Tiger mom's got her stripes

Jackie May: You're tired of Amy Chua, that Chinese American Tiger Mom and her beastly parenting, aren't you? So I'm sorry to bore you with the subject once again.

I thought I had had enough of her and the reaction to how she has chosen to raise her two daughters. But now I have the book, and I'm fascinated. Not by her parenting, but by her. She's a little crazy, and very funny.

Try this for weird. Early in the book, which is about how she - the daughter of an immigrant family - raised her children, Chua says she doesn't believe in astrology, adding: "I think people who do have serious problems."

But then she says that the Chinese Zodiac describes her daughters, Sophia and Lulu "perfectly". She goes on to tell us why, and that she was born in the Year of the Tiger. "I don't want to boast or anything, but Tiger people are noble, fearless, powerful, authoritative, and magnetic."

By her own admission Chua has problems - she takes the Chinese Zodiac way too seriously.

She's confident and self-assured. Nothing wrong with that. She's clearly bright, highly educated and ambitious. Married to Jed Rubenfeld, a Yale law professor and the author of mystery novels, they are one of many Chinese Jewish families in America. This isn't her first book either.

But the most important fact about her, something many articles written about her and her book fail to mention, is that she gave up micro-managing her children.

When Lulu, her youngest daughter, turned 13, she refused to go along with her mother's pushy parenting. Chua backed off and agreed to let go of the tight leashes. She calls it her Great Retreat.

In an interview with the Times of London she admits that "things are much calmer, and everyone seems happier".

Her children are doing well, and nobody seems too resentful. In an open letter to her mother, the oldest daughter, Sophia, says, "If I died tomorrow, I would die feeling I've lived my whole life at 110 percent. And for that, Tiger Mom, thank you."