Tiger Mom daughter gets into Harvard

[Start digression from blog post title]

In case you're hazy on the facts, Amy Chua made a name for herself earlier this year when she wrote a Wall Street Journal article talking about her parenting techniques, techniques she suggests were the result of her Chinese upbringing--thus, making her a Tiger Mom. (Sounds like someone has been listening to too much Survivor, circa 1982.) Considering that Chinese years are named after a variety of animals, it's smart marketing not to call yourself Goat Mom or Rooster Mom. (She'll peck your eyes out!)

What are Amy Chua's parenting techniques? They involve:

1.) making her daughters potentially socially awkward

1.) giving her children a complex

1.) guaranteeing her kids have anxiety issues

1.) giving her daughters enough information for a fantastic memoir twenty years from now

1.) making her two daughters as dull and uninteresting as possible

1.) being strict to the point of psychological abuse

Chua claimed her parenting techniques (which actually involve never allowing her children to sleep over a friend's house, have a play date, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch tv, "choose their own extracurricular activities" (her words), receive a grade less than A, and play any instrument other than piano or violin) are supposedly based in some sort on that Chinese tradition of parenting.

This is nonsense, of course.

Chua based her "facts" off her own experience, as well as one study in which 98 mothers were analyzed. Yes, 98. That's about a thousand times smaller a sample size for any study to have validity. But, hey now, she's busy. 98 is good enough, no?

In reality, Chua had motivations for the Journal article. She was publishing a book. (I won't link to it on Amazon. If you want to raise your children so they spontaneously cry whenever they see any form of popular entertainment, you can seek it out yourself.) She portrays you as a bad parent while she explains how she eliminates all forms of joy in a human being's life. Sounds like a beach read to me!

[End digression from blog post title]

Well, last week her daughter was accepted into Harvard. It was a supposed validation of her parenting techniques. Indeed--I'm sure it had nothing to do with Amy Chua being a law professor at Yale Law School--or that Chua herself went to Harvard for a degree in economics, and later a law degree. Nope. Not at all.

Pssh. If there's anything we know in this crazy world it's that Ivy League schools never do legacy admissions.