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?