I was under the impression that Amy Chua (the woman who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother") gave up the "tiger mom" strategy after one of her children had a breakdown:
"What brings the situation to an end is two horrifying incidents. First, Lulu hacks off her hair with a pair of scissors; then, on a family holiday to Moscow, she and Chua get into a public argument that culminates in Lulu smashing a glass in a cafe, screaming, "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."
> "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."
I started crying when I read that. I literally have tears in my eyes right now. I'm hardly surprised, though.
I expressed my opinions years ago here on HN, about this tiger mom horseshit and how it's basically child abuse, to me, even though I'm into my 30s it's still with me.
My mom did this shit to me and I had a couple of good, solid breakdowns. Constant pressure, college resume padding horseshit, extracurricular activities that I don't care about (kudos to you if you enjoyed them but most of the people at these things aren't enthused about it). NOthing I ever did was good enough, impossible busy work, constant comparisons to so-and-so kid's, being paraded out to brag about the family name, etc.
Then I did the unforgivable. I flunked out of college. I got FAT -- the worse! And grew a beard. She told me I was a complete embarrassment and she didn't want me around. Because of a beard. I guess I was about 25 when she said that, and I've seen her a three times since then.
I am reminded of the tragic case of Mengyao "May" Zhou, an MIT grad and Stanford grad student, whose death in 2007 was ruled a suicide. (While there was no clear evidence of foul play, the evidence for suicide was not overwhelming either -- in particular, she left no note.) While she was clearly very successful in her studies and was thought to be happy, some of the details that came out at the time left me with the distinct impression that she killed herself to get out of a life she had not chosen and could see no other escape from. Her father in particular seemed to have a habit of stating flatly how she had felt, as if he didn't have to ask her. That struck me as a big red flag that suggested that he related to her as an extension of himself rather than as a separate person -- a common pattern in "tiger" parenting.
I emphasize that this is only my impression; I didn't know her and have no privileged information about her. But the father's subsequent behavior -- insisting she was murdered and making rather wild suggestions about who could have done it and why -- did nothing to change that impression (even making allowances for understandable grief). Instead of stopping to wonder whether he really knew her -- who wouldn't wonder that after an unexpected suicide? -- he dug himself into his position. I think that in his denial that she could have felt any other way than how he wanted her to feel, he is still refusing to hear the message of her suicide.
It is bad enough to be living a life designed by someone else, where you know it's not your choice but you feel compelled to do it anyway. But to have had your own desires and feelings so rigidly unacknowledged for your whole life that you can't even imagine living your own life for your own reasons -- that seems to me unbearably painful. I have a feeling that is the place May Zhou was in.
I was at Osaka University for an exchange program once and I was staying at a dorm with all the other foreign students. On my first day there I went around the place to introduce myself to everyone and I one of the people I met was a really friendly Chinese guy.
Fast-forward a couple of days, I come back from the Uni and I see the guy sitting in the common room with a blank stare looking really white. When I go over there to find out what's going on, he tells me he found his Chinese roommate that morning. He had hanged himself because he couldn't stand the pressure anymore.
Seconding the "still alive" sentiment. A great friend of mine growing up was able to dodge the more abusive aspects of the parenting style. His parents would occasionally back off. Why? Because he was born after his two older cousins, one of whom committed suicide in college and the other who broke down permanently and has been institutionalized off-and-on ever since.
I have a feeling that there's a certain crop of high-school overachiever who, upon finally being free, ends up failing for the first time and in a spectacular fashion after they go to college.
How has your life evolved since 25? Did you end up losing the weight and the beard? Did they finally leave you be to pursue your own goals?
Hopefully it's by choice and he doesn't blame his parents for his beard and fatness anymore. I don't know anyone with perfect parenting and we all have our demons.
It may not work to raise your kids like you live in China, when you actually live in a western country. Of course this is a great exaggeration as an example, but picture Kim Jong Un as prime minister of Britain. How do you think that would work out?
1. Tiger moms in America are far more permissive, they swing back and forth - providing an unstable and inconsistent environment for their children. 2. The kids are inundated with the highly permissive hippie culture of the west even though the tiger mom tries on and off to limit this. The kids eventually rebel.
>The book bares all about how the parenting model worked for her older daughter Sophia, now 17 and heading off to an Ivy League college, but backfired dramatically for her younger girl, Louisa, or Lulu, who is now 14
Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?
I mean, I'm not going to be naive and insist that the worthwhile life doesn't look at results and instead only looks at the journey, but to consider one's parenting model as "working" at age 17 because one's child is going to Ivy league is hilariously short-sighted (unless you're planning for your child to die a lot sooner than most people).
My TL;DR point is follows:
17 years is too short to draw any conclusions on how successful a person's life is so the jury should still be out on Tiger Mothering.
Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?
Because, by all accounts, it is one of the most reliable indicators that the child is going to be successful.
but to consider one's parenting model as "working" at age 17 because one's child is going to Ivy league is hilariously short-sighted
Well, at some point you- as a parent- stop being responsible for your child's life. Many would argue that occurs when the child goes away to college and makes their own choices.
Your own link shows that 5 of the top 10 mid-career median salary schools are Ivy League schools. Only Brown (more arts-focused), Columbia (no clue why this isn't there), and Cornell (only Ivy with public ties, and the largest Ivy) aren't included.
successful. With the fruits of early success you can spend the remainder of your life figuring out what makes you happy, and it wont be limited to the things you can do in your home town for $10.
Attending an Ivy League school as an undergraduate is one of the most reliable indicators that a child is going to be successful?
Are you serious? A student of mine, who is not only exceedingly capable but also very pleasant, with many interests outside college (yes, he is a serious musician) applied to several Ivy League schools for his graduate degree but somehow none took him on. He is now going up to NYU, and he will enjoy it.
This is the wrong counter-argument, I think. Top schools get such a number of applicants that they have to turn away a fair number of qualified candidates, and once you are in and are not totally socially inept you can't help but make the connections that will get you set for life. Luck plays a great part at this stage, even though it's anathema to say.
If anyone wants to test the tiger-mother theory they should perhaps look at people who got into decent schools and follow up how they did.
untog didn't say that being successful and going to an Ivy League school are mutually inclusive. Untog said that attending an Ivy League school suggests the individual will be successful. This says nothing positive or negative about other schools.
> Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?
Because, statistically, they're going to earn a lot more money over the course of their careers (especially when you factor engineering students out of the state school equation).
That's great, assuming your kid is actually smart. What if he isn't? If he can pretend to be smart (and all the other things Ivy League schools look for), then his path through life will be much easier by going to a prestigious school.
Completely agree. I find it difficult to comprehend how moving your lifetime earnings potential from 2M to 20M is seen as a horrible thing. You could work 1/10 the amount of your life, have the same amount of money, and figure out what makes you happy with the other 9/10.
I get the feeling most of the people that say money cant buy you happiness have never been dirt poor. I'm not saying money buys happiness, but its damn hard to be happy when you r stressed out over how to pay the rent.
Over 2m? I did some quick extrapolation, which is probably wrong.
Current rent: 1595/mo ~= 19k/yr
Add 2% each year for inflation(probably wrong, but gotta start somewhere) and sum up 42 years (25 to 67) comes to just shy of 1.3M, merely paying your rent. Take taxes out of that 2M and rent+food+retirement is about the only things you can pay for and thats cutting it close.
2M to live in the place I was born just isn't going to cut it. There are of course optimizations, you could buy a condo or marry someone who also works to up it to 4M, but for a quick back of the envelope calculation its close enough.
My original estimation of 20M is probably off by a factor of 2 to 4, depends who you brown nose it with in the ivy leagues.
But basically, every time i think about my current costs and inflation, i realize that the estimated 2M average lifetime earnings potential of my education doesn't get very far.
Sorry, I confused myself. I was thinking of having $2mm net worth upon retirement, not $2mm lifetime earnings. You're right that $2mm lifetime isn't super awesome.
I definitely agree that your estimation of the benefit to graduating 4 years early is off by a few factors, still.
>But the cracks beneath the surface begin to show. [...] Lulu becomes rebellious, openly defying her teacher and her mother and bitterly complaining in public about her home life. By the age of 13, writes Chua, "[Lulu] wore a constant apathetic look on her face, and every other word out of her mouth was 'no' or 'I don't care'."
Looking back, I think I had a breakdown at 13, too.
It's not violins specifically, it's any western orchestral instrument that you can carry to and from school (or piano lessons).
My mother and I were frequently at odds about my violin lessons and practice habits but she was also a nurturing person and tried to explain the benefits of deliberate practice and musical training, which as an adult I now recognize.
Full-on "tiger" parents may be more fixated on western instruments because it's meant to be a status symbol not a means to enrich the child.
I've always assumed that the violin and piano are favoured by tiger parents because they are high-status instruments.
(Please excuse this off-topic rant: it dismays me that the violin is so high-status. The damn things are so shrill and squeaky they make me cover my ears. Meanwhile, the viola and the cello sound exquisitely resonant, yet they, especially the viola, are the ones who got second-class status. It is a tremendous musical injustice. I wonder if it has something to do with violins having been more suitable for virtuoso performance and thus more likely to be written for by primo composers.)
> I've always assumed that the violin and piano are favoured by tiger parents because they are high-status instruments.
Pretty much. There's a concertmaster, and the piano is situated prominently. Harps, cellos, and flutes are also preferred, but less favored.
I'm reasonably sure that my parents picked the piano because they had learned it themselves when young. (My mom still played a little; my dad had lost too much finger flexibility from sports.)
Funny that, my mum put me in piano lessons as well, but she absolutely hates me practicing because I spend 2-3 hours at a time when I get really focused. But fair enough I practice the same few bars continuously until they're perfect :P she also hates orchestral music and finds it all rather boring when I've grown to indulge in it.
Because orchestral music is high brow. The melody in orchestral music, for cultural, acoustic and agility reasons, is usually written in the soprano range, and therefore it is given either to violins or woodwinds in that range.
Unlike woodwinds, a violin doesn't drip on the floor: if you are playing an instrument for social status not having a puddle of spit (or a damp cloth) at your feet is important.
I'm not a fan of the Tiger Mother method of parenting, but the description of the incident hardly sounds like a breakdown. It describes Lulu when she was 4 years old, so it's more of a child's temper tantrum than a breakdown.
It was when she was 13, not 4. At 13 she is certainly capable of understanding her environment, how she's being raised, and realize she's being raised differently than her friends.
>and realize she's being raised differently than her friends.
I think this is an underappreciated point. It's not that this style of parenting is inherently flawed (aside from the emotional abuse), the biggest factor is that she can see that she's not like her friends and the comparatively easy life that her friends have leads to resentment. I'm sure she would be much better off if she were immersed in the Chinese culture where this style of parenting is typical.
You might think that, but evidence suggests you'd be wrong if the experience of Korean students is anything to go by. As Wikipedia notes in its entry on South Korea's extraordinary suicide rate "In cases of youth suicide, the most common cause is pressure related to the College Scholastic Ability Test."
Indeed, social pressure seems to amplify the pain, rather than minimize it through normalization.
"The obsession with academic success has even given rise to a new expression among young people: "umchinah," or my mother's friend's son – the elusive competitor who excels at everything."
> "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."
You may be right, but in this incident she's is referring to specific Chinese cultural norms, not the high expectations in her upbringing.
Heh, the point was that emotional abuse ala Amy Chua isn't a necessary component of being a "tiger mom", so considering it without the abuse angle is reasonable. It's obvious that emotional abuse leads to bad outcomes, its not obvious that tiger parenting necessarily does.
I think you're misreading the article. The first paragraph describes an incident involving a four-year-old Lulu. It's not very clear when the quoted incident occurred, but either way the language used in the outburst would almost certainly not be used by a four-year-old in a tantrum and is much more characteristic of an early teen.
This is a great article. The linked article ("Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?") is also very interesting:
"At the 2-year assessment there were no significant differences in severity of psychosis between schizophrenic patients (SZ) on antipsychotic medications and SZ not on any medications. However, starting at the 4.5-year follow-ups and continuing over the next 15 years, the SZ who were not on antipsychotic medications were significantly less psychotic than those on antipsychotics.”
Sounds like persons who are less functional feel that they need medication more than those who don't. Not that anyone WANTS neuroleptics, the side effects sound terrible.
I would imagine that anyone who wants to deal through them is going to necessarily have more troubles.
This is covered quite thoroughly in chapter 6 of Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic, which has extensive citations of the history and research on this problem.
Neuroleptics make schizophrenia patients more biologically vulnerable to psychosis. Standard antipsychotics block 70-90% of D2 receptors in the brain. To compensate, postsynaptic neurons increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The brain is then supersensitive to dopamine. This leads to dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms.
Aaron Swartz was an incredibly talented and idealistic developer and entrepreneur who made a slew of positive changes the world over.
Barrett Brown is a narcissistic heroin addicted hack journalist whose biggest claims to fame are ones he creates or inflates through media-whoring and being a mouthpiece for Anonymous.
The thing they share in common is the FBI enjoys fucking them both over as hard as they can. I can't say that Barrett deserved it, but in no universe is he in the same category as Aaron.
Barrett Brown was the "Official Unofficial Spokesman for Anonymous". Meaning, he participated in many interviews giving insight into the mindset of the collective, was involved in their IRC chats and generally immersed himself into their world. Some have questioned his description of his role as either being larger or smaller than he has portended in the past. He created the Project PM wiki (http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page) to collect information in private intelligence contractors in the United States and abroad. Mr Brown is a known heroin/opiate addict, alternating between heroin and the opiate substitute Suboxone as he has battled his addiction. He has taken stances that private intelligence gathering corporations influence on government is a threat to our national security. He has been accused of sending threatening letters to law enforcement officials, which he posted--as he does many of his videos--on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOW7GOrXNZI).
My personal opinion is that he was an intelligent young man with a troubled life led astray by drugs and emotional turbulence. I find very few of his topics interesting, and most of the rantings to be paranoid circumambulations regarding the evils of our current government, and his own actions to agitate authorities bring upon responses by the government that feed into his persecution complex. Just my personal opinion, buy frankly I think it's sad. If he does end up in prison, it might present itself to be the best opportunity for Barret to ween himself off his opiate addiction. The fact that he is on Suboxone and alternating between prescribed opiates and heroin is disheartening. Many doctors are afraid to try abstinence-based recovery as opiates are so hard to deal with, but perhaps prison will assist with that.
At the beginning of a mortgage, the overwhelming majority of your payment will be interest; a very small slice is applied to the principal. Over the term of the loan, those small cuts whittle away the principal owed, which in turn lowers the amount of interested charged each payment (a percentage of the principal owed), until at the end of the mortgage your payment is mostly principal.
If you do the math, a typical 30-year mortgage will cost you twice the actual cost of paying cash for a home, so roughly 50% of your payment actually gets converted into equity, assuming your home value was static over the term. This is why people often advise new homeowners to make an extra principal-only payment as often as possible at the beginning of the loan: to cut down the eventual amount of interest you'll end up paying.
That's what I've done with my mortgage. I've been lucky to be in a position to make frequent principal-only payments and should be able to cut a 30-year mortgage to 15-ish or so, saving a metric grundle of cash in the process. Given the nature of the conversation happening around this thread, I suppose I should state my reasons for trading away job-seeking flexibility: I LOVE that eventually, I'll have a roof and four walls independent of my employment situation.
As someone who just bought a home -- I can also assure others in this thread, there is a lot of emotional value in owning your own place (reality check -- yes I know the bank owns it for a while) -- but for me and my wife, the value comes from being able to do whatever we want with the house.
Expand the basement? Sure! Get a bunch of dogs? Why not! Commit to getting to know the neighbors? Sounds great. All while not having to worry about a landlord doing whatever they want at the end of a lease.
It's a very rewarding thing. Is it for everyone? Absolutely not, much in the same way having kids or getting married isn't for everyone either. But for me, there is a lot of value in the actual ownership.
>>Expand the basement? Sure! Get a bunch of dogs? Why not! Commit to getting to know the neighbors? Sounds great. All while not having to worry about a landlord doing whatever they want at the end of a lease.
It's funny that two out of the three things you said are additional expenses that the house enables.
Of course, we aren't disputing the emotional value of owning a home. We're just saying that it's a poor financial decision most of the time.
>>It's funny that two out of the three things you said are additional expenses that the house enables.
Those same two things may also be valuable to the owner, regardless of expense. Expand my basement so I have room to continue working on the hobby I love? Sounds good.
You obviously don't live where I do; nearly all changes to the house require a permit which takes 6-12 months to get and is quite expensive, and for anything that changes the # square feet (like expanding the basement) will be denied.
It depends. The interest portion is very high in the beginning of the mortgage and very low at the end.
In a typical 30yr mortgage, you will make 360 monthly (roughly equal) payments. If your mortgage payment is $1000/mo, payment #1 will be approximately $950 interest and $50 principal. Payment #360 will be ~ $50 interest and $950 principal.
Most people move every five or six years (historical, might not be true with current RE market), so they complete about 20% of their total mortgage schedule. However, because of this ramped apportionment, most people still owe the lender much more than 80% of their initial purchase price.
The first time I did the math on this, I thought I had discovered a huge consumer-hostile scam. But actually it's quite reasonable -- mortgages are designed to keep payments equal over the term of the loan, so there's really no other way to do it.
I just bought a home and 40% of my payments are principal from day 1. That's at 3.5% interest. If you get a conventional loan instead of a jumbo, you can do even better than that. Mortgage interest deductions make the calculus even better. Plus tax-free capital gains.
It was quite the slam-dunk easy decision to make where I live (San Francisco), considering how hot the rental market is. My house rents for $1k more than the monthly mortgage!
Interesting. If I understand the math correctly, that means that you have an effectively variable interest rate over the life of the loan (though presumably it will average out to the 3.5%). Is there a special name for that kind of loan?
The reason mortgages front load the interest is not to victimize borrowers (that's just a pleasant side effect) but because in the early days of the loan, you are using more of the lender's money. You pay it back slowly, but you pay interest in each payment on the amount that you're using at that point in the term.
So payment #1, you pay interest on ~100% of the loan. Plus a little extra to reduce your principal. Next payment is interest on ~99.8% (100% minus 1/360th), plus a little extra (more than last time) for principal reduction so that the payments total the same amount. On and on til payment #360.
If you're paying 40% principal on payment #1, by my math, either your effective interest rate is variable over the term, or you're choosing to overpay the invoice (applying the excess to principal -- which makes a huge difference in the early years).
I'm surprised the economics of buying work out so well in SF these days. When I left, it was the other way around. Interest rates help a lot. Congrats on the house!
It's not variable, it's fixed at 3.5% for 30 years. A "jumbo" loan has a higher interest rate than a conventional simply because of its high initial principal, making it a riskier proposition for the bank. What calculator are you using to calculate principal vs interest for a fixed rate loan? Remember, the lower the fixed interest rate, the higher % of principal you are paying at day 0.
The economics of buying vs renting has changed a great deal since I moved here. 5 years ago, buying was rather questionable. I took advantage of "cheap" rents to save up for buying a house when it finally became a buyer's market. Now rents have nearly doubled, but housing prices haven't gone up proportionately.
However, blindly following advice on renter-ship is as bad as blindly following advices on homeownership. Every situation is different, and you should do your math per your specific situation.
True. However, in the majority of cases the math is overwhelmingly on the side of renters. Whereas conventional wisdom goes the other way. This is one of the reasons we had the housing crash. The house of cards can only stand for so long.
There are lots of calculators that will show you, but for a $100,000 loan at 5% you only get about $1450 in equity the first year and only another 1550 the second year, but you pay about $4950 in interest the first year and $4900 in interest the second.
Unless you make lots of extra payments you gather equity very slowly. The break even interest vs equity per year point is at the half way point.
People often pay double the cost of the house, so on average (for the life of the loan), half of your mortgage payment is equity. In the beginning the vast majority (90%+) is interest.
Here's a calculator I whipped up: http://instacalc.com/1737 (adjust the numbers as you need; this is a side project of mine).
"Those who know me well in the the developer and tech community recognize that I have always tried to conduct myself in a way that builds bridges for everyone."
I couldn't get through the first sentence without laughing. How does shaming two men by posting their picture on Twitter qualify as "building bridges for everyone"? I think she is lacking in self-awareness.
For her it's all about branding and cashing in. Even her blog domain suggest that she's not here to code, but to create a name for herself in terms of "sexism at workplace".
>A good start, but shopping around is hard, if not impossible
I think shopping around, properly conceived, should be the primary care physician's job. If a doctor is referring e.g. 10 people a month to a specialist, then obviously they are going to be in a much better position to evaluate the options than a patient.
I believe that Sherpaa, Jay Parkinson's company, provides this "shopping around" service (https://sherpaa.com/).
Not really. Hospital networks are merging, affiliating and consolidating. So if your primary care doctor is affiliated with Hospital X, and specialist group Y is also affiliated with hospital X, there's a good chance that you're going to be referred to specialist group Y.
The exception is when you have some unusual circumstance, and they try to find the world's authority on your condition.
Before posting this I took a look at your comment history to make sure I wasn't feeding a troll. Instead, I found tons of quality contributions. You're better than this, my fellow HN'er.
"What brings the situation to an end is two horrifying incidents. First, Lulu hacks off her hair with a pair of scissors; then, on a family holiday to Moscow, she and Chua get into a public argument that culminates in Lulu smashing a glass in a cafe, screaming, "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy-chua-...