Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother vs Untigering: Parenting book Cliff Notes

This week, Rosie and Sarah take a sharp, analytical look at the 2011 cultural phenomenon Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. While the book is often framed as a "clash of cultures," Sarah peels back the layers to look at the darker psychological undercurrents of the "Tiger" philosophy. 

Rather than focusing on the individual chores or practice hours, Sarah reflects on the psychology of control. We dive into why the Tiger parenting model is a "perfect storm" for parents with narcissistic tendencies—those who view their children not as separate individuals, but as extensions of their own ego and social standing.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Child as a Trophy: the drive to use a child’s achievements (the Ivy League degree, the Carnegie Hall debut) to bolster the parent's self-image.
• The "Untigering" Framework: Moving beyond the "Tiger" archetype to reclaim autonomy. Sarah and Rosie discuss the book "Untigering" by Iris Chen. How to stop the cycle of performance-based love and transition into a parenting style rooted in unconditional love.
• The Architecture of Fear: Why "Tiger" parenting relies on emotional withdrawal and shame, and how these tools are used to keep a child’s identity fused with the parent’s expectations.
• Healing Through Communitz: Advice on building a community, cultivating positive relationships, and therapeutic connections that mirror your worth back to you—without the fine print of a grading rubric.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Go ahead and start the recording because I think the little banter is always good too. Yeah. So how did you find out about the book? I think it was like a targeted ad. Oh really? On social media. Man, how do they know so much about us?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Our spies. Um, yeah, it was because obviously I fit the demographic. Um, and I mean it was it was a good recommendation.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yeah, sometimes I'll get ads that are like weirdly correct, and other times I'll get ads that are weirdly incorrect. And I'm like, how could you think that? Like, don't you even know me, Facebook?

SPEAKER_00 0:39

They're the moms, moms, moms, moms. So the mill the hello and welcome to moms of the millennium.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

I am Rosie. You can find me on the social medias. I am on Reddit, Rosie the Red Reddit. I am on TikTok, Rosie the Red Talk, Instagram, Rosie the Redgram. So check me out. And my amazing co-host, Sarah, tell us about you and where you can be found.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Hey everybody, it's Sarah. You can find me on the internet on my website at zarinausman.com, Z-E-R-I-N-A-U-S-M-E-N dot com. And you can find me on TikTok. That's Zarina.usman. Uh on TikTok.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

All right. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you. Um, I also wanted to say we have 1,000 downloads. Thank you. Yay. Thank you to our wonderful fans. And we actually got a lot of new fans thanks to the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. So the book we're gonna talk about, yeah. The book we're gonna talk about today is Untiering, but this book is the tigering book. Um, because I'm on a subreddit for another podcast called If Books Could Kill, where they talk about different books that influence the culture somehow. They did a podcast about this book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I I really love it, but I really thought that they were kind of missing a little bit of insight because they're not parents themselves. And so I read the book myself and I made a post on the subreddit about the book. And the post generated a lot of interest. And actually, someone said, I wish there was a podcast like this for parenting books. And I said, Well, it's your lucky day, because I have one of those. If you're here from Reddit, thank you. We appreciate having you here, and yeah, hope and tell you all your friends, and we can make even more episodes. Episodes coming out on the first of the month, every month.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Love it.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Yeah, so that's what's going on with the pod. Um, so for this episode, when it comes to Battle Hymna the Tiger Mother, so this book was written by Amy Chua, who is a Yale law professor. And this book it kind of exploded onto the scene in the 2010s because they posted an excerpt of it in the Wall Street Journal that went viral, super viral. Everyone read it. The book became like a massive uh, you know, success. And it also generated a lot of buzz. What's what's this all about? I am not gonna do a typical Cliff Notes episode on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother because even when I don't like one of the books, I really try to give it a fair shake. I really try to go through the advice in good faith. But with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, I just can't do it. There's there's nothing that I want to share in terms of advice from it. It's it's so horrible. There is not one good thing I can say about her. I'm serious, not one.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Can you tell me like what's like a gist or like any sort of triggering points from that book that you're like, no?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Yeah, so actually Sarah asked me if she should also read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother to prepare for this episode, and I said absolutely not, because I honestly think if your parents were like this, so my parents were not strict. This is why I also thought it would be nice for Sarah to read um Untigering, because you did come from that kind of background, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Yeah. So I think if you did come from this type of background, like if your parents were like this, then reading this book battle hymn of an unrepentant narcissist. Reading all of their ramblings about how everything was great and they were amazing, and everybody clapped and they were the best parent ever, and their children were so successful thanks to these parenting tactics. For that reason, I think that especially if someone has, I think no one should read it, but I really think if you have this background, you definitely shouldn't read it because it would probably just what what is this? Um so as far as like what was in particular so bad about it, oh my god, so many things. Um so many things. So that the gist of the book is that Chinese parents are very demanding. You know, these uh tiger parent stereotype is that they're very demanding. You have to be the best, straight A's, number one at everything. 1,000 downloads. My son has 1 million downloads. Exactly. Yeah, let me know when, let me know when you have as many as Joe Rogan. So that's that's kind of the gist of it. And she's basically saying that Westerners are weakling degenerates who let their children be lazy and applaud mediocrity and all this stuff, and that being a tiger parent leads your child to all this success. I can I can get into it as we compare maybe to um the book we're really gonna talk about today, which is Untigering by Iris Chen, um, who is also Chinese American, and she wrote this book about how she is trying not to be a tiger parent. She's trying to de-tiger herself. Um, and so this episode, I am gonna put Battle Him at the Tiger Mother in the title for clickbait purposes, but I'm not going to explain the advice from the book because that would just be me a list of me being like, and then she yelled at and insulted her daughter for the ninth time, tenth time, eleventh time, twelfth time. That's pretty much the book. She's just screaming and insulting her daughters the entire time. And then they perform a concert and everybody claps and she says, see, wasn't it great? Anyways, uh, we can go ahead and get started. I talked a little bit about Iris Chen's journey, the untigering mom. She said she started out raising her kids in a tiger mom way, and then she realized it kind of wasn't working and she wasn't connecting with it. She went to a presentation about brain science, and it showed some information that kind of changed her perspective for the first time. I don't know. What did you what was your impression then from the beginning of the book?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I was impressed that in uh she decided to change her approach in the middle of parenting. Um, because once you start parenting a certain way, you kind of just stick to that. And the the fact that she made such a big turnaround um and became a bit more conscious, uh, I I was really impressed with that because I don't know, I think that's a hard thing to do and to learn a whole new new sketch set of skills. It feels like you're treading like unknown water and um it can be really frightening. And she came out of it really uh with a lot of great points, I felt.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

And that's a great point because she, I think she said her son was around seven when she decided to change her ways. So she was quite deep into it. Yeah, that's a great point. It's so hard to admit that you were wrong, you know, that you parented your children wrongly for seven years, you know. I I think that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of, it's hard to take a hard look at yourself and say, why am I doing this? Amy Chua, the tiger mom, will never do it. Um yeah, in terms of like so, okay, I can go ahead and start. Go back to Babylon of the Tiger Moms because her first daughter was like the goody two shoes obedient child. I I was very like that as a child. My parents were not strict, but I really related to the first child. I could totally see myself. Um, if if my parents had been strict, I just fell in line. I was a rule follower, I did everything. But the second child was way more rebellious and kind of didn't didn't like all of this control. So there was a point when the second child, Lulu, Lulu is the younger one, Lulu was three years old. Amy Chua wants to teach her to play piano. She tries to show her to play some note, and Lulu's like banging on the piano, and then they have this huge tantrum, and it's it's the middle of winter, they're in New Haven, Connecticut, freezing outside. And Amy says, Lulu, do you want to behave or do you want to go outside? And Lulu's like, I'll go outside. She like opens the door, you know, Amy opens the door and said, You want to go outside in the freezing winter? And Lulu's like, Yeah, I'll go outside. And Amy's like, oh no. I mean, Lulu goes out and she says, Okay, I see you learned your lesson. Now you can come back in. And Lulu's like, nope, I didn't learn my lesson. I'm not coming back in. And and I I respect so much that Iris saw it wasn't working and decided to change her ways because Amy's response to this, Amy Chua, is to double down. So she, of course, has to back down from this, right? Like she's not gonna actually murder her child by leaving her child outside in the cold. She just doubles down, like, okay, I have to be more harsh, I have to be more strict. And it just makes her look like a like a fool. Your child made a fool of you, called you on your bluff, and you didn't learn anything. Main theme of the book, she learns nothing. This whole tiger mom thing continues to not work on Lulu and she keeps doing it. I I can see how not everybody has that kind of um ability for introspection to to say, hey, is this really a good idea what I'm what I'm doing? Yeah. As far as untigering, I have to say the whole thing about the brain scans, um, I can see how if you grew up with this type of parenting and you think this is the correct way to do it, that seeing some kind of like scientific evidence might help you change your mind. Personally, I think like a moral argument is stronger. You know, there's no brain scan you could show me that would convince me I should hit my child or I should insult my child or I should scream at my child. You know, there's there's no brain scan that would make me say, oh, I think I will do that actually. I I don't do that because I think it's morally wrong. Um, but I don't know, maybe maybe other people would find that convincing.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

You know, metrics can go one way or another, like slavery is good for an economy. You get a lot of free labor and GDP go up.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Yeah, but that's not necessarily like what's your metric here? Yeah, won't someone think of the line? Come on. Um, okay, so I did take notes also going through the the untigering book. She says untigering is a two-fold practice: detoxing from being tiger parented and detoxing from being a tiger parent. Yeah, and she kind of goes into relationship building, how to build those uh connections within the family, that you need to listen to your children and not have like this top-down hierarchical power structure. But at the same time, that doesn't mean everyone is identical. Here, I can read the quote here. Babies are treated with special thought, attention, and tenderness. Teens are given extra compassion as they wrestle with their identities, changing bodies, and growing freedom. Parents who carry the mental load of the household are encouraged to take time to care for their personal needs. The family functions like a body with many parts, each part treated differently and yet appropriately, so that the whole body can flourish. I I think she has some really good metaphors throughout of Yeah. The baby is not gonna cook dinner, right? Everyone has a role, but that doesn't mean that everyone can't contribute in their way.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

She also talks about power dynamics, um, and that parenting is not about manipulating children to get what you want. You know, going back and listening to the how to talk episode, there is a little bit, oh, can I kind of trick my kid into doing what I want? I don't think that was the purpose of the book. I do think how to talk was really about how to connect with children on their level. But I feel like parenting hacks can kind of veer into this territory of just being manipulative. But of course, when we're tired and frazzled, and sometimes you just need to get the thing done, you know, so I can I can understand where that stuff comes from.

unknown 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Uh going back to the going back to the Amy Chua again, uh, one thing that really struck out, uh stuck out to me from that book is how she uses power and control over very minor things, things that have nothing to do with anything. Throughout the book, she justifies it in, like, oh, my children were so successful. They were so recognized, they played piano at Carnegie Hall, they had all these signs of success recognized by society. But it wasn't just controlling about academics or music or whatever. It was it was everything. She tells a story about how they went to vacation in Moscow, and this is when Lulu, the youngest, was 13. And they ordered caviar because they're in Russia, they wanted to try caviar, and Lulu was like, ew, it's yucky, I don't want it. Amy is like, you have to eat it, Lulu. You have to eat the caviar. And Lulu's like, no, I don't want to. Blah blah blah. And they have this huge blow-up, this huge fight. There's no medal for eating caviar. Yeah, no, no one's even gonna know. There's nothing. So even this justification of it was because of this success, which I don't even think that's a good reason, but even taking that reason that doesn't explain her behavior.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

And I think that's maybe because if you want to have this total control, it has to be like total control.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

I remember you talking about when we talked about food in in one of the other episodes, that your parents were also really strict about, oh, it's this time you have to eat, even if you're not hungry.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Yeah, what's the point of that? That's if your kid doesn't want caviar, who cares? They seriously, yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Maybe they'll try it on their own terms at some other point and tell you, hey, I actually tried it today. It's like 10 years later. Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

It's all right. And and she also scolded the older daughter for taking too much. So Sophia apparently has a it likes to eat everything, you know, and she's like, Sophia, don't take so much, leave some for the rest of us. And then she's like, Lulu, you have to eat some. So it's like they cannot please her. Nothing they do is right.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, yeah. Man, I could psycho, I could psychoanalyze narcissistic parenting to to next week, man. I could keep talking about that. It is partly like a need for control. And I also wonder if it's relevance. Can they can they even tap into being relevant to their child in a positive way? Can they be a happy person with their child and still be irrelevant? You know, like I don't know if she has access to that part of her in other capacities in a social setting, you know? How does with equals does she tap into happiness or is it always about control and status mongering with other people? I'm curious. I'm curious.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

That's a great question. I will say the social circle she's in, you know. So she is a Yale law professor. These are the elites, yeah, intellectual, social elites of the of the United States. Um, she did say with her law students that she's quite nurturing and nice, and that she's only mean to her children. Some I don't know. I don't know what's up with that. Yeah. Yeah. Um another way that she justifies it is um, this is Amy Chua. She says that uh Americans do not insult their children or they don't compare them to their siblings or or whatever, because they assume their children are weak and they can't handle these insults. And she said Chinese parents assume strength that our children can withstand that, and that's why we do it. And I'm like, isn't being weak kind of what children are? Like, I don't children are weak. That's kind of the number one difference between children and adults. Yeah. I mean, in in every respect, mentally, physically, emotionally, they are weak. They are. I and and this whole thing, like how you said about how she behaves among her equals, I guarantee you, when she's among her peers, she does not speak to them this way. I guarantee it. Because she said she called her children garbage, literally said, You're garbage. And I I know she doesn't say this to to people who are her peers, not even her law students who are also below her. So it's clearly not that you're assuming strength. You're only doing this because you have this power that they can't they can't do anything against it.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Yeah, so it's definitely a power dynamics thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, they they just use the justification that the outside world isn't gonna be nice to you and body body blah, and then but then well, if it isn't, then what the what is the point of you? Like, what is the point of a parent? Yeah, except to like be that safe space from this cruel outside world and give you the skills to deal with that BS, but be that safe space. So anyway.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

In the in in in untigering, she does talk about that. She does say just because the world is is bad and unfair doesn't mean we have to be bad and unfair. We can be better. Yeah, the home can be a safe space for them. We shouldn't say that, oh, because the world is gonna treat you badly, that I will too. You're supposed you're you're my mom, or you know, you're supposed to treat me better than my crappy boss or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

Yeah, what's the point of you, right? Um, and of course, I'm sure that Amy Chua would say, Oh, well, see, my children turned out fine. They're, you know, successful and all that. And I don't know that much about her children.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

I want to see their therapy bills.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah, and I'll say, Amy Chua is many things, but fine is not one of them. I mean, yeah. So speaking of like therapy bills, in in untigering, she uses this metaphor of the stripes of a tiger, that the stripes are patterns used to cope with these traumas. For Iris, she reacted to this kind of upbringing by becoming very emotionally unavailable because she learned that like relationships are not safe. I cannot open up to anyone. So I'm just gonna close myself off and not get close to people. Of course, people can react in different ways. Yeah, the idea that like your children will turn out fine after you, you know, treating them this way, I really just think yeah, let's see their therapy pills, right? I mean, because Amy Chua, you are not fine. And your children, I don't know how they are, but I I don't think they're fine. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Well, let's let's get into more of the untigering.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Yeah, so she uses this this metaphor of the stripes, and she says that the stripes of the tiger can also be our imperfections, um, things that we're not proud of, things that we're ashamed of that make us want to retreat into these angry behaviors that that that we've learned in the past. And that if we want to get away from this, we need to learn to accept our imperfections. And in spite of what in spite of this focus on success, she says focus on external success actually leads to deep insecurity because uh the child learns that you only love them if they uh achieve these things, the these accomplishments, right? She's saying kind of the accomplishments or success are also kind of like tiger stripes. Oh, you succeeded, you got this A, you won this thing, but it's never over. You you can you're you're never good enough. You have to continue this level forever. I I thought that was kind of an interesting metaphor that she used. I don't know, did you connect to that at all?

unknown 21:59

Uh

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah. It's like an external locus of control almost, because you you are always beholden to other people's uh impression of you or like your s status and whatnot. And you don't know who you are. You don't actually know what you like. You don't know what you're really good at. And I think that actually uh suffocates a lot of potential because maybe someone is a really good musician, but they have always had to do chemistry. Right. Or, you know, like you don't know what we're missing out on. And then later on in life, for me and other people who've been tiger parented, they I don't know, I had a sort of a strong sense of identity, but a lot of people who've been tiger parented don't know who they are until they have like a second childhood or a second adolescence somewhere in adulthood, and then they figure that out. Um so it's like you didn't really have a childhood. So you have to reclaim that some at a at some other point. So again, like these external things give you insecurity and they also give you a loss of identity. Yeah. So that was very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Yeah, another point was that you know, constantly striving for success can make you very fragile. Uh, the first sign of failure is it's all over. Um I don't know if you read the New York Times. Um, unfortunately, I still do. I should cancel it. I don't know why I still do, but um, from time to time they'll have like a moral panic column about how college students, particularly in Ivy League universities, are so fragile these days. They can't handle failure, they can't handle not being the smartest kid anymore. Well, yeah, the academic system penalizes failure very heavily.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

If you've ever failed a class, you're not gonna be at an Ivy League university. So, of course, the people at the top of this system that penalizes failure are people who never failed.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

And a lot of them did have tiger parents who said, if you even get a B, you're dead to me. And of course, now that they're at college and they're struggling a bit, that freaks them out because they learn that their worth is based on being at the tippy top. If you structure the system that way, then that's the kind of people it's going to produce. I don't know what you expect.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Uh the other, the flip side to being obsessed with success is uh the shame of failure. And that creates this just loop. It's it's unstable. It's unstable. And then it also isn't very adaptable. Failure happens no matter what. It's not very, you know, not everything is going to be a success. I think American culture is good at uh adaptability and entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Oh, you have to fail and fail and fail, and then, you know, those certain things will be a success. And then the just the resilience of that um is not present in something that's just so success-based, grade-based. It's it's a very linear, it's very black and white and fixed.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

Iris does use the metaphor in the book of being like bamboo rather than being like steel.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Steel, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Yeah, which I I thought that was a good metaphor because yeah, bamboo is a little more flexible. Um but it's sturdy. It gets the job done. Exactly. It's as a parent, you don't want to be like jello, right? You don't want to give in to everything. But you do need to have structure, but you can be a little bit flexible. Because sometimes you see the advice that, like, especially with toddlers, once you've made a decision, you shouldn't change your mind, you know, because then they'll learn that, oh, throwing a tantrum got my mom to change her mind or whatever. But I think that doesn't always have to be the case. So she said, sometimes I'm a better parent when I'm not consistent, when I don't follow through on the consequence that I decided on in a moment of anger, when I flout the rules that I made thoughtlessly, when I'm like bamboo instead of like steel. The point is that if you say something out of anger or you think about it later and you realize, wait a minute, maybe that wasn't really that necessary, it's okay to change your mind. I think it's also good to show our children that you don't have to stick with the decision to the bitter end if you realize it was a wrong decision.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah, yeah. I have a story, a little bit, about uh how Carwin once uh was really pushing it with our bus trips, and we had to, he loves riding the buses and going out to the boonies and whatever on the on the uh public system here. And uh, but I was so tired by the end, and he was like throwing a tantrum about going all the way to the end of the bus stop. And I'm like, we could just get off here and go home and just walk home right now, and I don't want to wait like a million, you know, for another bus. Um, and he was just so upset all the way home. And then I was like, look, we don't have to go on buses. This is something that we just do for fun, and it's not something we have to do. And if mama's gonna be this tired by the end of it, we don't have to do it at all. And that's that. Next time we're just not going on any buses on these fun trips on the weekend. And then he was really sad about that. And I mean, he stopped asking, and I was like, really sad that he stopped asking to go on these bus trips. But I was like, uh, I do want him to rest. What I want is to for him to have respect for the fact that I'm a person and that I get touched. Yeah, you know, like that's what I want. Like, I don't want him to not go on these buses or that we don't go on these bus rides. So when he brought it up again, uh, does this bus go here or there? We talked about, well, I will do it if you remember that last time I got really tired. And when it's time we're tired, we can go home very quickly, we're gonna do that. Okay. Just, you know, revisiting that conversation when it's we're a bit more level-headed, it feels so much better. Like that's I feel like that's bamboo rather than steel. And I know some people would be like, Well, they're not gonna listen to your words, they're not gonna take you seriously, you have to have firm boundaries. Yeah, sure, but you gotta really weigh a lot of these things. And yeah, so bamboo is is is the uh metaphor I appre appreciate.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

I think that's a great story, you know? It doesn't mean that, yeah, if something didn't go so well, it's okay to talk about it and see if you can maybe do it better next time.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

In Untiering, she talks about it too. Even if something doesn't go well, you had a fight or a disagreement, you can still heal from that. You can still talk about what happened and you can still um try to make it better. You know, she tiger parented her kids for seven years and she still went back and decided that she was going to repair. Um yeah, so a nice way to think about it. Um up next, uh healing through connection. She says that relational wounds are healed by relational trust, love, and connection. Community relying on others is a huge theme throughout the book. I definitely liked that. She also talks about accepting child development, understanding that children are not adults, we can't have the same expectations from them that we would have from an adult. And she does say if you were disempowered as a child, if you survived this type of parenting, then it's almost like hazing. You want to do it to the next generation, what was done to you.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

I survived it, so you have to survive it too. Repeating the the same thing again. And you also expect, hey, I was good, I was obedient. Why can't you be Okay, moving on? Ah, she also uses the metaphor of a garden. I really liked that. Like rather than you are a carpenter or sculptor carving your children out of wood, more like you're a gardener and you're plant them in the garden and provide an environment where they can grow uh and thrive on their own.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah, I really like that metaphor too. That was really all the nutrients that they need, the sunlight that they need, the water that they need, and then they'll become a strawberry or whatever that they want.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Yeah, exactly. And they can they can become their own thing. You you don't have to force them to be something that they're not. You wouldn't plant tomatoes in December. Well, if you're in the southern hemisphere, maybe you would. Um, yeah, that that you can take into account their own needs because children also have different needs, you know, some might be more extroverted, more introverted, and so on. You could almost say it's like from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Yeah. If anyone's uncle is listening and is curious who said that, it was Ronald Reagan. Moving on. Um, success. Ah, we talked about success a little bit already. Um, but that focusing on success forces children to hide their imperfections. They can't be themselves around us. If they're gonna be that strawberry, but you wanted a tomato, they they can't they can't show their their true selves. It's our responsibility as adults to free ourselves from these unnecessary expectations of external success and external validation. One of my favorite quotes from the book is she said, you want your children to understand nothing you could do could make me love you less. Nothing you do could make me love you more. I thought that was such a good sentiment.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

You don't have to do this stuff for me to love you. However, uh, she also talks about praise. This is another book that says insults and praise are like two sides of the same coin. If you do praise them, it does tell them that, hey, my approval is dependent on your performance in some way. Um so, okay, what are we gonna do then? How are we gonna show our children that we love them if we're not going to praise them? Um, she says what you can do is just use random acts of love and kindness. Just, you know, hug them, show affection, ask them how they're doing for no reason. And again, I don't think you have to take the most extreme version and just never praise them. But I do think this was a good thing to think about. However, she also talks a little bit about the idea of the love languages.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Yeah, I don't I wasn't a fan of that because I was like, that's a that's been debunked. It's just such a everybody needs all of that in different ways, you know.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And actually, if Books Could Kill the podcast I mentioned earlier, they debunked this book, the Love Languages book. But I don't think the idea itself is so bad. I do think it's like, yeah, some people might prefer something over something else. If you're gonna throw your kid a birthday party and they're a little bit more introverted, don't invite 30 kids and have a bounce house and stuff, you know? You can, I think, appreciate people's character and show them affection in a way that they appreciate more. Um so I do think the love languages, and honestly, I think this book was a little bit, she overdoes it a little bit with, oh, I have to put references for everything, I have to put quotes for everything, I have to put studies for everything. It's okay to just say your opinion. You don't have to say, like, oh, the love languages guy said the same thing. Um, yeah, so I did think that was a bit silly that she included that. Um, but I don't think you have to take it as a law of nature, but just kind of a way to look at relationships. That that can be a helpful framing device, I guess. She says, try to identify how your child prefers to connect. Uh, spend special time with them, one-on-one time. And she also recommends that trying to be playful yourself can also be healing. Being playful is a way that you can try to take yourself less seriously, be a little bit less worried about how you appear. Connecting with your children through play can kind of be a way to detiger yourself, that you don't always have to be on. You don't always have to be wearing this mask. Yeah. She talks about this concept of having family meetings. They do weekly meetings where they discuss what's going to be the schedule for the next week, um, and so on. And they have two parents, two kids, so they have four roles. There's a leader, there's someone who gets arranges the snacks, uh, someone who goes over the calendar, and someone who does a special thing to some fun thing we're gonna do together. And that way the children are kind of involved. I really thought that was a really nice idea.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

And that way also everyone knows what to expect coming up for the week. They're not gonna be asking later, like, oh, what time is this or that? Maybe you have it on a calendar that you made together. And that way also all the planning and mental load isn't just on one person. It's kind of it becomes a family responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

And it kind it kind of makes the labor visible too, because everybody's participating and it ties into the idea from the beginning of everyone being part of a body.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Yes! Make the invisible visible. I like that. Yeah, then everyone's recognizing it, everyone's uh involved in it. Yeah, that's that's a great point.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Um, I'm not sure what age she started that with her kids, but I mean, I guess once the kids are able to do take on certain tasks, like that, that would be really helpful to have them plug plug into the household.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Yeah, and and I think it, you know, the the tasks don't have to be as advanced as owing over the calendar. It could also be wipe off the table so we can have the meeting or something, you know, like whatever task is is at their leadable.

unknown 36:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

Next is relationships and respect. Um, she says being loving and showing affection to our children doesn't mean we have zero boundaries, right? We're bamboo, we're not, we're not jello. Um, so she gave the example of how her kid would like to pinch her arm and it would make her so over stimulated. Man, I'm also like this. I cannot stand light touches, you know, little tiny hands touching my skin, it's like woo. I like hugs and snuggles, but man, little light touches, oh, I just it drive me crazy. I cannot stand it. And yeah, she eventually put a stop to it. She thought, oh, I have to withstand this because my kid likes doing it and I don't want to, you know, be too harsh on him. Because yeah, sometimes D-Tigring can go too much the other way and say, Oh, I don't wanna, I don't want to be cruel to my children like what happened to me. So I'm gonna let them do anything they want. Um, but especially when it comes to your own body, you don't have to let them do whatever they want. If he wants to pinch you and you don't want to be pinched, yeah, you could say no. Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

And she said that when she stopped her child from doing this, that she felt less resentful. She felt more connected. You know, that by setting this boundary, it was a more uh a more connection because she wasn't obligated to do something she didn't want to do. Um yeah, I thought that was I thought that was a nice, a nice point. So the next section I called, so I titled this section in my notes, We Live in a Society. Uh so this is the first book we've talked about that actually admits we live in a society. Also the first book by a non-white author, maybe that's not a coincidence. Um, but I appreciated so much how she throughout the book is always talking about yeah, how does capitalism influence this? How does patriarchy influence this? How does being a minority influence this? I I I loved all those lenses.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Yeah, that's really it felt comprehensive in that way.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

Exactly, exactly. It was very comprehensive, and I really liked that she tied those themes into it because so far, all of the other books they always talk about what you can do. They were very individualistic and kind of ignored the wider society, even when that was very relevant. Like in Octum Baby, she talks about letting your children be independent while completely ignoring like if your house is actually in a walkable area where your children can walk alone without getting hit by a car, right? So sometimes even in cases where I thought it was really obvious that this should be mentioned, these authors just didn't mention it. And so, yeah, maybe being an immigrant, being a um minority kind of gave her this this insight that was lacking in other books.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah, you can see the framework uh uh at play in all of these different spaces. Like some people can't see the framework because they're just living in it.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

It does a fish know they're in water? Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. The I think I think when you are the member of that majority group, you don't really notice a lot of this stuff because it doesn't affect you. She she talks about teaching about children to navigate societal hazards. For example, if uh black parents have to have the talk with their children about how to behave around cops, how to behave in a store so you can protect yourself. Even if we want everything to be fair and good in our home, they do need to be aware that outside the home there are these dangers. She also talks about the whole uh model minority thing and meritocracy and how that relates to tiger parenting. Meritocracy is a myth, but this idea of meritocracy is the core of tiger parenting. This belief that if you work the hardest, then you will succeed. Um, and that's why you have to be this tiger parent and force your children to study six six hours a day and play violin three hours a day. There's this idea that as immigrants, we're going to experience this discrimination, but you just have to work harder and you just have to be better and you can overcome it. But she says, okay, it is true that the game is rigged. If you are a member of a group that experiences uh discrimination, don't offer your children as tribute. She says that kind of the tiger parent says, Okay, we don't need to change the system, we just need to be really good at it. We just need to follow these rules and do it this way.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

And she says, as a Chinese American, she had this uh model minority. Um this idea that, oh, look, Chinese Americans succeed, so that means meritocracy is real, right? It's it's kind of a way to focus on individual success without regard for others, without regard for like why is the wider society like this? She says, what we desire for our children, we must desire for all children.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

And compare that to the idea of this zero-sum game competition. I think it ties back to what we were talking about earlier. If everybody tiger parents, all the kids can't be number one. Right. 99.9% of the kids are not going to be number one and they're going to fail, and their parents are going to tell them they're worthless. So it doesn't seem like really a good idea for everyone to do that.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

I don't know. It's it's very hierarchical and it doesn't acknowledge that there's any other way to be.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

She also talks about how kind of being this model minority makes you feel like good. I am the best, right? And she says, uh, uh, I thought this was a really good point. Um, this has to do with we live in a society. She said that permissive parenting can create oppressors. Um, if you are a member of the dominant group.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

If you don't teach your children respect for others, how their behavior affects others, if you are just totally permissive and let them do everything, then you, your child will learn that only their needs are important and other people's are not. I've never seen that concept before. I thought that was very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

The permissive parenting part really made me think of Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court Justice.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:12

If you are a rich white person and you're a permissive parent, your child will be Brett Kavanaugh.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

I mean, he's on the Supreme Court, huh? They have to understand other people have needs and boundaries and things like that, too. It's it's you can't just permit everything, like just to be kind to them.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

Exactly, exactly. And Iris calls it peaceful parenting. That peaceful parenting isn't just about saying yes to everything, it's about teaching children to respect others. Okay, next up, uh, filial piety. This is a concept in Chinese culture and in many cultures in Asia about respecting family, especially the parents. This concept is used. Usually a result of fear, control, punishments, and so on. And kind of, you know, paradoxically, the point is supposed to make the family important, but it actually again causes children to feel deeply insecure about their parents' love. Um that their love is conditional. And also that achieving this control kind of requires escalating punishments. And that connection is is more effective because it's it's kind of this uh uh deeper than just fear. She contrasts that to the idea of a gift economy where it's not owe your parents something, like you respect them because you have a you are in debt to them, but that we have a gift economy where we give freely. Our parents give freely to us and we give freely to them without any expectations attached to it.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

I don't know if she talked about um the fact that children didn't choose to be born and that that whole concept. I I know a lot of um uh people who come from tiger-parented backgrounds, then the filial piety kicks in, and then it's like, okay, well, now your parents uh feel this martyrdom for having uh made you successful or and sacrificed, you know, if especially if they're like immigrants and now you owe them and you didn't ask to be born. So the gift economy sounds like such a lovelier way to approach relationships on both ends, and like imagine how much joy could be in that relationship instead of fear and just uh stress.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Yeah, yeah. Um Amy Chua does talk about that in the Tiger Mom book. Um she says, yeah, Americans say your children didn't ask to be born, they don't owe you anything. But she's like, well, Chinese people don't believe that. Well, they didn't, it's true. You can tell she is defending herself a little bit in the book. She talks about how I did it all for them. I sacrificed so much. I would also rather not spend three hours a night sitting with my children as they practice violin or whatever. And she also says, Oh, I took them on all these wonderful vacations. There's a paragraph that's literally just a list of all the places they went. So you can tell she's aware that Americans are not convinced by this idea. She's trying to show, like, see, I'm not a bad person. I took my children on these wonderful vacations and I did this and that, and I sacrificed so much for them.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah. I get with the martyrdom. No, it was all ego because if like what motivated uh doing all these things to make the kid successful was a fear of shame that extensions of her would not be successful and that would reflect badly on her. So that's the that's the shame aspect of of the success narrative. It's like, no, you didn't. That wasn't a sacrifice. That was to keep your ego in line.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

You know, part of me wonders if she's there are moments in the book where you can kind of tell that she knows she's being ridiculous, and she says things that are kind of in a joking way. Like, for example, she gets these dogs, and someone tells her that the dog breed she got is not the most intelligent dog or whatever. So she's like, So immediately I went and looked up the 10 most intelligent dogs or whatever. With that part, I was like, okay, she kind of knows she's being silly. It was, it seemed at times it was maybe she has a tiny, tiny bit of self-awareness. I don't think I don't think she's gonna seriously look at herself and ask if it was all worth it. I mean, yeah, her children went to Yale, law, Yale law school, but I was like, you're a professor at Yale. The chance that your children were not gonna also go there, I think, is who would have thought the children of a Yale law professor are successful? Who saw that coming? Yeah. Okay, going back to untigering, uh, she talks about this concept of saving face in in Chinese culture, um, where face is kind of like your reputation in society. And it is completely dependent on the opinions of others. How do other people see you based on how you behave, how you present yourself, what you know, and so on. And she said this kind of forces you to always wear a mask. You have to always be performing. Always. Uh they're very obsessed with status symbols like brand name stuff, fancy cars, big house, things like that. Um saving face means gain reputation for yourself, but there's also giving face, which means to show respect to others. And she said she does find this valuable. She says, here's her quote: When we go out to dinner, we can still offer our great grandma the seat of honor, make sure our parents get a bowl of rice before we do, avoid public and personal attacks against weird Uncle Tim, and slip our credit card to the waiter to pay for the bill. But giving face is also not limited to our elders and superiors. In fact, it can be most powerful when offered to those with less power. We can show our children special honor. We can express appreciation for the contributions of our team members. We can share our platform and pass the mic to those who experience greater marginalization. Um so it's not just about following this hierarchy, but also sharing power or privilege that you do have with others.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

I just I really appreciate a perspective like hers where there's so many um simplistic narratives at play uh in society, like, oh, Asians are really good at academics or whatever. And then you see China um excelling really as a country with technology and um innovation. And um, you want to attribute that to like tiger parenting or like that cultural drive for success. But then you have narratives from books like Untigering, where you can see the downsides of those kinds of things. And the question we have to ask, because I mean she's asking as like a global parent, having been in multiple places, what is the best of all of these things that we want to keep and what can we let go? You know, because some things actually you even though you see quote unquote success and you see like material benefits, what is the the underlying harm and can we do it better? And the can we do it better? And the the kinds of questions she's asking and and the reframing that she's doing. It's so important.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Because like otherwise, people will just default to these superficial truths that, yeah, you know, you you can see like a lot of Asians in higher positions uh because of being tiger parented, but you don't know what the dark side of it is.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

I think honestly, so in the if books could kill episode, I do think that was something that was kind of missing, is that they kind of focused on like, does tiger parenting, like quote unquote work, produce results, which I think is the wrong way to look at it. Yeah, I do think Amy Chua, her child did play piano at Carnegie Hall. It it quote unquote worked, it did get the result that she wanted. Um, but that is something in Untigering that she says, you know, we need to think about are these markers of success really important? Or that that we should try to care less about that?

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Yeah. Um are these markers really important and what what are they serving? What are these ideologies basically serving? Because there's uh things that will help you survive, and then there's things that will help you thrive. Yes. A lot of tiger parenting is survival mentality, scarcity mentality, like competition to the top because you know, otherwise you have nothing. Yeah, zero sum game, yeah. Zero sum game. Um, but we don't live in a world where there is scarcity. I mean, it's manufactured scarcity, but we can actually thrive and we should be teaching each other those skills. We need to have the skills to like deal with the people who think in zero-sum, in a zero-sum mentality. We need the skills to deal with them because they're gonna always like try to like you know, hoard and um be obnoxious. But we need to be able to think uh more towards thriving.

SPEAKER_03 53:02

Yeah, this idea that uh these external markers of success are the most important thing. I mean, I don't know how you can convince someone who believes that that that's not the case, but is the idea that's like, oh, who cares about being happy? You know, Amy Chua says, I don't care about happiness, it's all about success, status, accomplishments. Um, as far as China being such a successful country, maybe that has something to do with their government investing money in infrastructure and healthcare, health care, education, education, maybe that has some high-speed rail, you know. Man, maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe they're on to something. I don't know. You know, I I have a friend um from China, of course. So she's one person out of a billion, so I don't know how representative this opinion is, but I told her, oh, you know, I heard that Chinese people are generally happy with their government. And she just shrugged and said, they do their job. Oh my god, that's the dream. That is the dream. Can they just do their job? If they could just do their job, that's all I want. Oh my god. Yeah. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if that was the only thing you could say about the government in the United States? They do their job. Like they do everything except their job. Yeah, man. So maybe they're on to something. But I don't think it's tiger parenting.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:40

As far as Chinese culture itself, uh, Iris says she does think that there is a lot that we can learn from. That that the answer to tiger parenting is not individualism, um, but rather community. Uh, she says traditional Chinese values like humility, harmony, and interdependence don't have to mean tiger parenting. She also says that the idea of self-care that we have in the West, that this is a very individualistic idea. It tells us to retreat, to tend to our own needs rather than kind of focusing on connection with others. We need healthy boundaries, but that doesn't mean being completely self-sufficient, right? Uh, no man is an island, right? We we all have these uh connections and have to rely on others. Uh uh, she says this uh this um Chinese idea of community can have a downside of leading you to only care about people within your own group and ignoring others. Um so she talks about have you heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

SPEAKER_01 55:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:57

So um I know you're gonna be shocked to find this out, but um, he actually stole that idea.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

Can you believe it? So he had studied an indigenous group called the Blackfoot who live in um North America, you know, US and Canada.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Like Idaho, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:18

Exactly right. Um, and so the Blackfoot worldview is that they have self-actualization at the bottom of the pyramid. So Maslow put it at the top. In in their view, self-actualization is at the bottom of the pyramid, and at the top is connection to the group. So she says it doesn't pit individualism against collectivism, but sees self-actualization as fundamental for collective well-being. Individuals who have strong social connections will ultimately benefit the group. Um, so individualism and collectivism don't have to be opposites. They they're they are both part of the whole. Yeah. Yeah. Surprise, surprise, he stole the indigenous idea, made it worse, and claimed it as his own idea.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

You know, that makes a lot of sense, like that indigenous idea. Because and especially if you think of um rites of passage uh in teenage years or adolescents, because you're actualizing, you're looking for who you are, and then you want to see, you want to find out what your role is in society and in the group. And you you really need to like start knowing yourself and knowing what you can do and what how you think and whatever, like as a teenager, um, in order to fit into the group. Yeah. Self-actualization isn't something that you wait for.

SPEAKER_03 57:43

Yeah, it shouldn't be the last thing. I like that. It's the bottom of the period, it's the most pyramid, it's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:52

Or maybe the most important thing is going to an eyes wide-shut party with Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah. Could be. Um, yeah, she also says living authentically can help you connect with people who who feel the same way. So if you're trying to make those connections, um you can start doing that by trying to figure out what's really important to you. And when you start to live that way, you're going to be more likely to find people who who feel the same way. She talks about um, for her, she joined this uh buy nothing group as a way to find like similarly minded people who want to. Yeah, it's basically about giving away your old stuff. Yeah, yeah. I'm in those. Yeah, yeah. Um she also talks about slowing down. Um, this this idea of seasons is kind of a topic throughout the book that we aren't meant to be continuously running like a machine. We have seasons of activity and rest. We have summer and winter. We have seasons where we we need help, and we have seasons where we help others. Um one thing that I really noticed about the uh tiger mom book is this uh I will say fascist adjacent disgust with weakness. She she says it as it's always bad. Oh, Americans think their children are weak. And it's like being weak is okay. Everybody has a season in their life, you know, even if you're the toughest alpha man. You were once a helpless baby, right? So it's it's okay to need help. And depending on your able-bodiedness or your health and all these other factors, you know, maybe you will always need help. Um, but that's okay. Um, it's it's okay to be weak. It's oh it's okay. I think this is a really yeah, I I liked that idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Yeah. I I think the uh the tiger parenting hierarchical fascist thinking that dislikes the weak has to do with it distracts from the focus of competing. It's like, oh, I have to think about weak, oh, I have to have sympathy, I have to exercise these kinds of muscles. No, I have to do that, and that's where I'm going, and that's all I want to think about. And that's um sociopathic, honestly. It's like, are you doing society or not?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:37

Um, oh yeah, uh, with reference to um people who are disabled or whatever, um, one topic I find really fascinating is archaeological finds of remains of disabled people. Um, like there are quite a lot of examples of people who had really serious injuries or disabilities where they clearly could not have been providing for themselves like while they were alive. And yeah, it kind of shows that like people have always been like that. We've always had this desire to care for those who need it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

Yeah. And I think that's the marker of civilization, honestly. You know, that's when you're not just in it for yourself and just out there in the wild doing caveman stuff. Like that's when you're like building together with multiple people. Um yeah. If you can protect the the weak and the vulnerable, that's civilization.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:40

Yeah, I think so. I think so. And you know, you you'd be surprised. A lot of these remains were from like caveman days, you know, even in those days when life was supposedly so hard and so um doggy dog and everything. Um there's remains from like 20,000 years ago of someone who had a healed, like broken leg bone, you know, which shows that as this person's leg was broken, they couldn't possibly walk, but they had been cared for long enough for the broken leg to heal. Um yeah, I think uh that's yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I think so too. Um let's see. Ah, so how how how can we kind of like achieve this community feeling in our modern day, right? Um, one way is to mindfully choose a lifestyle that serves you, not enslaves you. You may have to give up some stuff, right? Maybe you take a job that pays less, but that is has less hours. Or maybe you live in a smaller apartment instead of a house, so that you can be more connected to a community of people. And yeah, of course, this of course made me made me think about urbanism, right? How your surroundings can have this huge effect on your quality of life and your ability to make connections with other people. Yeah, I feel like I really live this. I I think you kind of do too, in terms of how you chose to live somewhere where you have public transportation and um you have the ability to walk around to places. It makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

Yeah, yeah. Your world becomes so much bigger, actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

Yeah, paradoxically, yeah. Yeah, I think I remember was talking about how in the US your house is the only nice space. You nowhere else is nice in public. You have to be either spending money or you have to be at home. Yeah. Um, and that, yeah, when your home is the only nice space, of course you want your home to be really big and really nice. You have nowhere else to be. Um, yeah. And I will say, I think one kind of weakness of the book is she doesn't really acknowledge that a lot of people can't really make these choices. Cities that are walkable are expensive to live in because people actually like that. People actually like living in those places. And yeah, a lot of people might not have a choice to live somewhere or to to pass up a job with more money. Maybe they need the money, right? Um, I think she overall acknowledges, yeah, we live in a society, but um yeah, unfortunately, not everybody has the freedom to make those choices, even if they would be more fulfilling choices. Yeah. Well, maybe if our podcast blows up, then we can stop our nine to five grind and and just do podcasting for a living. So tell all your friends, maybe it'll happen. So Iris also says we have to consider how to dismantle a systemic oppression that creates undue stress on children, parents, and families. So she does acknowledge it. She does acknowledge that this is a factor, right? Um, one thing that I've kind of thought of lately is that, you know, this idea of cultivating a village, the government can be your village if you have a functional one. Which in the US, they always talk about this as a bad thing, like the nanny state. But what is a government for if not to help people who need help? Right. It's our taxes to serve us. That's what it's for. I mean, for people who need extra help, or you're just new to the area and you don't know anyone. And The example they always give in US social media that I've seen with reference to a village is giving people a ride to the airport, picking someone up from the airport. And it's like, yeah, but if they had public transportation, you're new to the area and you don't know anyone, then the nanny state will give you a ride. Actually, here in Germany, the government provides me a professional driver in a $1 million vehicle. It's called a train, and I can get on it, and I don't have to know anyone in the area, and it drives me to where I'm going. And yeah, I think the state can also provide that support. We we don't have to only rely on our peers. A functional state, it could also take over this role. Um, I mean, it's not currently doing that, but it could. Yeah, yeah. Um, also what you talked about in terms of kind of stereotypes uh about Asian Americans and so on, being this model minority, high achieving, um, Iris Chen started this untigering movement to try and build this community for Asian Americans um to try and work together to yeah, think about this issue, try to become better parents. And in the very beginning, she actually says people kind of joke that the best investment is to invest in therapy for your kids, as kind of like, uh well, you know, we're we're gonna screw up our kids no matter what. But she says it's not like that. That's a like fatalistic idea. We can do better, we can do the hard work and do better and and do better for our children, or as well as we can. Um, and I really like that. Uh she says uh the she um gives the example of how they reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the early 2000s, and it caused this transformation of the ecosystem because the wolves were like such an important part of that park. Without the wolves, there were too many elk, and the elk were overgrazing, and the plants couldn't really grow, and then beavers couldn't build the dams, and then these other animals couldn't have their habitats, and just how how this one animal can have such a huge impact on the environment. And she says we can be like that. We can try to transform the environment in a positive way.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

She also says we're not powerless against these cultural norms, right? We might have these cultural ideas of like, oh, we have to be like this, oh ha ha ha, you know, we we are such tiger parents. But she says we can fight back against that. Culture is dynamic, it's alive. Um, culture is not something that you just put in a box and you never touch it again, right? I I really loved that quote that she what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

About the wolves, because I was yeah, the wolves, like uh, we should be the gray wolf instead of the tiger, um, the tiger parent. Uh yeah, it's it's it because you're part of an ecosystem and you keep everything in harmony, and that's a great way to think about it. And then like with the the creating culture, like we're we're not slaves to culture, we shape culture, culture is people, and um just having that global upbringing, she says it gives her a sense of belonging without being owned, without being owned by any particular culture. And I love that idea. She says it's a synergistic relationship instead of um uh one of being like enslaved by culture. So yeah, I think that's like yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:47

In a way, you could say that Amy Chua was the the jelly uh because she could she didn't have the spine to stand up to that culture and say, Hey, is this really a good idea?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:01

She was just replicating, replicating without any thought, without any introspection, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:07

Yeah, yeah. And it's all like to please other people.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:11

Yeah. Why do you care so much what other people think?

unknown 1:10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

Okay. Um, that's pretty much the end of my notes. Uh, I had a lot more quotes that I didn't go to. Yeah, I don't know. Do you have any final thoughts on the book?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:28

I thought it was really lovely and again, like very comprehensive, and uh offered multiple um lenses through which to look at like a parenting style. Um, and it didn't feel like she was asking anybody to do a lot. It just seemed very practical and very compassionate. If you just chill out for like let let let this um play out naturally instead of all these scripts that we have. Like these, I think these are the realizations that a lot of parents would come to if, you know, uh on their own, and she gave it um words for it. So I appreciate that. Um, I did like the part where she was talking about parents being good interpreters. I don't know if you um I didn't write that down actually. Yeah. The kids have their own particular interests or want certain things, they don't have the words necessary, the vocabulary, and you have to. I think her son was um bullying somebody at school, and uh she had to figure out like what was actually bothering him, why would he do that? And it was because he was anxious. There was a lot of uh new things that he had to do deal with, and it was like stressing him out, and that's how that's the way it um came out. And so instead talked through the things that were making him anxious, and that kind of uh redirected his behavior, you have to be in tune with your child in order to get there. Like with tiger parenting, you don't care, you don't care what your child is going through or their inner world does not matter, it's external markers only. Um, so the the attunement um in order to be a good interpreter is so important because it builds the connection with your child and also helps them grow um in their vocabulary and they can see that their own behavior can change, they're not stuck.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:24

You're not also not labeling them as a bad kid or your you know, your friend so-and-so is so much better, or you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:34

So I appreciated that because I feel like that's a lot of the job. It's like, okay, you're saying this stuff and you're behaving this weird way. What do you actually want?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:42

Yeah, it's it's can be hard to figure out what's actually going on. And but yeah, if you have that connection, you can kind of get to the root of the problem rather than just trying on on this surface level looking at outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:57

Yeah. And I think that gets to self-actualization better for the kids because they're thinking, they're thinking of how they can acquire their own vocabulary or, you know, the questions the parent asks the child. Right. They're learning from that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:15

One thing I will say is I don't know if you got this impression, but it in terms of like criticism, but the bo it was a bit disjointed to me. I felt like it was just these random thoughts she had, and there wasn't a lot of an overarching theme or way to tie it together. Um, that was kind of one of my it was not that fun to read. I mean, yeah, I don't think every book has to be fun to read, but more people will read it if it is, you know. So yeah, I did think that was kind of a weakness. Uh, was that yeah, I don't know if you got that impression as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Yeah, I didn't mind it too much. Maybe it's because I'm a bit ad. This thought, this thought, this thought, this thought.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:01

Smush. Yeah, here's here they all are. Yeah. Yeah. If you were gonna give the book a rating out of five with no star fractions, whole stars only, what would you give it?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:19

Oh gosh. Um aside from the disjointedness, which didn't bother me too much, the actual advice in there and the actual realizations and the contribution to I think social development, I I do think it's worth reading. Like I think I would give it a five just for that. Wow. Because that's just as a untigering parent, please read something like this. Yeah. Um, I think it's very helpful um for anyone who might have been raised as by by tiger parents. So uh for you, it might feel different. So what do you think?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:58

Yeah, I will say for me, um, yeah, like I said, my parents were not that strict. I was I was not raised that way. So I did not connect with it on that level. Um, however, I really, really, really appreciated the we live in a society aspect of it. Like I I thought that was really positive. I also had another criticism, which I guess this is not the point of the book, but I feel like she didn't give very much concrete advice.

unknown 1:15:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:32

What do I do? You know, she said, Oh, you have to, you know, self-actualization and you have to make decisions.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

Um you want more details. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

Yeah, how do I do that? So I do I do see how she's trying to say you have to figure out what's important to you personally, but I I think I would have appreciated maybe just a little more um concrete advice or even about specific situations. If you're feeling triggered in some situation, what can you do? Or um, how can you deal with these feelings and everything? So I'm gonna give it a four out of five. Um, but I do I do see how if if you connected to it on that personal level from having the that background yourself, that it would be a five out of five. Um yeah, and also again, I hate to say it, but I just I just don't have good taste. I want to be entertained a little bit. And I, you know, would have appreciated just a little bit more fun. The humor. Yeah, yeah, just a little more. So um, but yeah, again, I'm a I'm a Cretan, so I just I like entertained. What can I say? I like to be entertained. Um, yeah, so that's uh any final thoughts or anything you want the listeners to know about the book before we no, I think I I would recommend it. And if anybody, you know, has other thoughts they want to share, I I guess we're open to like oh yeah, I was gonna say we got a comment on Spotify. Really? Yeah, I didn't even know you could leave comments on Spotify, but my husband actually found it and he was like, Oh, did you know you got a comment on Spotify? I was like, What? Um so anyone, if you have feedback, you can make a comment on Spotify. I will read it, I promise. Anyways, thank you all listeners for joining us and for getting us to a thousand downloads. Yay, yay! All right, well, I had a great time discussing this book with you. I was so excited about it. So many interesting topics. So, yeah, thank you for um being here and discussing the book and looking forward to seeing you next time. Yeah, thanks everybody. Yeah, thanks, Rosie. Yeah, thanks, Sarah. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

There, there, moms, moms, moms, mums. Oh, then we'll live here.