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Tiger Mother vs. Black Mamas: Is an Iron Hand the Key to Prosperous Children?

By Alexis Stodghill on Jan 20th 2011 2:27PM
Filed under: News

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By Gina McCauley

Tiger Mother Amy Chua

Amy Chua may be a terrible mother, but she's a marketing maven. For the past two weeks the world has been obsessed with Chua's new book, 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,' and her accompanying essay in the Wall Street Journal. Chua argues that Western ways of child rearing are inferior to those of Chinese parents (or rather the "Chinese style" -- which other smart ethnicities emulate!). Chua's recipe for success includes no sleepovers, no play dates, no TV, accepting only As on her children's report cards and forcing her kids to spend hours each day practicing the piano or violin. She has thrown handmade birthday cards back into her daughters' faces when they were small children.

To date, her Wall Street Journal essay has garnered 7,000 comments and a slew of editorials in response. The key to Chua's attention-grabbing success has been tapping into the neurotic insecurity among mothers that they will single-handedly doom their children to failure -- in this case, if they are not strict enough. And then there are all the haters who find her child-rearing ideas crazy. She's covered all angles and marketing bases. And, of course, it has everybody thinking about race and childrearing.


Since people are dabbling in gross generalizations about motherhood, children, parenting and ethnicity, I thought I'd compare the 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' to that of black mamas... or at least my mama.

Chua defines her children's success as their ability to get good grades and play musical instruments. My mother defined her children's success by their behavior. . . and securing their eternal salvation through regular church attendance, but that's another post.


That's not to say that my parents didn't value education -- they did. But it was made clear at an early stage that I could get away with bringing home a B, while I had better not bring home a "needs improvement" or "unsatisfactory" in the conduct portion of my report card. After all, it didn't take a genius to exhibit "good home training." And failure to exhibit this good training would be worth a whipping. Sounds very "tiger mother" to me.

I'm not alone in noting the similarity. Culture writer Danielle Deadwyler did her own comparison between Chua's Tiger Mother and "Southern Black Mothers," showing they have a great deal in common:

No wuss nurturers are allowed below the Mason Dixon line; Southern black women have been hardcore disciplinarians for generations. Results have been varied... However, there seems to be a 'get it done' through line in black parenting that echoes Malcolm's 'by any means necessary'. (Danielle Deadwyler)

Danielle goes on to tell a familiar tale about the time her classmate's mother came to school and whipped him "in front of the whole school" -- something we have all seen, heard about, or worse, experienced. Her friend wasn't alone. We all know many black parents tend to favor corporal punishment, also known as spanking, as a preferred form of behavior modification. In addition, many people of other groups are horrified by this. Yet just as Chua bragged to her peers over dinner about her harsh mothering methods, the black mother is not ashamed to administer punishment in broad daylight.

I, too, was spanked as a child, but eventually my parents figured out that I was actively conducting frequent cost benefit analyses of bad behaviors vs. spankings, so they had to get more creative. Case in point: I was a little black girl raised in the black Baptist church where children were to be seen and not heard. Unfortunately, I felt the good Lord gave me plenty to say. I thought the adults were generally wrong and they ought to know the extent of their many faults. In the end, I frustrated the heck out of my teachers, but they could never come up with anything concrete to pin on me other than my questioning their authority and their intelligence... in the most polite way possible.

My string of annual conferences in the principal's office ended in high school when my exhausted mother finally conceded that I was right. Well it was about time she realized that! Oh, how long I had waited for her to tell me what I already knew! But then she went on to add "but you lack prudence and tact!"

Why this focus on behaviour and not grades to the point of public beating -- or berating? It makes sense to me now. My parents were born and raised in the segregated south. Back then even the smartest black folks could find themselves hanging from trees or tied to train tracks for a small misstep. Being right wasn't enough.

As Karen Grigsby Bates explained:

During slavery, a black person's pout or backtalk to the wrong person could not only get him whipped, it could get him sold -- or, if the transgression was deemed bad enough, maimed or killed. Swift physical retribution for even minute transgressions tended to reinforce the rules, and adhering to the rules meant you were able to live to raise another generation. (Karen Grigsby Bate, Salon.com)

Having the correct answer wasn't nearly as important as knowing how to navigate yourself in a world where your "backtalk" would result in death. So frequent beatings were not only the lesser of two evils; a beating was also a lesson that could save your life. Much higher stakes than what Chua is dealing with. But the intensity of her methods is something that black mothers can understand.

So who is better at cranking out successful children -- Tiger Mothers or Black Mamas? Doesn't matter. As for me, I turned out okay. I went to law school and passed the bar exam to get paid to question authority.

In the end, this is all hype that plays upon on of the most natural inclinations in the world: A mother's desire for her children to do well. No group of mothers has a monopoly on rearing successful children. No one group has a monopoly on defining success for their children. Every child is different. A mother's role is to prepare her children to navigate the world and I suspect that most are doing the best they know how -- including African American mothers.

Questions:
-Do you agree with super-strict parenting methods?
-Do you think that beatings are a good part of traditional African American parenting?
-Do you see black mothering and Chinese mothering as similar, or very different despite common the focus on harsh punishment?

Gina McCauley is the CEO of the Blogging While Brown Conferenceand the blogsMichelle Obama Watch and What About Our Daughters. She is currently completing her first book, 'Michelle Obama Watch.'

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