Is Determination In Amy Chua's Battle Hymns Of The Tiger Mother

Determination on your child’s success can both better and destroy your’s and your child’s life. The book “Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother” by Amy Chua explains just that. A book which describes Amy Chua raising her two third-generation daughters Sophia and Lulu, using the Chinese/Tiger parenting style. Which is a relatively strict, strong, and authoritarian method. Through the book Chua’s love, strictness, and unchangeable determination with her children, especially with their instrument practice, is shown to both better and destroy their lives in some ways. While the determination principle of tiger parenting coming in from the parents' end to improve and give all their attention to their children’s lives adds value, as well as determination

Chua explains her worries for how her children will come out to be based on the new generation which they’ll be surrounded by, who will be born into a life of luxury compared to the previous ones. Along with how they will be spoiled and more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice from their parents, which she deems as heading straight for decline. She says while looking at her newly born first daughter, “Well, not on my watch…not to raise a soft, entitled child—not to let my family fall (Chua 22). Her determination on making sure her first child lives a life her and her family will be proud of started all the way from when her daughter was born. Later her decision played out to be insisting both her daughters play classical instruments as well as having many other expectations, such as learning Chinese, being a straight A student, respecting parents, and more, all from a very young age. This determination of Chua’s and her ultimately playing it out did improve the skills of her children however it also made her children despise and fight with her a

Even when both her and Lulu would be screaming and running around the house at times Chua would persist. She would also often say to the girls, to give some sort of explanation for her harshness, that “My goal as a parent is to prepare you for the future—not to make you like me” (Chua 49). This phrase alone so clearly explains her thought process throughout all their efforts. Especially whenever she would later hear her daughters giggling amongst themselves talking about how crazy their mother is she wouldn’t care because as she says she isn’t fragile like some western parents. This determination of her did get her daughters far such as performing in Julliard and having world renown musicians as teachers. However it also almost destroyed her relationship with Lulu. Near the end of the book Lulu age 12-13 decides she can’t deal with her mothers obsessiveness on her daughter's improvement and rebels by not listening to the things Amy Chua says. This whole situation truly caused a fire in the house but ended well with Amy Chua taking in some western ease approaches in letting her children have a say in their own lives. This once again displays the ups and downs of Tiger parenting and ultimately concludes to the family mixing both western and eastern