London - The Tiger Mother has sent me over the edge this week. I’ve spent hours fantasising about repeatedly clumping her over the head with one of my two-year-old’s mangled Barbies in an act of maternal revenge.
Amy Chua, who put us all on the naughty step because our toddlers couldn’t play the harp or speak five languages, has given interviews across the world claiming that her controversial parenting book, Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother was meant to be ironic, that her hardline guide to bringing up successful children was a bit of a laugh.
She may not have actually used those words, but may as well have done. She now claims that the book, which caused a parental firestorm, was only “a tenth” true, and that even though she told thousands of anxious parents that TV should be banned and encouraging free will is the path to C not A-grades - she didn’t mean it.
Sure she once called one daughter “garbage” for some minor misdemeanour and threw away the other’s DIY birthday card because it wasn’t artistic enough, but in reality she wasn’t anywhere near as rigorous in her boot-camp parenting as she had claimed.
Most irritating of all, she said that if she were to write the book again - or have another go at bringing up her two daughters, now aged 18 and 21 - she would be even more permissive than she secretly was. She would be more like us, the mothers she made feel like failures as we didn’t demand more from our offspring. What a cruel trick to play.
Out of her international bestseller, a term - Tiger Mother - was born and debated endlessly. It is now part of the parenting conversation.
The 2011 book also prompted a round of unhelpful questions over what exactly is the right regime to bring up “better” children.
Even though I had no intention of taking any notice of what she recommended, I still felt the cold wind of disapproval at my own parenting style. Should I be doing more, pushing them harder at school?
Maybe they should be practising something worthy as opposed to repeatedly videoing themselves pretending to trip over the sleeping dog in order to make a fake You’ve Been Framed film.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have laughed so hard at the flyer for Kumon maths and instead signed them up for Saturday morning classes?
This is why I am so furious at Amy Chua’s revelation that she duped us into believing her extreme parenting methods were real.
Every day new clues on the best way to be a mom are flung at us because we’re such a fragile, eager audience, desperate to devour any useful fact.
After all, none of us has done this before, and it’s terrifying. We pounce on knowledge like sugar addicts on a Walnut Whip.
Will our way turn out to be the right way? Will the latest received wisdom help make sense of the mothering conundrums?
We don’t expect a Wizard-of-Oz-like deception. It makes us feel bad, Amy.
I can cope with medics now blaming that glass of wine I had when I was nine months’ pregnant for my 10-year-old’s inability to do vulgar fractions, but a whole furore created (and then endlessly debated) by a book that wasn’t even true is infuriating. It’s disrespectful.
It turns out that the Tiger Mother has no more insight than any of the other parenting tomes like S*** My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, which is at least funny, or French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman, which is accidentally funny.
Amy Chua’s new book, written with husband Jed Rubenfeld, which prompted her to give these “clear the air” interviews, sounds dull: an academic foray into the common characteristics which make people from different cultures and religions successful.
The Triple Package: What Determines Success is a complicated read that makes me want to retire to a dark room and watch YouTube videos of kittens while I work out just why I’m so unreasonably cross about Tiger Mother’s reckless confession.
I feel like writing my own fake Battle Hymn parenting book but other matters are more pressing - getting the theme tune to The Lego Movie, Everything Is Awesome, out of my mind, for one.
Actually, maybe that is the title of my new parenting bible. But would you believe anything in a book with that title? - Daily Mail
* LORRAINE CANDY is editor-in-chief of Elle.