas in 1858. Though he lost, the positions he outlined on slavery during debates with Douglas gained him national attention. He somewhat unexpectedly received the Republican nomination for President in 1860, defeating the favored Senator William Seward of New York. His victory in the presidential election caused the southern states to secede from the Union. By the time he took office in March of 1861, the sectional tensions that had been intensifying over the previous decades had reached a full-blown crisis. Lincoln was determined to prevent the dissolution of the Union, and against tremendous odds; he achieved that goal before falling to John Wilkes Booth’s bullets only weeks after being inaugurated for his second term and days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

Like many great leaders, Lincoln consciously brought his enemies close and took advantage of having a variety of points of view among his advisors, traits that require a strong sense of self. He put together a cabinet consisting of prominent figures in the Republican Party, including Seward as Secretary of State (as an aside, consider this interesting historical parallel: a relatively obscure and inexperienced candidate from Illinois wins a Presidential election and appoints his well-known, primary rival for the nomination, a Senator from New York, as his Secretary of State), Salmon Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, and Gideon Welles as Secretary of the Navy. All these men considered themselves Lincoln’s superiors, all had had presidential aspirations of their own, and all angled to take advantage of what they perceived as Lincoln’s ineptitude to exercise their own power. However, he masterfully balanced them against one another, neutralizing them all, and eventually winning their begrudging respect.

Lincoln forged his political career in the heated controversy over slavery that dominated mid-19^th century American politics. While the containment and eventual termination of slavery remained important to him, he believed that his oath to support the Constitution demanded that he devote his full energies to preserving the Union. He pursued this goal relentlessly and to the exclusion of all else, beginning with his first inaugural address when he asserted that “the union of these states is perpetual.” He maintained the position to the end, when he refused any terms from the Confederacy except unconditional surrender. While, according to historian James McPherson, most Republican leaders—including Seward, Chase, and Horace Greeley, the influential publisher of the New York Tribune—acted like “foxes”, pursuing a variety of goals simultaneously, Lincoln was a “hedgehog.” He pursued one and only one goal, and this determined his success. McPherson asserts, “If [Seward or Greeley] had been at the helm instead of Lincoln, it is quite likely that the United States would have foundered on the rocks of disunion.”[i]

Like Washington, Lincoln was a man of great moral integrity. This quality played out in numerous ways, small and large. The historian Paul Johnson describes an incident when Lincoln came to confer with Seward, shortly after he had broken his arm and jaw in a carriage accident. As Johnson points out, Lincoln could easily have skipped the conversation on account of Seward’s injury, and given Seward’s condescending attitude towards Lincoln, that might have been an appealing option. Instead, Lincoln lay down on the bed with Seward so they would be at eye level together they discussed the immediate issues facing the government. Johnson says of Lincoln, “He invariably did the right thing, however easily it might have been avoided.”[ii]

Lincoln’s integrity governed his view of his obligation to preserve the Union, and for his commitment to that goal we owe him a great debt. However, his morality also informed his views on slavery, and it was this issue that originally defined him as a politician. A great deal has been written about the early Republicans’ views on slavery. While, like all political parties, the members did not hold monolithic positions, they did share a belief that slavery should not extend into the territories. The motivation for this position varied from those who didn’t want free labor to have to compete with slave labor to those who were morally opposed to slavery. Lincoln, while not an Abolitionist, fell firmly into the camp of moral opposition to slavery. He told a Chicago audience in 1857, “I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.”[iii] As was typical of the vast majority of whites of his day, he didn’t necessarily believe that blacks and whites were equal. However, he did believe they deserved equal opportunity. Also in 1857, he declared, “. . . in [a black woman’s] natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.”[iv]

While he generally advocated a gradual eradication of slavery and, as we have noted, made the preservation of the Union he sole objective, Lincoln ultimately maneuvered the war aims to end slavery. The Union war effort undermined slavery in a number of ways, including the fact that slaves regularly escaped behind Union lines where they were welcomed and put to work. By the end of the war almost 200,000 blacks, mostly ex-slaves, served as soldiers. Lincoln did not always support these measures initially, usually for political reasons—he was always trying to balance between the conservatives and the Radicals—but in every instance he eventually came around. Of course, his most famous effort in this regard was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Since this document only freed the slaves in states in rebellion, it is often noted that, in fact, it freed no slaves. However, McPherson argues that this criticism misses the point of the Emancipation Proclamation which he asserts “announced a revolutionary new war aim—the overthrow of slavery by force of arms if and when the Union armies conquered the South.”[v] Now the North fought to preserve a Union that would fully realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” Lincoln went on to support a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery which was ratified in February 1865. The “peculiar institution” had finally met its end.

 Lincoln was single-minded, but he was not doctrinaire. He was also very compassionate. He suffered deeply at the loss of life and the devastating wounds received by so many young men. A person of moderation, he did not seek revenge. He often infuriated his critics by not taking stronger stands, but in the long run he was probably more successful for his generous hand. There was, for example, the famous case of the Ohio man who was arrested for making a speech denouncing the war; rather than imprisoning him, Lincoln had him banished to the Confederacy. He was pleased that Grant offered Lee’s troops clemency, sending them home with their weapons and horses. And most importantly, his proposal for Reconstruction allowed the former Confederates to rehabilitate themselves by doing little more than take an oath of loyalty. Unfortunately, after Lincoln’s assassination, the Radical Republicans succeeded in imposing their much harsher brand of Reconstruction. Had Lincoln lived to oversee Reconstruction, the rebuilding of the Union would have proceeded as he hoped in his Second Inaugural Address, “with Malice towards none, with charity for all” and his leniency would have helped “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” Our post-Civil War history might have evolved quite differently under the leadership of such a compassionate, skillful, focused, and morally grounded man.

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[i] James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1990), 114.

[ii] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York, 1997), 487.

[iii] Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (New York, 1970), 215.

[iv] Foner, 296.

[v] McPherson, 34.

Reflections on Washington's Legacy

This is President’s Weekend, a welcome break in the dreary winter afforded by the celebration of the lives of two of our nation’s greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom happened to have February birthdays. For many, this is a weekend to go skiing, or maybe even to make a quick escape to warmer climes. I certainly won’t begrudge anyone a few days of winter fun. I, however, cannot resist the opportunity to put on my former history teacher hat, and devote some time to a brief exploration of leadership as embodied in Washington. A disclaimer: this discussion won’t reflect the most recent scholarship, but rather represents a personal reflection on this historic figure.

Washington had the opportunity to serve his country twice, neither time assuming the responsibilities with much enthusiasm, but both times accepting the call because he believed it was right to do so. Put in command of a non-existent Continental Army in 1775, a few months after hostilities had erupted between British troops and Massachusetts militia men, he faced the most disciplined, powerful military power in the world. An uncooperative Congress, lack of supplies and pay for his men—the worst occurring during the winter of 1778 at Valley Force—insubordination by some of his most talented officers (the traitor Benedict Arnold being the most notable example), and a rag-tag force of largely untrained men from widely varying backgrounds generally more loyal to their colony than some abstract notion of the United States. These hardly constitute conditions conducive for success.

However, through courage and force of personality he managed his detractors by confronting them, calling their bluff, ignoring them, or, in the case of some of his officers, even glossing over their disloyalty in favor of keeping their expertise. Likewise, he won the loyalty and admiration of his troops who knew that he always looked out for their interests. He learned from mistakes, listened to wise counsel from the likes of Nathanael Greene, and showed a willingness to dispense with traditional conventions of war—exemplified by the surprise attack on the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton the day after Christmas. With help from key European allies, he ultimately led the Continental Army to victory. At Cornwallis’ surrender to Washington at Yorktown in 1781, the band appropriately played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Significantly, as they fought for the common cause of freedom from British rule, Washington helped his troops forge a new identity as Americans rather than Virginians or men from Massachusetts. Washington’s ability to conceive a nation before many others did, and to put his prestige behind that vision, proved one of his many critical contributions to the formation of the United States.

The country turned to Washington—a national hero credited with the American triumph over the British—again to serve as the first President under the new constitution, to provide leadership that would build a nation from thirteen disparate states. Much as he would have preferred to stay at Mount Vernon, Washington again obeyed the call. As we all know, he established a number of important precedents, including deciding that the President would be addressed as Mr. President, rather than more aristocratic titles such as “His Mightiness,” suggested by John Adams. He also resigned after his second term, establishing a tradition that lasted until FDR and was finally enshrined as a Constitutional amendment in 1951. Both these actions indicate his lack of interest in self-aggrandizement, his humility, and his understanding of what the nascent republic needed.

One of Washington’s skills, and frankly a quality typical of most great leaders, was identifying and surrounding himself with extremely able people. He had done this with his officer corps during the war and he did so again as he appointed his cabinet. Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, stood out as among the most brilliant men of their generation. As events unfolded, fierce enmity developed between these two. Washington’s handling of this tense situation once again demonstrated his ability to put the needs of the country ahead of personal interest. He tried as long as he could to keep Jefferson in his cabinet, despite disagreeing with Jefferson’s idealistic attachment to the French Revolution and perhaps more significantly despite Jefferson and Madison’s virulent public campaign against Hamilton and even Washington himself. Washington deplored the development of the political parties that began to coalesce around Hamilton and Jefferson, and implored them to treat each other civilly and respect their differences of opinion. As the two factions garnered strength throughout the country, the partisanship threatened to tear the young republic apart. Washington stayed above the fray and Joseph Ellis, one of his more recent biographers observes that “Without him to center it, the political experiment in republicanism might very well have failed. With him, and in great part because of him, it succeeded.”[i]

Foreign affairs loomed large, particularly during Washington’s second term. The United States was young and weak, and more powerful nations eagerly sought to take advantage of us. Through a series of treaties, Washington’s administration defended U.S. territorial integrity. Through his Proclamation of Neutrality, a position he reinforced in his Farewell Address when he railed against “entangling alliances,” he established the long-standing policy of American neutrality. Failure to take on British aggression or to side with the French revolutionaries, brothers in the overthrow of tyranny, were unpopular decisions but ones that allowed the new nation to concentrate on building itself without expending scarce resources on foreign engagement which promised, to Washington’s mind, no advantage to the U.S.

Of course slavery presents the greatest moral issue of U.S. history, and here again Washington stood above his peers. Like all southern planters, Washington owned slaves, indeed quite a large number. However, over the course of his life, he developed a moral revulsion to slavery and spent a number of years trying to figure out how to disentangle himself from the institution. Always a realist, he could easily be criticized for refusing to support a movement to abolish slavery on a national scale during his presidency—he believed that such action would be too politically divisive. He could also be criticized for not freeing his own slaves during his lifetime. While there were complicated financial reasons that made it difficult for him to emancipate his slaves, by 1793, he had come to the highly unusual conclusion for men of his background that he wished to “liberate a certain species of property which I possess very repugnantly to my feelings.”[ii] Ultimately, he freed his slaves in his will, being very forceful in the wording to his executors on this account. Not only did he free his slaves, but he provided for the care of the elderly no longer be able to work and for children too young to work, including ensuring that they learned to read. He alone among the Founding Fathers took this critical step. Moreover, he did so not just to satisfy his own conscience but, keenly aware of the impact of his actions, to set an example for others.

We cannot underestimate Washington’s contributions to this country. His legacy has stood the test of time and the scrutiny of numerous historians. Ron Chernow, his most recent biographer, summarizes Washington as follows:

History records few examples of a leader who so earnestly wanted to do the right thing, not just for himself but for his country. Avoiding moral shortcuts, he consistently upheld such high ethical standards that he seemed larger than any other figure on the political scene. Again and again the American people had entrusted him with power, secure in the knowledge that he would exercise it fairly and ably and surrender it when his term of office was up. . . . He brought maturity, sobriety, judgment and integrity to a political experiment that could easily have grown giddy with its own vaunted success, and he avoided the backbiting, envy and intrigue that detracted from the achievements of other founders. He had indeed been the indispensable man of the American Revolution.[iii]

The United States’ founding contrasts sharply with most countries’ transition to independence. Consider Senegal, for example, a nation some of us have come to know quite well. Achieving independence from France in 1960, Senegal has been a democracy ever since. The Senegalese people are justifiably proud of their history, all the more significant for its rarity in Africa. However, as I write this, the current president continues his quest to expand executive power and undermine democracy as his police attack demonstrations protesting their leader’s aggregation of power. Washington could have parlayed his military success into dictatorship as so many revolutionary leaders have done, but instead he retired to Mount Vernon. Quite vague about executive power, the Constitution potentially gave Washington the opportunity to construct an imperial presidency and to remain in office for life. He did neither, instinctively balancing the need for a stronger central government with the deep suspicions of power that characterized the revolutionary generation.

As we enjoy this holiday weekend, I hope you’ll take a moment to remember the extraordinary leadership of George Washington, the man whom Congressman Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee eulogized as “First in war—first in peace—and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

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[i] Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York, 2004), 190.

[ii] James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (New York and Ontario, 1974), 392.

[iii] Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), 812.