Chua's Daughter: Back Off, 'Tiger Mom' Raised Me Well

Oldest child Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld defends her mother's parenting style
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 18, 2011 1:58 PM CST
Chua's Daughter: Back Off, 'Tiger Mom' Raised Me Well
This 2007 photo courtesy of (CC) Larry D. Moore shows author Amy Chua at the Texas Book Festival in Austin.   (CC)

Author Amy Chua is getting roasted for her praise of strict Chinese parenting, so who better to defend her than her own daughter? "I admit it: Having you as a mother was no tea party," writes 18-year-old Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld in the New York Post. "There were some play dates I wish I’d gone to and some piano camps I wish I’d skipped. But now that I’m 18 and about to leave the tiger den, I’m glad you and Daddy raised me the way you did." For starters, she writes, it's not the doom-and-gloom home critics picture.

Strangers, for example, "don't know how much fun we have when the six of us—dogs included—squeeze into one bed and argue about what movies to download from Netflix." And they'd never guess that her mom once whispered to her before a recital, “Soso, you worked as hard as you could. It doesn’t matter how you do.” Yes, her parents pushed her, but Sophia writes that a meaningful life is "about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential. You feel it when you’re sprinting, and when the piano piece you’ve practiced for hours finally comes to life beneath your fingertips. ... If I died tomorrow, I would die feeling I’ve lived my whole life at 110%." (More Amy Chua stories.)

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