I remember when Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua first came out. People were divided over it. “Leftists” were horrified by the book, shocked by the rigidity of a typical, Confucian Chinese household. Traditional Asians (like most of us here) could almost relate to Chua’s daughters, recalling moments of our own childhood when we, too, felt the wrath of our parents (mine was “the belt” by Dad) and had martial law imposed on us until we were in college.
The suma total of Battle Hymn—buried under all the Asian despotism—was that there was no one-size-fits-all way of raising kids. I had to explain this carefully to Mom, who stopped at the “spare the rod, spoil the child” parts and declared the book her Bible. My take-home for the book was that parents are also humans who are trying to navigate their way in life while leading their kids along, so we should cut them some slack whenever we can.
Which brings me back to Mom. I grew up in a pretty old-school household, much of that thanks to my mother. Not that Dad wasn’t in the picture—he was always the hardest worker in the room, providing for us. This left Mom to helicopter over me as she took me to school, brought me to our extracurricular activities—basically monitoring all my movements. So what she gleaned from her parents, first-generation Chinoys, she would often pass down to me through words and actions during our time together.
This often resulted in me and my brothers taking a lot of what would now be considered physical abuse by most people (hello, Belt, and sleeping in the bathroom). We would also be encouraged to aim high in whatever we did and then encouraged to aim higher whether the result was met or not. As with a typical Chinese family, words of affirmation were never a big thing, but actions always spoke louder than words anyway. Mom would never praise us outright, but then we would have an extra helping of fried rice the next time we ate out because we needed to “keep up our energy,” so to speak.
I remember an ugly argument Mom and I had the first time I entered college. Like Amy Chua in Battle Hymn, Mom had to respect my growing up, and I also had to respect her trying to navigate a kid through college for the first time. I’m learning to respect this now that I’m working with her and we’re both older. I’m proud to say that for every one time we butt heads over something, there are 10 other times when we put our heads together and work together.
Consider this post a belated happy Father’s Day for my dad and a happy birthday to the Tiger Mom of my life.
Happy birthday, Mom. Let’s go get some 10 Dove gelato.