It’s a sign of just how deep tensions are around parenting today that, over two years after Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” was published, its combination of shocking revelation, serious reflection and tongue-in-cheek exaggeration still sends T. Rex-scale ripples skittering across the surface of our sociocultural Dixie cups.

在虎妈蔡美儿(Amy Chua)的书《虎妈的战歌》(Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother)出版两年多以后，这本书中的大胆剖析、严肃思考以及半开玩笑的夸张措辞仍然在坊间释放著有如T. Rex乐队一般经久不衰的影响力。从中我们可以看出，围绕子女教育的话题存在着多么大的分歧。

Two weeks ago, novelist Kim Wong Keltner’s “Tiger Babies Strike Back” was published ─ her nonfiction account of growing up under the paw of her authoritarian Tiger parents. Last week, the web was abuzz over the release of UT Austin psychology prof Su Yeong Kim’s longitudinal study tracking the parenting styles and social outcomes of over 400 Chinese American families in the Bay Area, which seemed to show that children of Tiger Parents had both poorer emotional health and lower GPAs than those of parents who embraced warmer and fuzzier child-rearing strategies.

几周以前，小说家黄锦莲(Kim Wong Keltner)出版了她的非小说作品《虎崽反击》(Tiger Babies Strike Back)，讲述了她本人在威严的虎爸虎妈的管教下成长的故事。此后不久，得克萨斯州大学奥斯汀分校(UT Austin)心理学教授金洙荣(Su Yeong Kim, 音译)发表的一份追踪研究报告在网上引发了热议，这项研究通过追踪美国旧金山湾区(Bay Area)400多个华裔家庭的教育方式和教育成果发现，似乎虎爸虎妈教育出的孩子在心理健康以及学业成绩两方面的表现均不及在推崇温馨关爱教育方式的家庭中长大的孩子。

Up until now, Chua herself has assiduously stayed out of the fray. “I really didn’t want to get into the middle of this,” she told me by phone from New Haven. “People keep trying to pit me against Kim Wong Keltner, or to ask me to comment on that parenting study, and I keep telling them ‘Look, all I did was write my personal family story. I’m not a social scientist, I’m not a parenting expert. So all this is like asking apples to comment on oranges.’” (Keltner isn’t keen on being positioned as the Anti-Chua either: “I really see my book as an alternative, not a rebuke to ‘Battle Hymn,’” she says. “And frankly, [Chua] seems like she’s smart and funny and highly accomplished and very beautiful, and we’d probably have a great time hanging out.”)

截至目前，蔡美儿一直都在刻意避免介入争论之中。身在纽黑文(New Haven)的她通过电话向我表示：“我真的不希望牵涉其中。人们不断尝试着让我和黄锦莲大唱对台戏，或是请我对金洙荣的研究发表评论，而我总是告诉他们，‘要知道，我所做的只是写出了自家的故事。我既不是社会学家，也不是育儿专家。所以，这纯属驴唇不对马嘴。’”（黄锦莲同样也并不乐于被视作蔡美儿的对立面，她说：“我的书只是讲出了另一种教育方式，而非对《虎妈的战歌》的驳斥。坦率地讲，蔡美儿看起来聪明、幽默、才华横溢又非常漂亮，如果我们一起出去玩的话，说不定两个人都会很开心呢。”）

In fact, Chua says she’s especially confused by those who see “Tiger Babies Strike Back” as a rebuttal of something she advocates. “I read her excerpt and Keltner strikes me as a really funny person, with a poignant and important perspective,” she says. “And anyone who actually reads my whole book would understand that what she has to say is completely consistent with where I ended up. I talk about my father in the last few chapters, and about how he was the outlaw in his own family, how he hated his own Chinese mother and was totally rebellious against his oppressive parents. And what I said was that when this kind of parenting succeeds it succeeds, but when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. By the time my father came of age, his parents were basically dead to him. That’s something no parent wants to see happen.”

实际上，蔡美儿表示，她尤其不能理解那些将《虎崽反击》视为对她的主张进行反击的人。她说：“我读过了《虎崽反击》的节选，我觉得黄锦莲是一个非常幽默的人，她的视角发人深省，值得我们关注。任何真正读过整本《虎妈的战歌》的读者都会明白，黄锦莲所表达的观点与我在书中阐述的结论不谋而合。在《虎妈的战歌》的最后几章中，我谈到了自己的父亲，谈到了他与他家庭的格格不入，他有多么憎恨自己的华裔母亲以及他对自己强势父母的激烈反抗。我那时就在书中讲到，这种严格的教育方式要么成功，要么失败。在我父亲成年以后，他和他的父母基本上没有什么感情。没有哪位父母希望这种事情会降临到自己头上。”

It’s certainly something she didn’t want to see with her younger daughter Lulu, whose defiance in the face of her mother’s onslaught ultimately led Chua to rethink her Tiger ways.

这也绝对不是蔡美儿希望在小女儿露露(Lulu)身上见到的事情，露露对母亲严厉管教的反抗最终令蔡美儿对“虎式”教育做出了反思。

“I ultimately chose to go the other way with Lulu,” she says. “I didn’t want her to break off from our family, which is something that Keltner and others ended up doing at some point in their lives.”

蔡美儿说：“我最终选择了露露喜欢的方式。我不希望她和家庭决裂，这是黄锦莲和其他很多人在人生中都曾有过的经历。”

But, given seeming evidence to the contrary, like the Kim study, does Chua still think Tiger Parenting works? That’s a question that generates ─ not ambivalence, exactly, but certainly more nuance than is seen in many of the commentaries around “Battle Hymn,” both pro and con.

但是，考虑到包括金洙荣的研究在内的截然相反的论据，蔡美儿是否仍然认为“虎式”教育行之有效呢？这并不是一个引发矛盾的问题，不过在围绕《虎妈的战歌》的诸多正面或负面的评论中，这无疑是最能激起涟漪的一个问题。

“Well, my first thought is that I’m glad people like Kim are doing these studies!” she says. “I think ‘traditional’ Asian parenting often is too harsh and oppressive in a nonproductive way, and it’s important to highlight the costs. But then again, if it’s true that Chinese parents are just like Western ones ─ and if tiger parenting leads to lower grades ─ then why are Chinese Americans so wildly over-represented at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science and in the best U.S. conservatories and in the Ivy Leagues? I don’t believe that Asians are ‘naturally smarter,’ or that they’re inherently more self-motivated.”

蔡美儿说：“我的第一反应就是，我很高兴有金洙荣这样的人在进行相关研究！我认为‘传统’的亚洲家庭教育方式往往都过于严格、过于压抑，不能达到预期的效果，强调这种教育方式所需付出的代价的确至关重要。但是，需要重申的是，如果美国的华裔家长和西方家长在教育方式上果真一模一样的话──如果“虎式”教育会降低孩子的学业成绩的话──那么为什么在纽约的重点高中斯特伊弗桑特高中(Stuyvesant)和布朗克斯科学高中(Bronx Science)、在美国顶尖的音乐学院以及常春藤盟校中，华裔美国人的比例会如此之高？我并不相信亚裔‘天资聪颍’，或是他们的进取心天生就更强。”

There are certainly a few clear issues with Kim’s data, which she herself acknowledges: It is a study that focuses on Chinese Americans of a certain background (mostly Hong Kong and Cantonese immigrants) in a particular region, the Bay Area, where Chinese Americans are a plurality and very nearly a majority.

毋庸置疑，金洙荣的研究数据存在一些明显的问题，她本人也承认这些问题的存在：这项研究的主要研究对象是有着特定背景的华裔美国人（大多为香港和广东移民）。他们都来自一个特定的区域──旧金山湾区，在那里，华裔美国人人数众多，几乎成为了当地最大的族裔。

And though her sample is representative of the area and context from which it was drawn, the median income and education levels of the parents in question were significantly lower than the U.S. norm for Chinese Americans, much less Asian Americans.

虽然她的数据能够代表湾区的状况，但是当地华裔家长的收入中值以及教育水平却远低于全美华裔的平均水平，更不要说与亚裔美国人的平均水平相比了。

Kim notes that they controlled for income and socioeconomic status in order to eliminate variables that might impact their analysis of parenting-style distribution ─ and ultimately found that the basic proportions of Harsh, Tiger, Supportive and Easygoing parents was consistent despite those factors. But in doing so, they also made it impossible to clearly see the impact of those variables on student outcomes.

金洙荣指出，研究团队控制了家长的收入和社会经济地位对数据的影响，以剔除可能影响他们对于不同家庭教育方式所占比例的分析的变量，研究最终发现，尽管上述因素对结果存在一定的影响，但严厉型、虎式型、支持型和温和型家长的基本比例变化不大。不过，这种研究方法也令他们无法明确探究这些变量对学生教育成果的影响。

Class and education clearly play a role in the effectiveness of “Tiger”-style parenting ─ at least as far as academic achievement. My parents were strict, and had high expectations for my achievement, but they also did much more than just encourage and enforce: They spent hours working with me, answering questions, teaching workarounds, patiently (and sometimes impatiently) putting as much effort into my education as I did. Would that be true of parents who don’t speak English, or didn’t graduate from high school, or who work 80-hour weeks at a restaurant and come home exhausted? You could make a case that for parents whose backgrounds and cultural context don’t allow them to roll up their sleeves and help, being Supportive could certainly produce better results than being Harsh or Tiger.

课业及教育显然对“虎式”教育的成效起到了一定的作用，至少对学业成绩是如此。我的父母就很严格，他们对我的未来寄予了很高的希望，但是他们做的远不止鼓励我和要求我：他们经常花费数个小时和我一起学习、回答我的问题并教我解决问题之道，耐心地（有时候急躁地）在我的学习中付出和我同样多的努力。对于那些不会讲英语的家长，或高中都没毕业的家长，或每周在餐馆打工80个小时、回家之后精疲力竭的家长，情况可能会大相径庭吧？不过，有充分的理由可以说明，对于那些受到自己背景和文化的限制、对子女教育爱莫能助的家长，采用支持型的教育方式显然可以比严厉型和虎式型取得更好的效果。

I generally describe my parenting style as some weird mix of Tiger and Panda (Tinda? Pager?). I’ll do whatever’s necessary to help my kids achieve their goals ─ but the goals have to be theirs.

我把我的教育子女方式概括为一种虎式型和熊猫型的奇妙组合。我会尽我所能帮助我的孩子达成目标──但是这个目标也必须是他们的目标。

If they want to be championship ballroom dancers or bowhunters or street mimes, more power to them. I’ll sew sequins on unitards, I’ll set up bullseyes in the backyard. I’ll even learn how to press berets and apply pancake makeup. But I’ll also expect them to commit to putting in their best effort, and not giving up on their dream just because, you know, it’s hard. And at least they’ll know I’m in the trenches with them, though ─ walking against the same high wind, trapped inside the same invisible box, and hopefully finding ways to make the hard parts fun.

如果他们想参加国标舞大赛、成为弓箭猎手或者街头默剧表演艺人，我会赋予他们更多的选择权。我会帮他们在演出服上缝好亮片、在后院里摆好靶子。我甚至还会学习怎样熨烫贝雷帽以及画出街头艺人的妆容。但是，我希望他们自己也能全力以赴，不会仅仅因为觉得困难而轻易放弃梦想。至少，他们会知道我和他们是并肩作战的，一起面对阻力、一同经历困境，满怀希望地寻找让艰苦的过程变得妙趣横生的办法。

And both Chua and Keltner would likely agree.

蔡美儿和黄锦莲应该都会对此表示同意。

“That’s what I really like about Keltner’s book, from what I’ve seen of it,” says Chua. “You can tell it’s warm. It’s funny. You may be super strict or really lax ─ and as long as your family has love, warmth and a sense of humor, the kids will be all right.”

蔡美儿称：“从我已经读过的章节来看，这就是我喜欢黄锦莲这本书的原因。你会发现这本书温暖、幽默。你可能是那种极其严苛的或者那种非常随性的家长，但只要你的家庭充满爱、温暖和幽默感，你们的孩子就会健康成长。”