The Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother Summary

Name: Rahat Ahmed
Subject: English 125

Amy Chua’s “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” had created a great controversy around the world. Many writers around the world wrote about her book and criticized her for her parenting methods. Most of the authors raised questions about Chua’s parenting methods. While reading journals, newspapers, and articles I noticed that most of the authors discussed how harsh parenting method is not the way to raise a child. When parents become strict to their children it can have a negative effect on them. Harsh parenting methods affect children both mentally and physically. Chua wrote that it is better to become strict parents in order to make them successful. I totally disagree with her. I think
it can affect children’s psychology negatively. It also can effect on their children’s success in life. My goal is to show that treating children strictly can affect children to develop their mentality by growing a conservative psychology in their mind and it can also be harmful.
Think about a life where you have no freedom and you cannot do what you want to do. Your parents force you to do what they want you to do. Chua’s children were not able to attend a sleepover, have a play date, be in a School play, complain about not being in a school play, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A or not be the no.1 student in every subject except gym and drama. It affects their psychology to work with others. They have a mentality to work alone. We can clearly see that Chua’s children were not taught how to be social with other. In this world of communication it is very necessary to become social. It is always better to work in a group instead of working alone. Most successful people worked in groups because groups are more capable of solving problems than individuals. A person may become a successful student by studying alone, but after all, he has to face the real world. “Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonation and moods,
understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together” (David Brooks). That’s not all; working in group is also good for health not only for human being but also for other animals. Doctor McClintock, Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology, found that rats living in groups lived 40% longer than those who lived by themselves and also recovered more quickly from illness. This experiment has been extended to comparing lonely and social humans and although the trial is still running, early indications show the lonely people don’t recover as quickly from illness, don’t sleep as well and have higher systolic blood pressure. The early trial conclusions state that social interaction helps people be healthier and live longer. How Amy Chua raised her children did not teach them how to work in a group. I think parents should grow the mentality to work in a group in their children’s mind. It will create a positive psychology in their mind and also help them to become more successful in their life. Parents should support kids in extracurricular and cultural activities. Due to her strict parenting method, her children will have a work alone psychology and they may face problems in communicating with others in future.
Amy Chua called her daughter Sophia garbage. She wrote in her book that “my father angrily called me garbage in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. She thinks calling children worthless is good for them to become successful in the future, which is not true at all. Calling children worthless make them feel terrible. It is not the way to motivate a child. It can affect children’s mental health situation. They can also call their children worthless when they grow old. Amy Chua was affected by her father and he did this to her daughter. A social learning model was developed that portrayed 4 processes whereby harsh parenting might be transmitted across generations. The model was tested using a sample of 451 2-parent families, each of which included a 7th grader. Both parent self-report and adolescent-report measures were utilized for the harsh parenting construct. Analysis using structural equation modeling procedures showed that grandparents who had engaged in aggressive parenting produced present day parents who were likely to use similar parenting practices. The effect was stronger for mothers than for fathers. In addition to a direct modeling effect, there was evidence that similarities across generations regarding the harsh discipline of male children are in part a function of socioeconomic characteristics being transmitted across generations. There was little support for the contention that parents transmit their aggressive parenting practices indirectly by influencing the personality and parenting beliefs of their children. “ there is no reason to believe that calling your child ‘lazy’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘worthless’ is a better way to motivate [your child] to be good than some other gentle but persistent mood. There is a vast world between perfection and loserdom” (Hanna Rosin). Calling children garbage does not help them to become successful. Sometime children get disheartened and try to commit suicide. Instead of being strict parents can motivate their children in a gentle way.
Sometimes children may not be successful in one thing. Parents should motivate them instead of threatening them. When Lulu was continuously failing to play the piano piece “The Little White Donkey” Lulu lost her hope and wanted to give up. Amy Chua forced Lulu to learn the piece and when Lulu refused to do so she threatened her. “ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two or three year” (Amy Chua). She hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told Lulu that if she refused to learn the piano lesson, she would donate Lulu’s dollhouse to the Salvation Army. Pressuring children to do something cannot drive success. Instead of pressuring children parents should help their children to become self confident. Parents should listen to their children and know what their children want to do. According to Amy Chua, “children on their own never want to work”. So she chose the way to force her children to make them do what she wants them to do. Forcing children can have a negative effect in their mentality. They might become successful but they can never enjoy what they are doing. They will always have the mental dissatisfaction. Chua threatened her daughter to donate her doll house to the Salvation Army, which proved her wacky. “I think the dollhouse bit was an attempt to make fun of her [self]” (Meghan Daum). The suicide rate of teenagers in Asia is greater than in other western countries. The reason behind this is that parent put a lot of pressure on their children and forces them to do what parents want them to do against their will. Strict parenting methods may become successful in some occasion but most of the time the result is horrible. It plays a very negative role in children’s mind. According to a research by Journal of Family Psychology “on a sample of 325 Chinese children and their parents, the model showed adequate goodness of fit. Also investigated were interaction effects between parents' and children's gender. Mothers' harsh parenting affected child emotion regulation more strongly than fathers', whereas harsh parenting emanating from fathers had a stronger effect on child aggression. Fathers' harsh parenting also affected sons more than daughters, whereas there was no gender differential effect with mothers' harsh parenting.”
Strict parenting is not the way to raise children.
It affects their mentality. Amy Chua’s parenting style might help her to raise successful children but the statistics show that raising children strictly harms their psychological condition. Most of the time children cannot become successful because of their parent’s harsh behavior. Parents should behave as a friend with their children and show them the right path of
success.
Works cited

Dreifus, Claudia. “The Chemistry of Social Interaction”. New York Times, New York, November 16, 2004. Print
Brooks, David. Amy Chua Is A Wimp. New York Times, New York 17 Jan.2011: Print.
Rosin, Hanna. Mother Inferior. Wall Street Journal, New York, 15 Jan. 2011: Print.
Simons, Ronald L.; Whitbeck, Les B.; Conger, Rand D.; Intergenerational transmission of harsh parenting. Developmental Psychology, Vol 27(1), Jan 1991, 159-171.
Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. United States: Penguin Group, 2011. Print.
Chang, Lei; Schwartz, David; Dodge, Kenneth A.; McBride-Chang . Harsh Parenting in Relation to Child Emotion Regulation and Aggression, Catherine

Journal of Family Psychology, Vol 17(4), Dec 2003, 598-606.