"Tiger" parenting
"Tiger" parenting is a distinct and often contentious parenting style characterized by a strict, authoritarian approach aimed at pushing children to excel, particularly in academics and extracurricular activities like music. This style emphasizes high expectations and a competitive spirit, often requiring children to engage in extensive practice regardless of their personal interests. The term gained prominence in 2011 with Amy Chua's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," which details her experiences raising her daughters with this method, reflecting her own strict upbringing within an Asian-American context.
Critics of tiger parenting argue that it can lead to emotional distress, as children may receive little affection and face harsh discipline. Studies indicate that such high demands can negatively impact children's self-esteem and mental health. Conversely, supporters maintain that this style instills discipline and work ethic, contrasting it with perceived leniency in some American parenting approaches. While tiger parenting is often associated with East Asian cultures, it ultimately represents a specific parenting philosophy that prioritizes achievement and resilience over emotional nurturing. The ongoing debate surrounding its effectiveness continues to attract scholarly attention and public discourse.
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"Tiger" parenting
Tiger parenting is a controversial parenting style that utilizes a strict, authoritarian approach in which parents push their children beyond traditional limits to excel at academics or music and/or other extracurricular activities. Tiger parents cultivate a competitive spirit and expect their child to be the best. Whether the child likes the activity he or she must pursue and excel at is irrelevant; the child must spend countless hours practicing and perfecting the skill.
Critics accuse tiger parents of giving their children too little affection, disciplining them too harshly, and offering them too few choices. Opponents of this parenting style believe that the unreasonable demands placed on a child can be developmentally inappropriate. Supporters of tiger parenting argue that many American parenting styles lack discipline and reward children for little or no work, providing trophies and cheers for minimal effort.
Background
The term "tiger parenting" was not used until 2011, when attorney and author Amy Chua published the book Hymn of the Tiger Mother in which she discusses how she used an authoritarian parenting style to raise her two daughters. Chua makes a direct connection between her tiger parenting and her strict Asian-American upbringing. She explains that some of the demands tiger parents place on children stem from the parents' desire to achieve and compete successfully in a new environment and culture. Chua believes American parents are overly concerned with fostering their children's self-esteem instead of teaching them to work hard.
In the book, Chua recounts her tiger parenting: she required her daughters to spend hours practicing music each night and expected them to earn As on their report cards. She made her
youngest daughter redo a sloppily made birthday card and forbid sleepovers, play dates, and participation in the school play.
Chua's book received international attention, and she appeared on talk shows and news programs defending her parenting style. Her book became an international bestseller and was widely discussed around the world. In 2011, Chua was named one of TIME magazine's one-hundred most influential people.
In the book, Chua explains that tiger parenting is common in East Asian cultures and demands long hours of supervised practices on both academics and music. Tiger parents compliment their children for mastery instead of effort, as is common in Western cultures. She also notes that many Chinese parents believe they are more willing to make sacrifices for their children than Western parents. As a result of tiger parenting, their children become very high performing and demand perfection from themselves.
Chua's book sparked international debate as to whether or not tiger parenting was an effective parenting style.
Overview
While tiger parenting is often associated with Asian-American culture, it refers more to a parenting style than an ethnicity. In Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua lists ten tiger-parenting rules that she demanded when raising her children: (1) no sleepovers; (2) no play dates; (3) no school plays; (4) no complaining about not being in school plays; (5) no watching television or playing computer games; (6) no choosing your own extracurricular activities; (7) you must earn all As on your report card; (8) you must be the best student in every class except gym and drama; (9) you must play the violin or piano; (10) you must not play instruments other than the violin or piano.
If children are not meeting expectations, tiger parents take away privileges or insult the child so they become aware that expectations are not being met and can work harder to meet them. Tiger parents expect their children to be tough and resilient, so they can handle hearing that they are failing or need improvement. They also expect their children to be obedient and to listen carefully. Because it allows for little, if any, negotiation, tiger parenting is authoritarian. Tiger parents expect their children to achieve on their terms and meet a very high performance level.
Several books have been written about the negative effects of tiger parenting including Tiger Babies Strike Back (2013) in which author Kim Kong Keltner discusses her suffering as a child of tiger parents. Kong Keltner describes her unhappiness and feelings of inferiority because her parents never thought anything she did was good enough.
Dr. Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, examined the positive and negative outcomes of tiger parenting on children's development after following more than four hundred Asian-American families for eight years. She concluded that some tiger-parenting techniques, such as yelling, blaming the child for failures, and bringing up past mistakes, resulted in poor academic performance and low self-esteem. A study published in 2018, which looked at 263 children in Singapore, found that children whose parents were very critical of them and held them to high standards of performance were more likely to develop depression, anxiety, or levels of perfectionism that were detrimental to their emotional well-being than children whose parents had less "intrusive" parenting styles. Another study published that year, looking at preschoolers in China, found that tiger parenting was not associated with better outcomes in school readiness than other styles of parenting, and in fact parents whose style was classed as "supportive" were the ones whose children were most reliably prepared to succeed in school.
Bibliography
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English, Rebecca. "From Tiger to Free Range Parents What Research Says about the Pros and Cons of Popular Parenting Styles." The Conversation, www.theconversation.com/from-tiger-to-free-range-parents-what-research-says-about-pros-and-cons-of-popular-parenting-styles-57986. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
Guey, Lynne. "There's a Growing Backlash Against Tiger Mothers." Business Insider, 27 May 2013, www.businessinsider.com/study-shows-tiger-parenting-is-ineffective-2013-5. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
"How Tiger Moms and Hovering Parents Can Damage a Child’s Ability to Cope with Life’s Challenges." South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/1982993/how-tiger-moms-and-hovering-parents-can-damage-childs-ability. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019.
Kim, Su Yeong Kim. "What Is 'tiger' Parenting?" American Psychological Association, July 2013, www.apadivisions.org/division-7/publications/newsletters/developmental/2013/07/tiger-parenting.aspx. Accessed 28 December 2016.
Pappas, Stephanie. "Tiger Mother and Her Critics Both Right Study Finds." Live Science, 22 Jan. 2013, www.livescience.com/26465-tiger-parenting-cultural-style.html. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
Parks, Alice. "The Tiger Mom Effect Is Real, Says Large Study." TIME, 5 May 2014, time.com/88125/the-tiger-mom-effect-is-real-says-large-study. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
Pickernell, Martha. "Tiger Mom Hold That Growl." 24 Sept. 2014, http://time.com/3426536/tiger-mom-amy-chua-new-study/. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
"Tiger Parenting: Good for Children?" PBS, 18 Jan. 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/pitchroom/tiger-parenting-good-for-children/6462/. 18 Jan. 2011. Accessed 28 Dec. 2016.
Tullis, Paul. "Poor Little Tiger Cub." Slate. 8 May 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/double‗x/doublex/2013/05/‗tiger‗mom‗study‗shows‗the‗parenting‗method‗doesn‗t‗work.html. Accesses 28 Dec. 2016.
Xie, Sha, and Hui Li. "Does Tiger Parenting Work in Contemporary China? Exploring the Relationships between Parenting Profiles and Preschoolers’ School Readiness in a Chinese Context." Early Child Development and Care, vol. 188, no. 12, 2018, doi:10.1080/03004430.2018.1521806. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019.