Amy Chua, Yale law professor and author of the derided yet oft-purchased best-seller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in which she criticizes the Western style of parenting, writes in an excerpt of her novel for The Wall Street Journal, “I’ve noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. […] Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches.” 1 In other words, this focus on self-esteem maintenance actually serves to stymie intellectual growth as opposed to helping it burgeon, and overall, this makes sense. If everything we do is “excellent,” “super,” or “very nice,” then what summit should we strive for if we’ve reached the apex at the age of ten-years old? This is not to suggest that encouragement is unnecessary, but when encouragement is disingenuous, then the individual is also being set up to fail when he or she is moved from the parental shelter into the world of higher education and employment where academia-driven professors and oft-indifferent bosses critique without interminable praise and pats on the back.
Moreover, consistent praise and approval might even negatively affect the way that children will ultimately feel about themselves. For example, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck “has conducted studies with hundreds of students, mostly early adolescents, in which experimenters gave the subjects a set of difficult problems from an IQ test. Afterward, some of the young people were praised for their ability: ‘You must be smart at this.’”; however, those that were praised for their intelligence “were more likely to turn down the opportunity to do a challenging new task that they could learn from,” which suggests that their unfamiliarity with failure or less-than-admired performance sets them up for a more sheltered existence, which can also lead to “anxiety and depression.”2
So, while Chua has come under fire for her extreme parenting methods – and to be honest, some are rather harsh, particularly when she calls her daughter “garbage” or “little white donkey” – she has a fine point about the dangers of sheltering children, so, why has she gotten so much flack for this? The dangers of over-praise is a theme that we are exposed to at a young age through a number of fairy tales, warning us to avoid vanity and cockiness lest we end up like the lazy rabbit who lost to the slow and steady tortoise or the three little pigs, two of which built their houses expediently without taking time to have it properly inspected for foundational difficulties that would leave them homeless after the first gust of wind (or breath as it may be).
What might be my favorite fairy tale that sheds light on this recurrent revelation is “Little Red Riding Hood,” though the moral is often mistaken and misconstrued as a warning for children to stay on the beaten path and not stray from parental instruction. However, a deeper subtext within this fairy tale is one that explores the illusory world created from the lack of strict parenting and how what might be obviously dysfunctional or malevolent is misinterpreted as normal and innocuous.
Although there are number of variation of “Little Red Riding Hood,” the tale was originally told by French author Charles Perrault around 1697, and in this tale – much like the also popular Brother’s Grimm version – the reader is introduced to Red as “the prettiest creature who was ever seen,” whose “mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more.” 3 In other words, Red was hardly the object of scorn or judgment. Instead, the excessive cosseting by both maternal figures in her family has fashioned this cloying, saccharine atmosphere, and while there are benefits to encouragement, this prefaces Red’s ignorance and inexperience when she ventures to grandmother’s house and encounters the wolf, an ominous creature who “had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest.” Aside from the sexual undertones of this encounter that pits the virginal country girl, who was “the prettiest creature who was ever seen,” against another creature that symbolizes the natural hunting instinct within animal –kind, Red’s ignorance to the danger posed here – both sexually and physically – is emphasized, particularly when she exposits exactly where she’s going and how to get there. Overall, Red’s ignorance, at least in part brought on by her mother’s and grandmother’s enabling ultimately leads her into a nefarious situation.
The subtext to the original version of “Little Red Riding Hood” is also explored in 1996’s Freeway, which stars Reese Witherspoon as Vanessa Lutz, an illiterate, sexually experienced, daughter of a crack-head who is often molested by her crack-head stepfather. And while Freeway provides us with a character who is more experienced in regards to her sexuality and the violence she has witnessed, she is still ignorant to what genuine love or support consists of. What I mean to suggest is that Vanessa views cops – or pigs – as villains who continually make her an orphan by taking “her whole family away” for various infractions like prostitution, drug possession, or parole violation without seeing the dysfunctional play in which she has been cast.
Despite the fact that Vanessa’s mom Ramona (Amanda Plummer) is the obvious degenerate who is easiest to vilify for her preference for crack over her daughter, the wonkiness of their relationship is illustrated when she tries to plead her way out of an arrest by stating “[Veronica] just got out of children’s services, and I can’t afford to be busted again. They’ll take her away from me.” Here, we see a maternal side shining through, and whether it’s a cop out or not is unclear, but it is clear that Veronica loves her mother when she holds back tears long enough to be Ramona’s hands, helping her smoke a cigarette before a last hug, and chalking her parents’ recent conflict up to them “just going through a hard time, that’s all,” allowing us to see how little Veronica understands the twisted triad of her family, which also poses the question: if twisted love is all you know, does it negate the emotion?
A combination of her mother’s arrest and a desire to avoid another foster home drives Veronica to find her grandmother, her only known relative, but someone who may not know that Veronica exists. Regardless, Veronica’s car eventually breaks down and she’s picked up by Bob Wolverton (Keifer Sutherland), who turns out to be the I-5 killer, a murderer who has spent the last few weeks praying on hookers and leaving their bodies on the side of the highway.
While Wolverton’s spectacles, eloquent diction, and tweed suit with leather patches deter Veronica from assuming he’s a homicidal maniac, Freeway offers a similar example of ignorance leading to peril. While Red Riding Hood was unable to discern the danger lurking within the visibly ominous wolf, Veronica is swept up in the neat appearance and intelligence of Wolverton, unable to see the creepiness that lies underneath his façade until she is already in his Blazer and travelling down the highway. Although there is a social commentary running here about classification though appearance, Veronica has been trained to see Wolverton as someone who is not her, someone who is not a “urinal,” and this allows his to make his move by eliciting the information he’s seeking. In Freeway, it is not the grandmother’s house, but a justification to kill Veronica once he can categorize her as “garbage people,” someone who he’s “absolutely reached his fucking limit with,” those whose puerilities are “so intrinsic to your fucking nature you’re not even aware of when you do it.”
However, Veronica is unaware of where Wolverton’s hatred of these acts comes from because, to her, they are second nature and behavior learned from a laissez faire mother, step father, and foster parents who, while they may not have encouraged her actions, did little to discourage them.
In the end, perhaps the same reason why we truncate and focus on the minimal moral within certain fairytales is because our fear of exposing the youth to anything perceived as “damaging” or “self-esteem hindering” has overridden our sense of responsibility to set examples and illuminate the positive and the negative, the malevolent, the benevolent, and the ambivalent.
1Chua, Amy. The Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” 2011.
2 Paul, Annie Murphy, Time, “The Roar of the Tiger Mom” 2011.
3 Perrault, Charles “Little Red Riding Hood” http://werewolves.monstrous.com/perrault_version.htm
