Mommie Dearest

And the Mother of the Year award goes to Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School and author, who believes holding dictatorial control over and instilling massive insecurity in one’s child is the best way to raise them. In fact, it’s this method of child rearing – which she says is the “Chinese” way of doing things – that she accredits for producing so many successful Chinese children. She just wrote (a completely insane) an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”, an excerpt from her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which comes out tomorrow.

I’d like to believe her article

was satirical, but I suspect that she honestly thinks publicly humiliating your child, telling he/she that she is “garbage” and “pathetic” and exerting so much control over their lives that they cease to have a mind of their own will drive them to excel.

These are some of the things her two girls were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

The Chronicle reviewed her book, and implied that some of her parenting views may be tongue-in-cheek. I really hope so.

To read the whole sordid article, go here.

Photo credit: Erin Patrice O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal