I have followed with great curiosity and mixed feelings the release and surrounding publicity about Amy Chua’s new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I am the daughter of a Japanese mother. My mother was 1st generation here in the United States. She came here after marrying my white father, who was in the Air Force, in Japan.

My first disclaimer is that I have not read the book yet. But, the publicity has made me reflect more on my own childhood and the control I experienced both as a result of my mother’s cultural expectations of parenting and the cultural expectations of the United States during the time I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. I could write stories of my mother controlling me and telling me she was disappointed in my choices, but I feel as though this kind of story would divert from the real issues at hand.

I want to discuss the issue of control more generally. The kind of parenting control described in excerpts from the book and on blogs represents one extreme end of the control paradigm in parenting. Although there have been comparisons between Western and Asian parenting in the media, I would argue that Western parenting still operates from a paradigm of control, although this control may represent itself as more palatable because it focuses on covert control.

The kind of control my mother exercised was obvious and not at all subtle. In some ways, she was open about it. She was not manipulative. Instead she was quite clear about her expectations for me. I knew what I was dealing with. The dominant paradigm in the United States still operates from a foundational belief that control is a necessary and important parenting tool. We mask this control through “gentle” discipline. Rather than hitting, we use time out. We give children two choices (both acceptable to us) to give them the illusion of power and choice, but we do not allow them to make choices that we do not agree with.

The limits of the current controversy over the Tiger Mother are that we see her parenting as extreme and condemn her for it, while feeling superior ourselves that we merely use time outs, withdrawal of love, and manipulation of choices as our parenting tools. We have not gone further in this debate to consider whether we should be using control and domination in any form (overt or covert) in parenting. I actually hope to widen the current national discussion with the release of my new book to address the harm of control in parenting beyond the more extreme examples currently being discussed.

In other news on the Parenting for Social Change front, I have two new articles posted and we are on target for the February 15 release date of my book!

New Articles for January 2011

Mindfulness

Dehumanization of Children

As always, thanks for supporting my website. All the best!

Teresa Graham Brett