Stereotypes In Amy Chua's Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Family

Stereotypes. They come in all different shapes and sizes. And they target all different kinds of people. Most stereotypes are untrue, like the ones that assume that Goths always wear black clothes because they are depressed; that teenagers are rebels; and that politicians think only of personal gain (well, this one may be true). But there are others that are true as well. One of the most notable of those is the stereotype that kids that come from Asian families are set on a path from an early age towards becoming a doctor, engineer, lawyer, or other respectable profession. And there is a reason for that. For many Asians, especially the Chinese, this is attributed to the “tiger mom” technique: a strict and controlling parenting style that almost guarantees academic success in a child, as studies have shown. These “tiger moms” first got attention through Amy Chua’s 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which compared traditional Chinese

Strict parents ordinarily have higher behavioral demands for their kids in order to “keep them civilized,” which is especially important at younger ages. In order to maintain behavioral control over their children, tiger parents often punish their children for being disobedient, throwing tantrums, and so forth through verbal, even sometimes physical, means (Coste). But this has much more pain than gain, especially in the long run, as children will begin to behave out of fear as opposed to understanding what they did wrong. Dr. Susan Newman of WebMD advises to “Allow your child to explain his or her mistake/error in not adhering to a rule, because not giving a child a chance to be heard will probably result in the opposite of what you are trying to teach” (Mann). They will ultimately lose their ability to distinguish between right and wrong, causing them to become individually incompetent in the