I was just thinking about that Yale professor who wrote that book, remember, she screamed at her daughters all the time and didn’t let them go the bathroom while they were practicing piano (violin?), Asian parenting-style etc etc.
I was just wondering . . . what if she’d had sons rather than daughters? What are the rules? Would bringing up boys be the job of mellow white dad rather than intense Asian mom? If mom were still in charge, would the boys be doing piano, or something else like hockey? Tiger Mom seems to be into traditional values so I’m assuming she’d want her kids doing something sex-stereotyped? But sports would be tough, her (hypothetical) boys would have to compete with big strong athletes and would be less likely to be winners so then she couldn’t brag about her amazing parenting skills.
I really don’t know the answer to this one. Maybe some of our readers who are Yale law professors can enlighten us?
check this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/14/lang-lang-piano-china-father
Notice: Both are extreme cases.
Just my personal experience.. I had to learn piano…But then, my dad is not white…
I think music is unisex
If she had done the same classical music routine with her sons, she wouldn’t have gotten a book contract, certainly, since she and her hypothetical violinist would not have evoked the frisson of jealousy that she and her Harvard-bound daughters did. Other key elements of that critical frisson are that her husband is white and that she is fairly attractive. An unattractive woman with an immigrant chinese husband would have been less threatening and therefore less interesting to readers.
Pop cultural phenomena about parenting are far more likely to be about parents’ insecurities– sexual as well as pedagogical– as they are about What We Really Want for our Children.
“Other key elements of that critical frisson are that her husband is white”
Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld is not only white, he’s handsome and Jewish. Much of the frenzy of denunciation aimed at Amy Chua came from Jewish women in the media, and it had an undertone of They’re Stealing Our Men.
Statistically, there is some truth to the stereotype of Jewish husband – Chinese wife:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/studying-and-living-jewish-asian-intermarriage.html
I can’t understand why it’s taken you over a year to raise this obvious question. Too slow!
Umberto Eco had a great essay once about how intellectuals always fail in influencing Grand Events because they like to think about things too long, and once they are done thinking, the Grand Event is already done.
Not to say Tiger Mom was a Grand Event.
Maybe he has a long list of scheduled posts? Just kidding, but I guess this one was posted more than a month ago.
Yup, we’re on an approximately 1-month delay (except for the topical items that I post right away).
The thing I always wondered is what if she did that with someone else’s kids. She’s generalized her ‘success’ to saying that this would work for everyone – but her kids have half her genes and so are more likely to be similar to her. If you tried this with my kids, they’d stop, and perhaps eventually cry – they really, really hate being ordered around (they refuse to play any team sports for this reason).
Amy Chua’s father, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering Leon Chua, has received nine honorary doctorates.
what exactly is the question? Is it
1) what is the traditional parenting style for boys from the culture of Ms. Tiger; or
2) how would Ms. Tiger adapt her goals/methods to raise boys succesfully, however she might define the success; or
3) what is her opinion about success for boys; or
4) how would she need to do her parenting to right a successful book about it?
Not that I know answers to any of this questions…
There are lots of stupid typos in this comment. My apologies.
The impact of Asians on competition for the top slots in the American meritocracy is a huge story that isn’t going to go away. For example, in California in 2009, among National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists, one was named “Cohen” and 49 were named “Wang.”
I assume that Tiger Mom would want her little Wang-Cohens to do well in school whether they’re girls or boys. But that alone is nothing special. Everyone knows about parents who make their kids work hard on schoolwork. What made the whole Tiger Mom thing so over-the-top was that she made her kids suffer, just so they could play the violin or piano or whatever it was. But somehow I can’t picture her doing the same thing to a pair of boys. Not the piano, at least. And, as noted above, sports would probably be too competitive (unless she chose some obscure preppy sport, but I assume she’d consider that cheating, sort of as if she’d had her girls learn the viola or the harpsichord). So I can’t figure it out. Maybe they would’ve had their boys become junior entrepreneurs, they could’ve been pushed to start some business and make a million bucks before the age of 20? I guess that’s my best guess.
Dear Andrew:
Keep in mind that Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is an intentionally funny semi-self-parody. (But it’s not a hoax, either, it’s just Chua amping up lots of stuff for comic effect.) A lot of the outraged commenters didn’t get this. (Charles Murray was the first to point this out, in a piece mentioning how similar Chua is to his first wife.) I read her book in four hours and laughed out loud half that time.
In general, Tiger Parenting works a little better on girls than on boys because girls are more conformist, but if you look at who is getting the 5’s on the AP Calculus BC test and the like, clearly it is working on boys as well as girls.
In Chua’s book, Tiger Mothering works like a dream on her feminine, conformist older daughter (who got into Harvard), but doesn’t work as well on her more rebellious, more tomboyish younger daughter, whom she eventually allows to drop music for tennis.
“unless she chose some obscure preppy sport, but I assume she’d consider that cheating”
Hardly. The goal of having her daughter practice violin was to have something impressive to put on her college application to Harvard, not to push forward the Art of the Violin.
Obscure preppy sports offer a lot of college scholarships for women these days due to Title IX, so they are very popular among ambitious parents. Even if they don’t get a scholarship, they look good to admissions committees.
In general, white parents and white-Asian parents are more likely to go the obscure preppy sport rather than classical music instrument route than Asian parents.
Yes, but a preppy sport for boys wouldn’t work so well. Either it’s a really obscure sport (in which case it’s less impressive) or there’s that competition thing. For example, suppose she wanted the (hypothetical) boys to play lacrosse. They’d have to compete with lots of 6-foot-tall preppies, maybe not so easy to excel!
Right. If you look, for example, at all-star high school girl golfers in Southern California, they are overwhelmingly Asian, but their male counterparts in So Cal are heavily white, with just a few Asians. Boys are more self-motivated to practice golf, so intense parental pressure isn’t as big a factor in success.
Of course, a combination of Tiger Parents and white/black physique can sometimes produce an amazing combination of accomplishment. (Little known fact: Tiger Woods’ father was 1/4th Chinese.)
On the other hand, male Asians in California are pushing aside white gentiles and white Jews in standardized tests of math and science achievement, much more so than a generation ago, back when Asians in California were trying to assimilate into laid back white culture. So, Tiger Parenting works for boys, too, just not as well as for girls.
“Yes, but a preppy sport for boys wouldn’t work so well.”
It works better for getting on the Harvard-Goldman Sachs track than not playing a sport in high school because there was too much competition for you to make the basketball team.
I don’t have any insight into what Tiger mom would do with boys, but the idea that sports are more competitive than music – especially the flagship instruments piano and violin – is almost certainly wrong. To play piano or violin at a competitive level, a teenager needs to practice at least 4hs/day (and that’s on the low side – you really want to be able to do 6-7hs).
I think it’s likely that you would be able to get your kids to be at least college-level athletes by putting them through a corresponding training regime. Obviously you wouldn’t want to pick basketball where height matters a lot – but soccer, hockey, lacrosse, track etc. all seem like great candidates – the actual problem is that culturally sport doesn’t have the same status among many Asian-Americans (that’s what Jeremy Lin says, at least – I don’t have any data to support that).
But it’s not like sports and music are the only possibilities: Other possibilities would be things like science and engineering competitions, which I understand are dominated by Asian-Americans (and I believe lean heavily towards boys).
Also – there I don’t see why couldn’t tiger-coach a boy to be a musician. There are almost as many men as women overall in top conservatories, with some variation by instrument, obviously, but piano is pretty even.
Sebastian:
I agree that it would seem possible for Tiger Mom to have pushed her (hypothetical) boys into music. It just doesn’t seem to me that this would’ve fit her story, which seems centered around a proud embrace of race and sex stereotypes.
I think Andrew is confusing good ol’ American sex stereotypes with Asian ones. Sports are only weakly valued in Asian cultures compared to classical music/success in school/doing well in business. And that goes as much for boys as for girls. Sure an Olympic medal is something to brag about, but everyone would be *much* more impressed by a Nobel-prize winning physicist or a Lang Lang or a Baryshnikov. Ask what hockey players anyone has heard of, and the answer is going to be “none”, or “what is hockey?”. I’ve seen Asian parents try to keep their boys out of sports because it might damage their hands (for music!) or waste their time (when they could be studying!) or give them bad role models (hanging around with white unmotivated losers who just want to have fun). Pushing boys into sports would not have fit her story *at all*.
Luosha,
I see what you’re saying but Tiger Mom’s book was a big success here in the U.S., and I think part of the appeal was her unabashed acceptance of race and sex stereotypes in a way that would appeal to the American audience. If she’d written a book about how she’d made her boys work hard and win math and science competitions, I think the reaction would’ve been: Yawn, another boring Asian parent. I think that getting the stereotypes to line up was a big part of the appeal of her story.
Tiger Parenting works better for getting girls sports scholarships to college than for boys, because there is less competition from girls.
East Asian women now dominate the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, but not the PGA tour, because Tiger Parenting in sports is relatively more effective on girls than on boys. Very few girls are individually motivated strongly deep down inside to become pro golfers (the exceptions tend to be lesbians who have fond relationships with their golfing dads). On the other hand, more than a few boys want to become champion golfers, so Tiger Parenting doesn’t produce many stars on the men’s tour. (And the best known product of Asian-American Tiger Parenting on the PGA Tour, Anthony Kim, has had a lot of trouble with alcoholism and other forms of rebellion.)
If you are interested in wide-ranging review putting Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” in perspective:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/amy-chua-tiger-mother-or-market-dominant-minority
Steve Sailer, you regularly destroy the spirit of this blog. I have seen you inappropriately comment on many of Dr. Gelman’s posts. Hijacking someone’s blog is not the venue for your trite racist/sexist commentary. The unfortunate consequence of internet is that armchair social theorists now also have a voice. Please go away.
Bassoon to get in college, or French horn, oboe or something similarly rare.
Andrew,
I’m an Anglo male in his late 70s. Up until five yrs ago, I played competitive table tennis … brought me into contact with lots of asians. The boys had two primary duties: school and music. If they excelled at both, their parents let them play (highly coached and competitive) table tennis … let them play in the US Open and Nationals. But this highly structured recreation depended on superior results at their primary efforts.
The boys (and girls) were unfailingly polite, cheerful and high-spirited … mature beyond their years … a real joy to be with them
Regards,
Bill Drissel
Andrew,
As an Asian-American male who grew up in a Tiger Mom environment, I can tell you that I don’t think she would have pushed a boy into sports. Sports are not seen in the same light as music. While music is seen as something to enhance the mind and college applications, sports is seen mostly as a diversion. I know growing up, I was forced to play piano, but I was “allowed” to play basketball only if it did not conflict with piano playing. Most Asians realize that their Asian sons would probably not have a comparative advantage in the popular sports, so they stick with music, where there is a comparative advantage. Tennis is probably the only sport that Tiger Moms will allow their sons to play in a semi-competitive non-diversionary way.
I think the experience that Chua describes would be exactly the same for boys and girls. No dating, no going out, practicing instruments all the time. In addition, the boys would probably have slightly more expectations put on them than girls. They will be expected to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, or investment bankers (in that order). Being in political science (like I am) is almost unheard of amongst Tiger Mom parents, although my focus in methodology and statistics brings it a little bit back toward the Tiger Mom realm.
Send them to medical school at 15
> her (hypothetical) boys would have to compete with big strong athletes and would be less likely to be winners so then she couldn’t brag about her amazing parenting skills
The inference being that because she is Asian she could have not have possibly produced good athletes? Thought this blog was about statistics not eugenics. My mistake.
No, I just think that in the U.S. there are more boys doing sports seriously than there are girls (or boys) doing music seriously, so the competition is tougher.
Based on my undergrad years, yes they would have played sports more but no the big strong poor people wouldn’t have made them look bad. Rich people/Asian people play sports no one else does so they can look good, i.e. rowing, tennis, sometimes cross country.
Cross country is semi-competitive, like classical music, is very straightforward to get good at. You just run, a lot. The longer the race the less genes matter–for long enough races women can compete with men. That explains why its cross country and not the 100m.