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| Tiger Mom: me me me |
In case you missed it, (which I'm sure you didn't), last year a law professor at Yale published a book explaining how she was a brilliant mother as well as a fabulously successful academic. I expect she can cook and do really athletic stuff in the sack too. Oh well.
The premise of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is that strict Chinese-style parenting is much better than namby-pamby Western parenting.
The book is a memoir by Amy Chua of how she brought up her two daughters with no playdates, no sleep-overs and two hours instrument practice a day. Since so many parents already seem to schedule their children up the wazoo (French lessons, band practice, therapy) – and then put them on prescription drugs if they don't conform – I really hope we don't start taking this shite seriously.
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Ceres is in Leo in an out of sign opposition to Jupiter in Pisces. Maybe that's a very big need to show off about being a mother. Leo is all about the performance, and at its lowest extremely self-centred.
When asked to discuss the book Chua's daughter said: “I’m sure it’s all about you anyway.”
And what about her Moon, the traditional planet of mothering? It's conjunct Dark Moon Lilith – the planet of anti-mothering and Mercury (children and communications) in Libra. Libra is an intellectual air sign, so it's no surprise that her approach to parenting was, to say the least, rather cerebral, with Mercury there I guess she really had to tell everyone about it. The DM Lilith can be our most unacknowledged darkness, the thing we really cannot bear to look at. What's interesting is that Chua clearly had not realised how much she inadvertently revealed her own darkness in the book.
But there must have been tremendous emotions for Chua because her Sun is in watery Scorpio exactly trine Jupiter in even waterier Pisces. This is a potentially obsessive combination, and frankly her behaviour tips over into bonkers. Some of the things she describes in her book are incredibly emotionally cruel, a speciality of a poorly developed Scorpio. In fact, some of it, for example not allowing her daughter to drink or go to the loo, is simple child abuse. Mars opposite Saturn is a classic signature for violence. Mars (pain) is in Leo (the self) and Saturn (discipline) is in Aquarius (the other, them, society).
I wonder what the reaction to her behaviour would have been if she were not a professor.
She says she feels no guilt – but with Jupiter in Pisces, she will. Her daughters will be able to tell her exactly how good she really was as a mother when they have their own children, unless she's put them off the whole idea of breeding altogether.
Chua's back in the news at the moment because of some research that shows Chinese parenting might be rather horrid. To read an article about that click here.
Me, I'm off to indulge my children.
