"It's like déjà vu—the nightmare all over again. I seem to never learn," says Amy Chua, of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother fame. That 2011 book about her disciplinary parenting of her two daughters had people publicly wondering whether, as Chua laughingly puts it, she really burned some stuffed animals in the service of teaching some Larger Life Lesson. Today she's talking about an early critical ambush on The Triple Package (The Penguin Press), cowritten with husband and fellow Yale Law prof Jed Rubenfeld.
The book meticulously documents that a variety of subgroups—Chinese, Mormons, Jews, Iranians, Indians, and Nigerians, among others—are higher- achieving than the average American; its 182 pages of text come with more than 100 pages of supporting notes. In analyzing how these groups, all of which identify as outsiders in some way, have done so well, the authors suggest that all Americans might profit from emulating these "model minorities."
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What could go wrong? Oh, I don't know—accusations of racism? (Ridiculous—look at the variety of groups just listed.) Elitism? ("We're not saying any groups are better. We're saying some groups are doing better in terms of traditional metrics like income and test scores and stuff like that," says Rubenfeld.) Victim blaming? ("We say up front that the lack of the Triple Package does not explain why people are poor in the first place," says Chua.) No matter—all of these charges are already being leveled.
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So what is this Triple Package? It's a social-psychological model that, the authors contend, describes these groups' orientation toward achievement: They all cultivate a superiority complex, a group conviction that they are smarter, more virtuous and industrious—just better—than "the rest," which makes them resilient in the face of failure and frustration. They all implant a sense of insecurity in their members, an urge to measure up to expectations, to avoid letting down the team or embarrassing the family. And they all practice a brand of child- rearing that inculcates impulse control and the ability to delay gratification.
Chua and Rubenfeld readily concede that each of these components has a dark side—they devote a whole chapter to effectively denouncing their own model: In it we learn that Phillip Lim's mother, as of 2011 anyway, had never attended one of his runway shows ("I've never felt ready to receive her," he has said), and that as Amy Tan stood over the open casket of a schoolmate who had probably died of leukemia, her mother said, "This is what happens when you don't listen to your mother." Chua says her own parents were horrified when she went off to Harvard Law; she was supposed to become a physicist, dammit!
Rubenfeld, in particular, stresses that the Triple Package is like a ladder that can be kicked away when family or group success invites a broader range of options; he himself studied drama for two years at Juilliard before going to law school and is a successful novelist on the side. But both authors are adamant that America could use more Triple Package rigor to counteract our permissive parenting and the smug, instant-gratification culture we've become.
I don't know: I keep thinking of Amy Tan's mother and how every generation tends to tyrannize the next with its fears, its prejudices, its superstitions, even its hopes and dreams.