So again, I think it’s too much on both sides. I think the problem on the other side is, you know, I don’t know about sitting still and listening to a lecture for 10 straight hours, I think that’s not a very good way of stimulating exciting original thoughts. In “The Triple Package,” we actually write about the benefit of the ability to be able to have impulse control, the ability to sit still for 20 minutes. Because when they get so stressed, you can’t sit down for 10 minutes. For example, a little more self-discipline in many young Western kids would actually help them a lot when they get to high school and college.

I think, in some ways, my view is kind of if you could mix the best of both aspects. On the other hand, I think for traditional Asian parenting, again, it’s not everybody but just sort of generally, it’s too strict, and too stifling, too suffocating, and not very good at promoting creativity and leadership and fun-lovingness. And that is not necessarily a recipe for happiness. In my view, kind of mainstream Western parenting, sometimes it’s too permissive, too coddling, you know, sometimes you let kids give up too fast. Q: What do you think is the biggest difference in parenting between the West and the East?Ī: I feel that when it comes to raising children or educating children, the East and West almost have the exact opposite problems. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for my whole family as well. You know, a lot of that came because of the firestorm and suddenly, people wanted to talk to me. Including all the wonderful people at The China Project. Without that controversy, I would never have met so many amazing people. Now I kind of realize, you know, it was an incredible opportunity. But now, you know, it’s been eight years. So I was kind of making fun of that, you know, I was much more lenient on myself. Because a lot of in the book was supposed to be funny and tongue-in-cheek. I am a very proud, relatively strict mom, not in a way that both people in the U.S. But if you actually read the book - I wrote it when my younger daughter rebelled against my strict parenting. So they had this idea, this crazy, strict mom saying it’s better. I kept wanting to say, “Wait! You misunderstand the book.” I mean, the truth is, I think that many people talking about the book and what they think of it are actually people who never read the book.

At the beginning, I was a little bit upset about it. You know, most, many people know of me as the tiger mom but don’t even know that in my real job, I am a Yale law professor and my expertise is in foreign policy and ethnic conflicts.

Tiger mom book amy chua