Asian Parents

We wanted to take this snowy Friday to share a different type of post, but before we get to the heart of our post, we'd like to give you some background.

On January 8th, the Wall St. Journal ran a controversial article titled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" The article was written by Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, and it contains the essence of her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In the article, Chua explains her style of raising children and how she would restrict what they could and could not do, which to "western" parents would seem outlandish. She does not have a problem seeming antithetical to western parents because she believes they are weak-willed and overly concerned for their children's self-esteem. She believes children can take much more than western parents think.

Her philosophy in raising children was to be as strict and aggressive as possible in order to force your children to be excellent at everything you desire for them. For example, in the article she shared a anecdote where her youngest daughter gave up on a very difficult piano piece. In response to this rebellion she threatens with deprivation of gifts and meals, selling her toys and telling her to "stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic."

As you can imagine, the response to this article has been great (for publicity). Opponents and proponents of this style of child-rearing have spoken up and taken their stand. Some people are declaring her the breath of fresh air declaring, "Stop spoiling your children and demand more of them!" to parents raising failing children. To others, that breath is foul as it is one that is at least promoting verbal, psychological, and potentially physical abuse of their children.

You can make up your mind by reading the article yourself, but we here at FHS are quite excited because we were able to get an exclusive interview with Amy Chua. It was not easy to find time to meet with her, but because of our excellent agent/publicist, we were able to make it happen. We contacted her and she was more than willing to give us her thoughts. The transcript of our conversation is below.

For Humor's Sake: So Amy. You've been getting a lot of attention for your book and your article in the Wall Street Journal, how has this been affecting your personal life?

Amy Chua: SHUT UP YOU NON-4.0 GPA HAVING, VIDEO GAME PLAYING, LOWLIFES! STOP WASTING YOUR TIME BLOGGING AND PRACTICE PIANO!

FHS: ...Yes, maam.