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by contributor Matt Winkler
I applaud Chris’s tiger-father post, below. Chua has seized the spotlight of America’s complex education/parenting debate, on the stage somewhere beside Kelley Williams-Bolar and opposite the film Race to Nowhere. In a nation saturated with polarizing dialogue, I’m encouraged by the thoughtful, level-headed position that Chris presents here on Band of Fathers, and I’d like to chime in with my own.
When my daughter was in high school, I expected her to complete every homework assignment and earn grades above 80%. Because I held her accountable to this standard, she called me Hitler. I’d like to thank Amy Chua for publishing her manifesto, which makes my allegedly Nazi edicts sound shamefully pedestrian. My daughter’s rebellious attitude was par for the course, but I was surprised when her guidance counselor and my own wife joined her resistance movement. (Et tu, Sweetheart?) Their coordinated political pressure lowered the bar I’d set, granting her a shortsighted power gain, a weaker college application, and a stunted work ethic that haunts her to this day.
Waffling through school, more concerned with “feelings” than with grades – such is the standard American teen inclination. But adults exist so they don’t get away with it! Conflict is inevitable, important and often necessary. Chua’s response is extreme, but all parents must set some sort of appropriate expectation, otherwise teens can be expected to completely drop the ball. I agree with Chua (and my non-Chinese grandparents) on one point, at least: kids today are lazy and entitled because their parents and teachers demand too little of them.
Dear reader, whatever unique battle hymn you compose, march forth and hold the line. Stay involved. Demand hard work. Support legitimate effort, regardless of outcome. Troubleshoot obstacles. Give ground as needed, but never capitulate. Today’s pampered teen is tomorrow’s fundamentally incompetent basement dwelling twenty-something. Never mind aspirations of Ivy League graduate schools and C-level job titles; the gold standard for adulthood is feeding and housing oneself. Without apologies to the boomerang generation, I think that basic expectation is as reasonable as earning straight B’s and doing your homework.
by contributor Chris Belden, a new addition to the Band of Fathers. Chris is a recent graduate of the Fairfield University MFA program. He lives, teaches & writes in Connecticut.
My daughter Francesca (aka Frankie) started ballet lessons at age two, and was enthusiastic for two solid years, but over the past few months she’s resisted going to her lessons because they’re “too boring.” This presents one of those confounding challenges that plague my wife and I on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. Do we force Frankie to go to ballet, which means we’ll have to endure her crying and pleas to do something else, or do we allow her to make the choice herself? Which choice is better for her? For us?
By now–unless you’ve been in that cave everyone alludes to when discussing cultural phenomena–you have heard of Amy Chua and her controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,  in which the Chinese-American author chronicles her pathologically strict parenting style, which includes such rules as no sleepovers, no play dates, no grade lower than an A on report cards, no choosing of extracurricular activities, and no ranking lower than #1 in any subject. Chua is ruthlessly honest in her account of how Chinese mothers differ from western moms. When one of her two daughters hand-makes a birthday card for her, Chua throws it back in her face and says, “I want a better one.” She calls her other daughter “garbage” when she doesn’t live up to her extraordinarily high expectations. This treatment, she claims, has made her kids smarter, stronger and more resilient than their sissy western peers.
Like most parents, I cringe at the cruelty depicted in the book. How many years of intense therapy will it require for Chua’s daughters to recover? But, also like most parents, I’ve been trying to figure out whether Amy Chua is an unforgivably selfish parent, or a merciless but uniquely unselfish one.
Since becoming a father, I’ve wrestled with the natural selfishness left over from my many years of being a non-parent—without a child to care for, after all, we’re able to do our own thing most of the time. When that old selfishness rears its ugly head, it can sometimes be obvious, as when I let Frankie watch a DVD while I check my emails. But what about when she’s resisting ballet class (or swim class, or pre-school, or taking a walk, etc.), and I force her to go, as Amy Chua would? Is that selfish on my part? Or is giving in to Frankie’s demands the selfish act—choosing the easier path, and avoiding emotional outbursts that make me uneasy and afraid? It’s easy to disguise giving in as being indulgent, or as doing something kind for my daughter, when really I’m doing it for myself.
Where is the line of selfishness for Amy Chua? Clearly she wants her kids to line up exactly the way she wants them to line up—they are fulfilling her expectations more than their own. This strikes me as flagrantly selfish. At the same time, Chua makes an enormous effort to oversee her children’s progress, to pay attention to their schoolwork, their behavior. She doesn’t give them a DVD to watch while she catches up on her emails. She doesn’t give in just to make things easier for her. In this way, she is impressively unselfish.
After critics attacked her mother’s book, Chua’s older daughter published an open letter to her mother in the New York Post entitled “Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom,” in which she writes, “I think your strict parenting forced me to be more independent.” Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, at 18, appears ready to leave the “tiger den” and go out into the world a smart, ambitious young woman.
I’m still wrestling with whether or not to let my child quit ballet. Ooh, maybe she should try wrestling…
Is Amy Chua completely wrong about how to raise a child? Is there a satisfying and healthy medium?
When we were a childless couple, a four-day ski weekend in Vermont would certainly be classified as a “getaway.” We were leaving responsibility, jobs, and the city far behind. But now, with children, there’s no “getting away.”
We’ve been going on a ski weekend somewhere in New England each February for years. It’s a great opportunity to spend time together with friends, and to sit in a hot tub for far longer than is recommended.
These days, all four couples have at least one kid, and it has changed everything. It’s a virtual kidsplosion in our ski rental home…from little bodies to high chairs to toys and other gear (none of it ski-related, yet). No more late nights for us–now we’re asleep by 10pm from the physical exhaustion of not just skiing, but keeping up with our kids. So strange that we can pine for the days of late nights and crippling hangovers.
How has your vacation life changed with the onslaught of kids?
It’s been a cold, snowy winter in these here parts. And let’s just say our landlord isn’t the first on the block to wake up to shovel/salt the steps and sidewalk. Especially on the weekends.
This Sunday, I was carrying my 7 month old in one arm, the stroller in the other, and I took one step and my legs flew out from under me. I slipped and fell hard. It seemed to happen very slowly because the whole time I was so worried about my son getting hurt. I was yelling “Oh no, oh no!” to no one in particular, imagining the worst: massive head trauma.
When I stopped sliding, I looked over at my son who I was still holding–he was face down and started crying immediately. I turned him over and he was fine, just a tiny little scrape on his forehead. A second later, I looked over and my wife was there with one boot on (she had heard me yell and came running). As soon as she realized we were okay, she grabbed the boy and pounded on my landlord’s door to wake him up and get him to salt the steps; a real mother-wolf protecting her den.
We got inside and I realized I was pretty badly hurt, but it didn’t matter to me. i started to cry I was so upset at “What Could Have Been.” Had a I done a good enough job protecting my son? It was very emotional for me. Probably because I knew that was the first of hundreds of more instances where I’ll want to do everything I can to protect him, but most of it will be left up to chance.
Instead of licking my wounds, we ended up “brushing it off” and going to the park to watch older kids play in the snow. I think it was a good lesson to the boy–whether he’s old enough to internalize it or not–that when you fall, you’ve got to get right back up again.
What were some scary moments with you and your children? How’d you handle it?
(c) 2012 Band of Fathers
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