The Triple Package

by Amy Chua

  Juilliard Pre-College students: See Grace Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: ‘Music Moms’ and the Performance of Asian and Asian American Identities,” American Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2009), pp. 894, 901 n. 6; Joseph Kahn and Daniel Wakin, “Increasingly in the West, the Players Are from the East,” New York Times, Apr. 4, 2007. See also Mari Yoshihara, Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), pp. 2–3, 53.

  “focused activity”: Jose et al., “Parental Values and Practices,” pp. 689 (Table 4), 690.

  one-third less television: Ibid.; see also Pearce, “Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors,” pp. 75, 81, 89 (table 4).

  Asian kids are more likely: Laurence Steinberg, Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 91–4.

  extra work: Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs,” p. 410; Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 42–5. See generally Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity,” pp. 326–7; Min Zhou, “Assimilation the Asian Way,” in Tamar Jacoby, ed., Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 146–51.

  social skills and self-esteem: Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs,” especially pp. 408–10.

  “an hour per instrument per day”: Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (New York and Boston: Business Plus, 2010), pp. 7–9.

  One recent study: Su Yeong Kim et al., “Does ‘Tiger Parenting’ Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes,” Asian American Journal of Psychology 4, no. 1 (2013), pp. 7–18. “[I]t may be,” the authors of the study acknowledge, “that the parents identified as supportive in the current study would no longer be identified as supportive if they were part of a sample that included European American families.” Ibid., p. 16.

  strict parenting is “uncommon” . . . “supportive” parenting is the norm: See, e.g., Lindsay Abrams, “The Queen Bee’s Guide to Parenting,” The Atlantic, Apr. 2013; Susan Adams, “Tiger Moms Don’t Raise Superior Kids, Says New Study,” Forbes, May 8, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/05/08/tiger-moms-dont-raise-superior-kids-says-new-study.

  The same study was further reported to have shown that “tiger parenting doesn’t work”—that the “supportive” parents had children with better academic grades and fewer adjustment problems. See, e.g., Adams, “Tiger Moms.” But once again, the study’s methodology makes it difficult to draw conclusions. Because the study looked only at Chinese American households, the parents who were classified as “supportive” (and whose children were found to have better outcomes) could very well have been engaging in what was, relative to American norms, very strict parenting—strong on discipline, high in expectations, less concerned with raising self-esteem through praise, and so on. The study’s lead author, Su Yeong Kim, acknowledged in an interview that the Chinese parents classified as “supportive” in the study engaged in practices that most white American “supportive” parents probably don’t engage in (and might not consider supportive): for example, “shaming” their children, emphasizing “filial obligation,” making their children feel that achieving is necessary to preserve family “honor,” and constantly reminding them of parental “sacrifices.” Kim also said that this “may be the key to why some of these kids are doing well scholastically.” Jeff Yang, “Tiger Babies Bite Back,” The Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/05/14/tiger-babies-bite-back.

  Moreover, notwithstanding media reports, Kim’s paper does not in fact make the claim that “supportive” parenting caused better academic and psychological outcomes among her subjects, or that harsher parenting caused worse outcomes. The study had no way of measuring causation and carefully states its findings in terms of “association,” not causation. Kim et al., “Does ‘Tiger Parenting’ Exist?”, pp. 7, 10, 12–3. In other words, the true cause-and-effect might have been the reverse of what the media reported: parents in the study may have adopted harsher disciplinary measures because their kids’ grades dropped or because the kids began engaging in problematic behavior.

  Studies also confirm: See Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity,” 327–8; Louie, Compelled to Excel, p. 43; see also Rebecca Y. Kim, God’s New Whiz Kids? Korean American Evangelicals on Campus (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 79–80.

  “sleepovers” . . . “for the longest time”: Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 45–6.

  “I have a friend”: Ibid., p. 43.

  intergenerational conflict is a frequent theme: See Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity,” p. 328; Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 43, 45–6.

  the consistent finding . . . “educational advantage”: See, e.g., Steinberg, Beyond the Classroom, pp. 85–7; Pearce, “Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors,” pp. 94–5; see also Louie, Compelled to Excel, p. 47 (quoting a respondent as saying “I felt I had an advantage because I was Chinese because I felt that I was coming from a better work ethic”).

  sense of the superiority of the Chinese work ethic: See, e.g., Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 39–40, 46–8; Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture,” pp. 892, 894, 896.

  “American kids, they do not have the discipline”: Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture,” p. 896; see also Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 47–8 (quoting a respondent as saying that unlike “Hispanics, blacks, whites” she could “force myself to study” even when she was tired).

  “most American parents”: Pew Research Center, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” p. 135.

  “American parents, if they too hard have to sacrifice”: Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture,” p. 892.

  “There wasn’t much praise”: E-mail to Amy Chua, July 2, 2012 (on file with authors). Zappos founder Tony Hsieh described a similar upbringing:

  My parents were your typical Asian American parents . . . They had high expectations in terms of academic performance for myself as well as for my two younger brothers. . . . There weren’t a lot of Asian families living in Marin County, but somehow my parents managed to find all ten of them, and we would have regular gatherings . . . The kids would watch TV while the adults were in a separate room socializing and bragging to each other about their kids’ accomplishments. . . the children had to perform [either piano or violin] in front of the group of parents after dinner was over. This was ostensibly to entertain the parents, but really it was a way for parents to compare their kids with each other.

  Hsieh, Delivering Happiness, pp. 7–8; see also Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, p. 207; Jin Li, Susan D. Holloway, Janine Bempechat, and Elaine Loh, “Building and Using a Social Network: Nurture for Low-Income Chinese American Adolescents’ Learning,” in Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Niobe Way, eds., Beyond the Family: Contexts of Immigrant Children’s Development no. 121 (2008), pp. 9, 18.

  conventional forms of prestigious achievement: Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 42, 107, 136–7; Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity, pp. 326–7.

  first-generation Korean and Indian Americans: see Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 194–5; Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim, Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers—and How You Can Too (New York: Berkeley Books, 2006); see Clara C. Park, “Educational and Occupational Aspirations of Asian American Students,” in Park, Goodwin, and Lee, Asian American Identities, Families, and Schooling, pp. 135, 148 (study of 978 white, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other high school students in southern California showed that “Korean students had the highest educational aspirations among all groups” as well as “the highest perceived parental influence”).

  Preet Bharara: Anita Raghavan, The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of th
e Galleon Hedge Fund (New York and Boston: Business Plus, 2013), p. 361.

  “I remember when I was learning decimals”: E-mail from South Asian young man to Amy Chua, Apr. 7, 2011 (on file with authors); see also Pew Research Center, The Rise of Asian Americans, p. 46 (“Indian Americans stand out from most other U.S. Asian groups in the personal importance they place on parenting. 78% of Indian Americans say being a good parent is one of the most important things to them personally”); Parag Khanna, “Confessions of a Tiger Dad,” Huffington Post, July 31, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parag-khanna/confessions-of-a-tiger-dad_b_3682869.html.

  “My parents were obsessed”: E-mail from Indian American young woman to Amy Chua, May 15, 2012 (on file with authors); see also Bandana Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), pp. 91–3; Nitya Ramanan, “Raising an Indian American Teen,” India Currents, June 4, 2012, http://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2012/06/04/raising-indian-american-teen, pp. 140–1.

  “your job is to study” . . . “Going to the mall was forbidden”: Patricia Ngozi Anekwe, Characteristics and Challenges of High Achieving Second-Generation Nigerian Youths in the United States (Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers, 2008), pp. 140–1 (quoting interviewees).

  “At school you talk”: Kim, God’s New Whiz Kids?, p. 79; see also Ramanan, “Raising an Indian American Teen.”

  “place greater expectations on children”: Carl L. Bankston III and Min Zhou, “Being Well vs. Doing Well: Self-Esteem and School Performance Among Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Racial and Ethnic Groups,” International Migration Review 36, no. 2 (2002), pp. 389, 393, 395; Park, “Educational and Occupational Aspirations of Asian American Students,” pp. 148–53; see also John U. Ogbu and Herbert D. Simons, “Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 29, no. 2 (1998), pp. 155, 172–3, 176; Lingxin Hao and Melissa Bonstead-Bruns, “Parent-Child Differences in Educational Expectations and the Academic Achievement of Immigrant and Native Students,” Sociology of Education 71, no. 3 (1998), pp. 175–98.

  dramatically lower rates of drug use: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Results from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings, NSDUH Series H-44, HHS Publication No. (SMA) 12-4713 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2012), figs. 2.11, 3.2; Li-Tzy Wu et al., “Racial/Ethnic Variations in Substance-Related Disorders Among Adolescents in the United States,” Archives of General Psychiatry 68, no. 11 (2011), p. 1179.

  lowest rates of teenage childbirth: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Birth Rates for U.S. Teenagers Reach Historic Lows for All Age and Ethnic Groups,” NCHS Data Brief, April 2012, fig. 3.

  so highly correlated with adverse economic outcomes: Rubén G. Rumbaut, “Paradise Shift: Immigration, Mobility and Inequality in Southern California,” Working Paper No. 14 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, KMI Working Paper Series, October 2008) p. 5.

  Impulse control is like stamina: Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 129–41; see also Mark Muraven, Roy F. Baumeister, and Dianne M. Tice, “Longitudinal Improvement of Self-Regulation Through Practice: Building Self-Control Strength Through Repeated Exercise,” Journal of Social Psychology 139, no. 4 (1999), pp. 446–57; see also Heidi Grant Halvorson, Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (New York: Plume, 2012), pp. xvii–xxi; Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng, “Improved Self-Control: The Benefits of a Regular Program of Academic Study,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–16; Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng, “Longitudinal Gains in Self-Regulation from Regular Physical Exercise,” British Journal of Health Psychology 11, no. 4 (2006), pp. 717–33.

  “health code”: Claudia L. Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America (Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 2006), p. 20–2.

  “sin exceeded in seriousness only by murder”: Tim B. Heaton, Kristen L. Goodman, and Thomas B. Holman, “In Search of a Peculiar People: Are Mormon Families Really Different?,” in Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, and Lawrence A. Young, eds., Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 87, 100; see also Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 22.

  three hours at church . . . “seminary”: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 30.

  National Study of Youth and Religion: Ibid., p. 47.

  Missionary Training Center: Ibid., p. 62.

  ten to fourteen hours a day: Ibid., pp. 59–61, 63.

  constant rebuffs, rejections: Jeff Benedict, The Mormon Way of Doing Business: How Nine Western Boys Reached the Top of Corporate America (New York: Business Plus, 2007), pp. 14–5.

  “The thing a mission does is teach you persistency”: Ibid., p. 20 (quoting Gary Crittenden).

  “companionship” requirement: Keith Parry, “The Mormon Missionary Companionship,” in Cornwall, Heaton, and Young, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 182–206; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 64.

  “The idea of having a companion”: Parry, “The Mormon Missionary Companionship,” p. 183.

  not playing golf: Benedict, The Mormon Way of Doing Business, pp. 51, 60–1.

  Family Home Evening: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 44–5.

  “gods in embryo”: Monte S. Nyman, 28 Truths Taught by the Book of Mormon (San Clemente, CA: Sourced Media Books, 2011), p. 56.

  “sea of moral decay”: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 35.

  “creepy” (as Mitt Romney’s sons were repeatedly described): See, e.g., “Which Romney Son Is Creepiest?,” Gawker.com, http://gawker.com/5953005/which-romney-son-is-creepiest.

  “do not regard the Mormon church”: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 23.

  2006 South Carolina poll: Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p. xiv.

  “peculiar people”: Ostling and Ostling, Mormon America, p. 185; see also Heaton, Goodman, and Holman, “In Search of a Peculiar People,” pp. 87–117.

  “cognitive dissonance”: Armand L. Mauss, “Refuge and Retrenchment: The Mormon Quest for Identity,” in Cornwall, Heaton, and Young, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 24, 36–7.

  clean-cut, all-American: Mitt Romney’s five sons are sometimes perceived as “too strapping, too wholesome, and too perfect somehow,” particularly “in an age when complicated, messy families increasingly seem like the new normal.” Ashley Parker, “Romney Times Four,” New York Times, Jan. 6, 2012.

  Joseph Smith ran for president: Ostling and Ostling, Mormon America, p. xiii.

  Orrin Hatch: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 16.

  vacillated between assimilation and retrenchment: Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 5; Ostling and Ostling, pp. xviii, xx–xxvi.

  Twilight books: The wildly popular Twilight series was written by Mormon author Stephenie Meyer, and the Mormon symbolism, which the author says is overplayed, has been much discussed. See, e.g., Angela Aleiss, “Mormon Influence, Imagery Run Deep Through ‘Twilight,’” Huffington Post, June 24, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/24/mormon-influence-imagery_n_623487.html.

  “As somebody who grew up in Utah”: Walter Kirn, “Mormons Rock!,” Daily Beast, June 5, 2011 (quoting Dave Checketts).

  “A big part of my drive”: Benedict, The Mormon Way of Doing Business, p. 19 (quoting Dave Checketts).

  “one of the most misunderstood organizations”: Ibid., p. xiii (quoting David Neeleman).

  “It’s all about doing better than everyone”: Ibid., p. 24 (quoting David Neeleman).

  divine favor: James Carroll, “The Mormon Arrival,” Boston Globe, Aug. 7, 2011.
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br />   “Puritan anachronism”: Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 103.

  Asceticism has never loomed large in Judaism: See, e.g., Louis Ginzberg, “Israel Salanter,” in Jacob Neusner, ed., Understanding Rabbinic Judaism, from Talmudic to Modern Times (New York: KTAV Publishing, 1974), pp. 355, 378 (“there can be no doubt as to the correctness of the view that Judaism is not an ascetic religion”); George Robinson, Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs, and Rituals (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), p. 84 (“Judaism is most decidedly not an ascetic religion”); but for dissenting voices, see Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 5–6 (“Though I have heard over and over again that Judaism is not an ascetic faith, experience teaches me otherwise”); James A. Montgomery, “Ascetic Strains in Early Judaism,” Journal of Biblical Literature 51, no. 3 (1932), pp. 183–213.

  613 to be precise: See Ronald L. Eisenberg, The 613 Mitzvot: A Contemporary Guide to the Commandments of Judaism (Rockville, MD: Schreiber Publishing, 2005), p. xxi; Robinson, Essential Judaism, pp. 196–219.

  law to bind the Jewish people: Jews traditionally consider the revelation of the law—the Torah—to Moses on Mt. Sinai as the “defining event in the history of Judaism.” Wayne D. Dosick, Living Judaism: The Complete Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition, and Practice (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 177. For one of the leading twentieth-century treatments of Jewish law, see Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994).