Therese Park

After reading “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” in The Wall Street Journal by Amy Chua earlier this year, I asked myself these questions:

Did I know what was best for my three American-born daughters and ignore their desires? Did I think they owed me everything, including their successes and happiness, because I’ve done so much for them? Did I punish them for not obeying me? With “No” to all three questions, I was relieved.

According to the UC Berkeley news magazine “Hard Boiled,” Asian-American women have the highest suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds in the United States, and every year nearly 1,100 of the same women’s group nationwide commit suicide due to the pressures from home and academic demands.

I find the article by Chua (who also wrote the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”) embarrassing, not only that she considered Korean mothers to be like herself but also that she spelled out her “recipe” for making stereotypically successful kids. Her two daughters were not allowed to attend slumber parties or get any grade less than “As” or choose their own extracurricular activities or learn to play any instrument but violin or piano. When her demands were not met, her daughters were verbally abused and lost their meals or toys or their future birthday presents.

When I became an American citizen four decades ago, I solemnly swore before an American judge that I will absolutely renounce and abjure all allegiance to any foreign state (including my native country); that I will support the laws of the United States of America; that I will perform work of national importance. My duties included raising my children as American citizens, not Korean citizens. Had I wanted to raise my daughters the way I was raised in Korea, why would I have come to the United States?

My daughters helped me to be a better American citizen. They corrected my accented English, my bad grammar, and let me look over their shoulders while they did their English assignments so that I could improve my second language. They also set their boundary against their Korean mother.

“Mom, we’re tired of eating steamed rice and stinky soybean paste stew almost every day,” they often complained. “Why can’t we have hamburgers and French fries for dinner like normal American kids?”

Granted! I made hamburgers and French fries or hotdogs and Tater Tots for dinner, and they were blissfully happy. But their father grumbled, “Since when did you think I liked American junk food?” It was my turn to say that we were not in Korea and that we should at least try to eat like normal American folks once in a while.

I, too, encouraged each of my daughters to play a musical instrument, but I never forced them the way Chua forced her daughters. Still, my first-born became a professional violinist who’s now a member of a prestigious American symphony orchestra. Did I fail as a mother because only one daughter chose her career in music instead of all three?

My mother, too, demanded that her seven kids get “As” in every subject and lectured us not to “shame” her. The only child who met her demand was my eldest brother. He was extremely bright, as bright as 200-watt light bulb, which made the rest of us look dim.

Next to him, I was only about 40 watts bright. The day I had to deliver my report card, I purposely took a longer way home, hoping someone would snatch my book bag with my report card in it and vanish. But it never happened. In my sixth year in elementary school, my dimness worsened. I had three “Bs” on my report card one day, and I tore it up.

“You’re an average kid,” Mom declared when she found out what I had done with my report card. “You might as well know that the life of an average woman in this society is an endless thicket of thorn bushes. You will have to swallow many tears.”

It was a turning point of my life. Without mom’s tight grip on me, I began to breathe.

Average kids have time to dream big dreams and learn from their own mistakes, while “stereotypical successful kids” are too busy following rules.

Average men made the world we live in today. Ludwig Van Beethoven was an average boy whose abusive, alcoholic father forced him to play piano like Mozart. By resisting his tyrant, he found his creative force within. Albert Einstein, too, was an average child who didn’t begin to speak until he was 3 years old, and as a teenager, he failed entry exams to the Swiss National Polytechnic.

Each child is born with gifts, and parents’ duty is to nurture them with love and tenderness.