Infamous "Tiger Mom" Returns To Troll the Entire World
If you can think all the way back to 2011 you may remember Amy Chua, the Yale professor and "Tiger Mom" who set your Facebook feed on fire with a book excerpt that argued for maniacally strict parenting lest your kid become a massive failure. Well, she's back and she's coming for us all.
The New York Post has a review of her new book The Triple Package —co-authored by her husband, Jed Rubenfeld — which says that there are eight groups of people superior to all others: Chinese, Cuban exiles, Indians, Iranians, Jews, Lebanese-Americans, Mormons, and Nigerians. Remember, her daughter got into Yale and Harvard so it has to be true.
According to Chua and Rubenfeld, there are three reasons — the so-called "triple package," please bear with me — why those eight groups reign over everyone else in the world: superiority complexes, insecurity, and impulse control. They believe ("believe") that true success is reached because you think you're better than everyone else, but also not really, and that you can resist temptation as you strive for a larger goal. Oh, and also that you haven't "yet bought into mainstream, post-1960s, liberal American principles."
If all of this sounds like complete nonsense it's because it probably is — reviewer Maureen Callahan is fiercely critical of the book's conclusions and its methods. But, obviously, none of that is really the point: Chua stumbled into a reputation as an agitator and here she has widened her scope as much as possible. Now, not only are parents supposed to get mad at the insinuation that they aren't ruthless enough assholes — and buy a book teaching them how to be — but everybody is.
Still, pop psych trolling this flagrant can only work for so long: it's actually hard to tell if Chua and her husband are trying too hard with this theory, or not even trying at all. That said, it is still just a wisp away from the best-sellers that influence all types of intellectuals: if Malcolm Gladwell repackaged this premise we would all be expected to bow down to his genius.