'Your Mama..'

Once when I was a kid, and in the doghouse, I remember calling my mother 'a tiger' (she was always the bad cop) after she had given me a heaping dose of discipline. My father hearing my remark verbally blasted my sass. That was as close to emoting as it got in my Asian family. Amy Chua's book, 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,' or essay, 'Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,' ventures into the X Games of parenting that no 'white' 'honky' 'haole' rents could possibly understand. Seriously. In a million years. The brouhaha is laughable. Chua's mantra of straight A's and draconian discipline is stunningly familiar; frames of references leapt up like old spooks in the attic. My parents' demands were a little different...um, honor roll, no TV except on the weekends, become a doctor or lawyer (never any other profession), if both were out of reach, than marrying a doctor or a lawyer was the next best thing, college preferably an Eastern school etc. and god help your sorry ass if you didn't get off the island and into a Mainland college. You might as well have been a roach praying for nuclear deliverance. Having chugged through high school populated by girls whose Asian mother's, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, called them 'ugly, or fat, or stupid' for most of their waking lives was not shocking. It was part of the culture. Call it old school. Or conditioning. And yet, in a sinister way, some of these same girls, emotionally battle hardened, were the brilliant mathematicians, and scientists of my class. My mother had six siblings. When one of them transgressed, my grandfather (a tall scary dude) would line up all six of them and hit them with a belt. Whack. Today it might be called child abuse. Whatever. On reflective days, I go back and think about how that affected (or not) my mother. To all the critics whose undies are in a bunch over the Chua book, stuff it.The challenge of academics, rocket fuel, to Asian 'rents supersedes all the western gobbly gook of nurturing. Crying? There is no crying in Asian families except over B's or C's. Park the emotional at the door. As for Chinese mothers being superior? Amy, I want some of what you're smoking. After $20,000. of therapy, I can rear view mirror all of that.