Entries for January 2011

At long last, there’s a national best-selling book that offers practical and proven advice on many of the social ills that plague our nation.

This book explains with measured solutions how to curb childhood obesity and enhance children’s nutrition, improve communication between married couples and among parents and their kids, instill sound values in the next generation, conduct civil political discourse, engage in community involvement and service, improve time-management skills, avoid the pitfalls of media saturation and much more.

The author isn’t a physician or a policy expert or a social scientist; she’s not a preacher or a teacher — she’s not even certified in her field. Nonetheless, if every American family purchased this book and followed the simple recipes for living contained in it, our communities and our country would be profoundly better off.

She's opinionated. She's controversial. She's a grizzly mama. And her outspoken comments about certain Americans are generating Twitter memes and death threats.

She's not Sarah Palin; she's Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of the new book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," a tell-all about her successful (and not-so-successful) use of "Chinese parenting" to raise her two daughters.

Released last week with an excerpt in the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Chua's book has garnered the attention of parents, parenting experts and Asian-American culture observers thanks to her provocative assertions that Western parents are too concerned with our children's happiness, compared to "Chinese mothers" who, in her view, are correctly obsessed with their children's achievements and success.

Mrs. Chua uses the term "Chinese mothers" broadly to describe a stereotypically Asian style of authoritarian parenting. Compared to Western parents, she makes sweeping generalizations, such as that:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the photographs of 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green and her purported killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, may speak volumes about American youth culture.

Christina was the third-grade victim of the shooting that took place at the "Congress on Your Corner" event sponsored by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday in Tucson. The image of Christina released to the media is the picture of innocence and wholesomeness — her sweet smile and wide eyes conveying the kind and capable spirit for which she was known.

Christina's friends point to her fun sense of humor and willingness to talk with anyone as traits they will miss at Mesa Verde Elementary School. Recently elected to the student council, she had started to develop an interest in government, which prompted her neighbor and friend Susan Hileman to take Christina to Mrs. Giffords' event.

Born amid fear and foreboding on September 11, 2001, Christina was the picture of possibility and promise. A baseball player who also took ballet lessons, Christina was being raised in a faithful home and recently received her First Communion. By all accounts, she exhibited a zest for life that was fed by the love and encouragement of her family and friends.

The portrait of the man charged in her death is a stark and scary contrast, indeed.