The best kind of book is one that moves you to read another. It’s no wonder, then, that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from “Hillbilly Elegy”: the fresh and vulnerable 2016 memoir of Republican, Ohio lawyer, and U.S. Senate hopeful J.D. Vance. Broadly, the book concentrates on themes of family, parenting, and resilience, rife with allusions to the values of merit and hard work. Throughout, Vance owes his success to Yale Law Professor and his longtime mentor Amy Chua. In Vance’s own words, Chua is “the [second] person who deserves the most credit for [“Hillbilly Elegy’s”] existence,” and “has the wisdom of a respected academic and the confident delivery of a Tiger Mother…”
Such high praise piqued my interest in Chua’s controversial 2011 memoir “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” an autobiographical account of her experience and methods as a parent which gave her an outsized presence in discussions about education, parenting, race, and — like Vance’s 2016 book — meritocratic conservatism. Intrigued but mindful of lending monetary support to a potentially problematic narrative, I bought a used copy before begrudgingly beginning to read.
The first chapter was all too familiar: It was the same one that online publications had plastered all over the internet in the early 2010s, attempting to satirize her brutal portrayal of “tiger mothering.” It begins by chronicling Chua’s interactions with her two daughters Sophia and Lulu and, if their attendance at Ivy League universities is any indication, the methods she used when raising them to become successful. Brought up by a Tiger Mother herself, Chua attempted to employ many of her own parents’ unconventional methods on her daughters: no sleepovers, no TV, and six hours of music practice a day, to name a few. She was no more charitable when communicating with them, calling her daughter “garbage” and threatening to “TAKE ALL YOUR STUFFED ANIMALS AND BURN THEM!” At first, Chua’s informal sardonic tone made me uncomfortable as an Asian American raised by an immigrant. But, like Vance’s memoir, I couldn’t stop reading — I finished it that day.
Critiques and summaries of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” often reduce it to an apologetics paper for brutal “Chinese” parenting, characterize it as a scathing critique of “Western” parenting, or use it to defend or upbraid American ideology. While these conceptions of the book may seem accurate on the surface, I found her memoir engaging for a different, perhaps contradictory, reason: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’s” true purpose is neither to defend Chua’s parenting style nor to discredit that of others. Instead, she aims to throw “Chinese” parenthood into sharp relief, and, in doing so, interrogate her own evolution as a mother.
It is crucial for me to mention that, for the purposes of this article, the terms “Chinese” and “Western” are used in a cultural, rather than ethnic, fashion. Chua herself clarifies that the words “Chinese” and “Western” are meant to be taken “loosely.” She even notes “a super-successful white guy” whose father was a “Chinese mother” and many ethnically Chinese parents who did not employ “Tiger” parenting. Rather, “Chinese” parenting is a mindset that dictates how one raises their child, independent of racial background.
To Chua, Tiger parenting is the act of “assum[ing] strength, not fragility [of the child].” So, when Chinese parents like herself punish children for B’s, override their choices, or resort to name-calling, they do so because they believe their children are strong enough to withstand it. By contrast, she asserts that Western parenting obsesses about building self-confidence, bodily autonomy, and positive reinforcement. In the opening chapters, Chua highlights this juxtaposition and calls Chinese parenting’s emphasis on hard work the “virtuous circle,” claiming that, where Western parenting fails, it helps create disciplined children by overriding childhood preferences to play instead of work and encourages them to find satisfaction in success rather than recreation.
If this were Chua’s driving narrative, it would be natural to assume that she is prescribing her parenting universally and impossible to deny the questionable implications of “Chinese parenting,” especially for those who have experienced it. Indeed, although Chua’s narrative did help contextualize the upbringing of many Asian Americans, whenever this book wove itself into conversation with my Asian friends or family, opinions would range from slight disapproval to extreme distaste. Moreover, in a study of “Battle Hymn’s” Amazon reviews two months after publication, Chinese Americans were two-fold more likely to dislike or strongly dislike the book than other reviewers. Reading the book’s initial pages, I too fell prey to the same discomfort.
Most notably, misrepresentations of Chua’s book also re-ignited conservative discussions on American success. Chua’s seemingly legalistic Chinese parenting ironically seemed to resonate with conservatives aching to return to traditional American family values. Suzanne Venker, a self-described “expert on America’s gender war” and author of “The Flipside of Feminism” asserted in an interview that Chua was “calling for… a return to a philosophy that we in America have gotten away from when it comes to taking care of our kids.” A New York Times Magazine article even described it as “clearly aspir[ing] to become a battle plan for a new age of re-empowered, captain-of-the-ship motherhood,” and cast it as an antidote to the “nurturance overload” of modern American parenting.
Ultimately, though, the many who took “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” as a prescriptive parenting manual missed the point. In short excerpts and birds-eye-view reviews, Chua’s exploration of her evolving parenting style and constant reference to hindsight in her narration are lost. When these critical elements of her memoir are reintroduced to the perspective, though, it becomes clear that Chua aims not to endorse or promulgate a certain parenting style but to highlight the progression of her parenting as a journey in family, work ethic, failure, and success.
First, Chua’s memoir is not written as the how-to guide its well-publicized first chapter leads people to believe. Instead, it details the lives Chua and her children, specifically a series of confrontations between Chua and her younger daughter Lulu caused by Lulu’s disenchantment with her mother’s parenting. The simmering family conflict leaves Chua “humbled” when Lulu explodes in contempt and anger on a family vacation. She smashes a glass and makes a public spectacle — but she stands her ground while it is Chua who flees the restaurant crying, forced to reassess her approach to motherhood.
Tiger parenting worked on Chua: Not only did she achieve success, but she also believes she “owes everything” to her parents’ authoritative style. Ironically, though, after her fight with Lulu, Chua’s own mother reminds her not to sacrifice a relationship for a parenting tactic, citing the resentment Chua’s father harbored against his parents after their Tiger parenting left him feeling unsupported and belittled rather than successful or appreciative. He left his Chinese parents for the U.S. and never looked back.
This generational story is the one that most media articles fail to mention. During its time, it served as a real-life warning to Chua — as well as the cultural mavericks and nostalgic conservatives who blindly support her initially harsh parenting style — that her ways could backfire. Although not explicitly stated, Chua comes to a pivotal conclusion: Maybe Western parents focused too much on being “friends” with their children, but at least they would have a relationship. Consequently, she herself was forced to take a softer parental approach in order to salvage her bond with her youngest daughter.
If “Battle Hymn” is a story of parental change rather than parental traditionalism, why have conservative thinkers been so quick to appropriate Chua’s narrative for themselves? Perhaps the internet rage against “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” — accusations of “racism” and “abuse” were prolific upon its publication — resembled conservatives’ perceived censorship and prompted their solidarity. Or perhaps they interpreted Chua’s account as pointing at modern Western — often progressive — culture’s failures in order to dilute criticism of the existing system, one conservatives are inclined to protect. Or perhaps it is because Tiger parenting and Chua’s story ultimately confirm the supremacy of individual responsibility and success: the American Dream to which conservatives link themselves. After all, if Chua’s low-income, first-generation background did not hinder her from attending Harvard College and Law School or becoming a respected academic, why can’t others achieve it as well? Why can’t others simply employ Chinese parenting and reach equally atmospheric heights of American success?
Whatever the reason, it is clear that societal and conservative misunderstandings of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” glorify Tiger parenting as the panacea for cultural “decadence,” ultimately distracting from Chua’s true message and invalidating systemic and institutional problems that keep people from prosperity. While conversations on such issues — wealth inequality and racism, among others — were on the rise in 2011 and gave Chua a wide platform, they ultimately led “Battle Hymn” to receive both undue praise and hate. Many of those who expressed negative sentiments never gave the book a chance after being deterred by The Wall Street Journal viral article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” (Chua never even chose or saw the title until she opened the newspaper herself). Meanwhile, many of the positive evaluations her book received were rooted in the inaccurate idea that she wholly disparaged the indulgent nature of Western parenting or promoted conservative meritocracy by asserting that successfulness was predicated on parenting rather than privilege or structural barriers.
I did not find that Chua did any of these things. Rather than crafting a cheat sheet for creating successful children, she chronicles her journey as a parent, striking the essential but tenuous balance between Chinese and Western parenting and learning that motherhood must be responsive and adaptable to the child. Even as others with flawed understandings sought to make her experience the soundtrack for their own political and cultural conflicts, Chua’s true narrative suggests that battling at all — whether between parenting styles or family members or political ideologies — may not be the answer. Conversely, the ultimate battle hymn is something far simpler: reconciliation.
