If you haven't already read enough about Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, you might want to check out this Balkinization post by Chua's Yale Law School colleague, Ian Ayres, in which Ayres describes denying his 7-year old daughter a dog unless she publishes an article in an academic peer-reviewed journal. If you think that description sounds a little harsh, just read it.
Photo: From East Asian Inspiration, which says that the happy family is from Jinan Paomaling Wild Animal World in Shandong province, and that it is common for Chinese zoos to use surrogate dog mothers to nurse rejected tiger cubs. Admittedly, the photo has nothing really to do with the post, except that if my children were not already grown, I would certainly think about challenging them to write a poem inspired by the photo, for publication in the New Yorker. Or else.
