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This was the title of a Wall Street Journal article written by Amy Chua, a 48 year old Chinese American female Harvard graduate and Yale Law School professor, and published in the Saturday 1/8/2011 edition of the paper. In the space of five days, it has generated over 3000 comments about the article ( mostly negative), helped launch the publication and review of the author’s book (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother which is a more expanded version of the WSJ article),  got an interview for the author on the NBC’s popular Today show, and  garnered priceless publicity for the author and probably turning her book into a best seller.

The article takes an extreme position and portrays Chinese mothers as heartless, joyless, and merciless monsters whose only purpose in life is to turn her children into a machine with number one academic records and first class musical instrument players. It certainly casts Chinese mothers in a bad light in the views of western readers.

Most Chinese Americans in the US roundly condemned the article since the author had no right to turn her personal opinion to dishonor all Chinese mothers. A more charitable explanation is that the author deliberately use this ploy of extreme positions to generate publicity for her book and make a bundle of money in the process. Otherwise why would the Today show interview her. Opinions of other Chinese Americans be damned. In either case, I feel sorry for her. Relevant websites are

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories 

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2011/01/your-permissive-western-parenting-is.html 

Here is what I wrote to my circle of friends yesterday :

“My first reaction to her article is shock – this cannot be true. It certainly was not the way my mother brought me up nor the way my wife brought up our children as well as score of other Asian mothers we know. Next come anger and shame  - what right she has to use her personal experience to dishonor and insult the entire Chinese motherhood. How did Harvard produce such a racist. Now it in fact slowly turns to “admiration” in a non-value judgment way (you can “admire” the audacity of Bernie Madoff in pulling off the biggest financial fraud in history and fooling everyone for more than two decades. You can also “admire” the way Hitler engineered his way to power in the late 1930s in Germany). In four days since publication of her WSJ article, she has generated over 2700 comments on her article, gotten her book launched and reviewed, has her Wikipedia bio updated, and appeared on the Today show. These things did not happen by chance. It is carefully organized and staged. I “admire” her manipulation of publicity and the way she handled this event. Despite all the criticisms which probably rolled off her like water on the back of a duck, she is laughing all the way to her bank with her book becoming a NYT best seller. The most effective way to protest includes not to buy her book and tell your like minded friends not to also. If you must read it then use the local library.”

(note added 1/26/11: for another view and radio interview of the author see

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/01/tiger-mother-the-mommy-wars-and-the-decline-fall-of-the-american-empire.php )