Analysis Of Amy Chua's Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother

A common question among parents is “Are we raising our children right?” This question is addressed in Amy Chua’s book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, asserts that the best parenting technique is that which the Chinese use, and that the parenting in the United States, the “Western” parenting technique, is horribly ineffectual. For children to shine they must succeed and for them to succeed they must submit to their parents who know best. This is the essential argument that Chua makes. “Chinese parents understand [that] nothing is fun until you’re good at it” (Chua 306), the only way for a child to succeed is hard work, and since children never want to work on their own, parents must override …show more content…
American parents will question the school system and teacher before questioning if their child’s ability, fearing they’ll hurt their children’s self-esteem. The worst thing a parent can do for their children are let them give up. While Western parents think that yelling may hurt their children’s self-esteem, the real danger is letting them fail and give up. In this parenting guide Chua explains her parenting methods and the results of them. She argues that the Chinese parenting model is the best one and that no other can raise respectable children that parents can be proud of. Chua has succeeded in stirring up quite the controversy with her book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, but she has not succeeded in bringing many over to her side. Few parents after reading such a book will agree with Chua and do a complete one-eighty in their parenting style. This is because the very nature of humanity is a dislike of change and a desperate holding on to the way things used to be. Chua makes some valid arguments, but she fails to be convincing, as her entire story is merely a first hand experience, and can only speak of how her children reacted to her style, without mention of how others may