Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua Page A

can’t tell you how many Asian kids I’ve met who, while acknowledging how oppressively strict and brutally demanding their parents were, happily describe themselves as devoted to their parents and unbelievably grateful to them, seemingly without a trace of bitterness or resentment.
    I’m really not sure why this is. Maybe it’s brainwashing. Or maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome. But here’s one thing I’m sure of: Western children are definitely no happier than Chinese ones.

16
     

     
    The Birthday Card
     
    Everyone was moved by what Sophia and Lulu said at Florence’s funeral. “If only Florence could have heard them,” Florence’s best friend Sylvia said sadly afterward. “Nothing would have made her happier.” How, other friends asked, could a thirteen-and ten-year-old capture Florence so perfectly?
    But there’s a backstory.
    It actually starts years earlier, when the girls were quite young, maybe seven and four. It was my birthday, and we were celebrating at a mediocre Italian restaurant, because Jed had forgotten to make reservations at a better place.
    Obviously feeling guilty, Jed was trying to act jaunty. “O-k-a-y! This is going to be a g-r-e-a-t birthday dinner for Mommy! Right, girls? And you each have a little surprise for Mommy—right, girls?”
    I was soaking some stale focaccia in the small dish of olive oil the server had given us. At Jed’s urging, Lulu handed me her “surprise,” which turned out to be a card. More accurately, it was a piece of paper folded crookedly in half, with a big happy face on the front. Inside, “Happy Birthday, Mommy! Love, Lulu” was scrawled in crayon above another happy face. The card couldn’t have taken Lulu more than twenty seconds to make.
    I know just what Jed would have done. He would have said, “Oh, how nice—thank you, honey,” and planted a stiff kiss on Lulu’s forehead. Then he probably would have said that he wasn’t very hungry, and was only going to have a bowl of soup, or on second thought just bread and water, but the rest of us could order as much as we goddamn liked.
    I gave the card back to Lulu. “I don’t want this,” I said. “I want a better one—one that you’ve put some thought and effort into. I have a special box, where I keep all my cards from you and Sophia, and this one can’t go in there.”
    “What?” said Lulu in disbelief. I saw beads of sweat start to form on Jed’s forehead.
    I grabbed the card again and flipped it over. I pulled out a pen from my purse and scrawled “Happy Birthday Lulu Whoopee!” I added a big sour face. “What if I gave you this for your birthday, Lulu—would you like that? But I would never do that, Lulu. No—I get you magicians and giant slides that cost me hundreds of dollars. I get you huge ice cream cakes shaped like penguins, and I spend half my salary on stupid sticker and eraser party favors that everyone just throws away. I work so hard to give you good birthdays! I deserve better than this. So I reject this.” I threw the card back.
    “May I please be excused for a second?” Sophia asked in a small voice. “I need to do something.”
    “Let me see it, Sophia. Hand it over.”
    Eyes wide with terror, Sophia slowly pulled out her own card. It was bigger than Lulu’s, made of red construction paper, but while more effusive, equally empty. She had drawn a few flowers and written “I love you! Happy Birthday to the Best Mommy in the World! #1 Mommy!”
    “That’s nice, Sophia,” I said coldly, “but not good enough either. When I was your age, I wrote poems for my mother on her birthday. I got up early and cleaned the house and made her breakfast. I tried to think of creative ideas and made her coupons that said things like ‘One Free Car Wash.’”
    “I wanted to make something better, but you said I had to play piano,” Sophia protested indignantly.
    “You should have gotten up earlier,” I responded.
    Later that night, I received two much better birthday