ABSTRACT
This chapter comprises a feminist-historical materialist analysis of two high profile Anglo-American maternal memoirs produced by two such mothers: Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Julie Myerson's The Lost Child. Both works are of particular interest as they were greeted with spluttering outrage and accusations of child cruelty that were clearly unjustified by anything revealed in these candid autobiographical works. The chapter proposes that the public mother-shaming endured by Chua and Myerson was not provoked by concern for their children – who could hardly benefit from being placed at the centre of such inflammatory accusations but by the contradictions the memoirs expose in the current, socially validated neoliberal approach to childhood and parenting. Chua's memoir was preceded by a Wall Street Journal article with the more provocative title, 'Why Chinese Mothers are Superior'. This was accompanied by a photograph of Chua smiling triumphantly while her teenage daughters displayed their musical talents.
