MADRE TIGRE

Is Amy a good mother or a bad mother or both?

Amy Chua is a good mother. A good mother is defined as someone who loves their kids and is willing to do anything to see them succeed. This is exactly what she did her entire life. The book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is written by Amy. She provides the reader with various examples of how she raised her kids. She talks about raising them under a traditional Chinese parenting style while living in the United States. From an American perspective, Amy is seeing as a strict mother. From a Chinese perspective she is seen as a mother who was not strict enough. This cultural clash makes it hard for Amy to successfully raise her daughters without being judged.

Throughout the book, Amy describes herself as a Chinese mother. A Chinese mother is a term used to describe a mother who believes that academics should be a main priority and getting less than an A is unacceptable, participating in sports would never be as good as playing the piano or violin, and attending sleepovers or participating in school plays is something they should not even think about, because the answer would always be a no. For someone raised under the western parenting style this is something completely absurd, since this is not letting the kid have a “normal childhood”. The kid does not have the opportunity to do what he finds interesting and he does not enjoy his childhood to the fullest.

If we define a good mother as someone who wants their child to be happy, Amy would be considered a horrible mother. Ever since Amy and Sophia were young they were forced by their mother to play an instrument. Most kids, rather play a sport or go outside and hang out with their friends but in this case they were had to practice the piano/violin so they could become the best of the best. As they got older the amount of pressure they received from their mom only became worse. She expected more and more from them , especially because Sophia and Lulu had bigger and greater opportunities: such as playing at the Carnegie Music Hall or getting accepted into Juilliard School of Music. As Amy mentions “one of the things Lulu hated was my insistence on pulling her out of school to get in some extra violin practicing….sometimes i was able to cobble together a two hour block by combining lunch, two recesses, and say music class, where they'd be playing cowbells, or an art class, where they be decorating booths for the Halloween fair”(168). This shows how Amy took all of the fun away from her daughters childhood.

Every kid needs to feel loved. This way when they grow up they feel confident about themselves. It is the parent job to make the child feel good about themselves, especially at a young age. In various instances Amy has verbally abused her daughters. She called Lulu a piece of garbage, “lazy, coward, self indulgent and pathetic”(61) Amy saw this as words of motivation rather than insults. Amy also hurt her daughter feelings when she did not accept their birthday cards. Although she knew that they had the capacity to create better birthday cards it is not fair that she hurt their feelings by not accepting them. She mentions that If a western parent was to hear this incident they would think that Amy is a horrible mother who is raising her daughters to be self-conscious and with a really low self-esteem. Amy believes that she was raised to be a successful woman and this is whys he wants to raise her daughters in the same way she was raised.

Amy considered the Western parenting style to be the wrong way to raise a child this is why when Sophia and Lulu were born she made a deal with her husband Jed, that they were going to raise them in a traditional Chinese way . She believed that the Chinese traditional parenting style “prepared the child for their future, by letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits, and inner confidence that no one can ever take away”(63). Clearly those words make the reader think that she only wants the best for her kids. As a Chinese mother, Amy had high expectations for her children, but she knew that there were times when they were going to fail

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