Amy “Tiger Mother” Chua, the Yale professor who enraged much of the United States’ parenting population earlier this year when she wrote a Wall Street Journal piece about her strict child-rearing techniques, can safely say her rigidity accomplished something.
According to Above The Law, Chua’s eldest daughter Sophia has been accepted to Harvard University. Young Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld received her acceptance letter earlier this week and “has already made up her mind that Harvard is where she’ll attend college.”
Amy Chua received ample criticism in January, when she penned “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal and listed some of the restrictions she’d given her daughters. The rules included but were not limited to: not being allowed to attend sleepovers, have play dates, participate in school plays, complain about not being able to do school plays, get anything less than an A, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, or opt out of playing the piano or violin.
Catherine Connors, a writer and award-winning parenting blogger, told The Daily Caller in January that Chua’s parenting decisions are “beyond extreme” and could make children fall ill.
“When I heard about this article, my first reaction was that this had to be satire,” Connors told TheDC. “But obviously, it wasn’t, so my second reaction was that this is a borderline abusive parenting style. If these kids are shamed and harangued into performing well, what you end up seeing is they end up being sick.”
Others have opposed Chua’s methods and dubbed her abusive for name-calling her daughters and possibly bullying the young girls into perfection. But Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld herself stood up for her mom soon after the national outrage against Tiger Mother ensued.
In a letter to the New York Post titled “Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom”, new-Harvard bound cub Chua-Rubenfeld wrote, “Having you as a mother was no tea party. There were some play dates I wish I’d gone to and some piano camps I wish I’d skipped. But now that I’m 18 and about to leave the tiger den, I’m glad you and Daddy raised me the way you did.”
Like most students who get into Harvard, Chua-Rubenfeld is no newbie to success. At 14, she made her Carnegie Hall piano debut. She also comes from a sharp family, as her Tiger Mother and father attended Harvard.
