A Jewish Father Responds to Tiger Mother
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Shabbat Mishpatim 5771
Yale law professor Amy Chua is a self-described “tiger mother.” She pushed her daughters very hard, at times denying them water and rest when they were practicing or studying, calling them disparaging names, and challenging them to achieve.
She’s appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and on television. Her recent book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has attracted a lot of attention, most of it negative. Though I suspect there’s more to the story, that reaction motivated me to write this letter, as a Jewish father responding to a “tiger mother.”
Dear Tiger Mother,
I think you’re right. Our children should know what we expect of them. We should hold them to high standards and motivate their achievements.
While raising your daughters Sophia and Lulu, I gather you expected of them mastery, proficiency and discipline. You make clear in what you write that less than an A in school was unacceptable. They were to be the best student in every subject, in every class except gym and drama. There was no time for friends or extracurricular activities, and certainly no time to waste on television or computer games because they had to become virtuosos of violin and piano.
You believe that many of us are misguided and soft, you might call us “pussycat parents.” You have no patience for our anxiety over our children’s self esteem. You believe that children owe their parents a debt of obedience, unlike your husband, a father who believes its parents who have a duty toward their children. You know what’s best for your children, regardless of what interests them.
“Don't get me wrong,” you explain. It's not that you don't care about your children. Just the opposite. You would give up anything for your children. “It's just an entirely different parenting model.”
I think you’re right. Our children should know what we expect of them. We should hold them to high standards and motivate their achievements. I just have a different measure of what those standards and achievements ought to be.
Given your methods of extreme parenting, I want to tell you about a father I know. Well, actually, he’s a fictional character based on a real father.
In Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, the Hasidic Reb Saunders explains that he raised his brilliant son Danny in silence. Since Danny was four years old, we learn in the last chapter, Reb Saunders had not spoken directly to his son. Reb Saunders is quite pained by his choice. But he believes it was his only option.
Danny Saunders was blessed with an incredible mind. The novel describes that at four years old he enjoyed reading a story about a poor man and his struggles. He did not feel the story’s pain. Danny’s joy was in his intellect, in his ability to read and easily understand the book. Reb Saunders observed that his son “was a mind in a body without a soul.” He wondered to himself, “How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain?”
In his father’s silence, Danny learned to stand inside another’s soul and see the world through others’ eyes. He suffered and became sensitive to the suffering of others. “In the silence between us,” concludes Reb Saunders, “he began to hear the world crying.”
Reb Saunders was very strict, like you, and both of you are much stricter than I could ever choose to be, or want to be, but…his discipline was not to train his son’s mind. It was to nurture and develop his son’s heart and soul.
Though an extreme example, as I think you are, this strikes me as a parent’s real purpose, at least as Jewish values teach us. We seek to raise children who master the blessing of compassion, children who become adults proficient in building caring and genuine relationships with others, and children who are disciplined toward goodness.
I believe in motivating my children to learn, and to develop their intellectual and artistic abilities. I want them to succeed as best they can, and to try their very best. I also want them to work on who they are. The reputations they earn for themselves are far more important than the reputations of the universities they may attend or the companies they may work for.
In every endeavor, I always set the bar very high for my daughters, just like you Tiger Mother. But, I was also there to appreciate them, and to catch them, when their very best efforts fell short. Learning how to fail, and to get up again, not finishing in first place no matter how hard you try, these are also valuable life lessons and skills I want my children to master.
Tiger Mother, you write, “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.”
Here too, you make a valid point. If it’s important, it requires effort. Just like rules show that we’re serious, practice and preparation demonstrate our purpose.
What’s important does have rules. To be part of a family, to be part of a community, like our Jewish community, means accepting that there are limits, standards, and expectations. Because we love our children we make demands of them. Because God loves us, Judaism makes demands of us. The more consistent is our response, the more significant, and enduring, is the result.
A classic text of Jewish law and customs declares, “A father is obligated to guide his children along a path of ethics and values.” That’s the rule for a Jewish family: ethics and values. When our children are born we pray that they live a life blessed by learning, love, and acts of goodness – Torah, Huppah, u’Ma’asim Tovim.
Many years ago while waiting for the birth of his first child, Rabbi Richard Israel wrote, “I write all this to warn both of us that I shall try not to live out my deficiencies through you but at the same time that I do not plan to abandon all goals and aspirations for you just because they happen to be mine, too. One goal that I think I shall not give up is that I want you to be clearly and irrevocably Jewish. I do not know if my way will be your way, but your way must be a real way, and a serious way. I won’t give an inch on that one…I want you to be happy, caring, and Jewish.”
So, thanks Tiger Mother. After reading about your approach to parenting, I was glad to express my own. I plan on sharing this letter with my daughters, too. Like Sophia and Lulu in your experience, I hope my grown girls will recognize something of their childhoods in what I’ve written, because in their choices, characters, and goodness they’ve more than met my expectations.
Sincerely,
A Jewish Father
© 2011 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
