<p>“When Chua’s book came out in 2011, Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, had already been studying the effects of tiger parenting on hundreds of Chinese-American families for more than a decade. Her report, “Does Tiger Parenting Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes,” was recently published in the Asian American Journal of Psychology.
“Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation,” Kim explained in her report. “It was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation.”
The bottom line? Tiger parenting doesn’t produce superior outcomes in kids,” she concluded."</p>
<p>Different families have different priorities and raise kids differently. As long as the end result doesn’t cause a drag on society, let each family do what they feel is correct.</p>
<p>Lower academic achievement and greater depression increase the risk that the tiger child will become a drag on society when s/he grows up. Greater alienation from parents increases the risk of both the child and the parents becoming a drag on society.</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered how those kids pushed from early childhood to be the absolute best end up feeling when they put their all into something and end up third or fourth, or god forbid, average. Not every child can be the valedictorian, the first chair, or the science fair winner.</p>
<p>In the documentary Ivy Dreams Sophie so stressed over getting into an Ivy League school to prove something to her parents and her grandparents back in China that she felt like a failure when “all” she got was a $40,000 full honors scholarship to Washington and Lee. Watching her tearfully and disdainfully read her acceptance letter was sad.</p>
<p>Every parenting method has the potential of backfiring or succeeding. I know families where tiger parenting has been very successful, families where it has been sort of successful, and at least one family where the results have been worse than anyone could possibly imagine (both children with multiple suicide attempts, one of whom succeeded . . . and that was the one who was basically living up to expectations). Few of us can bear to acknowledge the role that luck plays in our lives.</p>
<p>Another problem (which may not be important to tiger parents) is that it can create a gulf between tiger kids and “regular” kids. The tiger kids are often too scheduled and too “in the zone” to enjoy some of the advantages of going to an American school and living in an American community–time with friends, extracurriculars “just for fun” and so on.</p>
<p>Jhs might be right about parenting methods and the chance of success. But the price obe pays to obtain that elusive success is telling a different story. A story that is sad and sickening. The pressure placed on children to satisfy the great expectations, the social climbing, the mirage of economic benefits, the vindication for the abject pursuit of a vicarious achievement by parents is stomach churning. </p>
<p>And does it ever stop? After high school, it turns into a quest for the right internship, the perfect GPA, the impressive interviews, and the plum job or fancy graduate schools. The same parents on the video will be the ones raiding the campus bookstore and dress like living commercials for the schools, and monitoring the grades and friendships to ensure that the right contacts are made. And right means simply rich or famous. Constant pressure is the key. </p>
<p>And what happens when Goldman Sachs remains unimpressed? More deception for GrandMa in Asia? Disappearing visions of a lavish lifestyle and opportunities to … brag? And then comes the car, the wife, the house. All needing to fit an illusory vision of success.</p>
<p>Despite the success of some, it is nothing but a despicable quest built on misplaced expectations, entitlement, and vanity. The worst part is that parents will become the next grandparents, and the children the parents who will repeat the same vicious circles. With the same abuses.</p>
<p>“Tiger Parenting” is just a sugarcoated description for a parenting style based upon absolute parental control and expectation of abject obedience by their children. This parental approach has its pluses, which include often includes strong academic performances from the affected kids with the resulting achievement results, but also negatives associated with such psychological domination, including eventual performance anxiety, suppressed anger, skewed expectations (“I’ll die if I don’t get to HYP!”), and perhaps estrangement from those domineering parents (if their adult-children eventually develop some emotional separateness).</p>
<p>I think it backfires when these kids are around other non-tiger-kids and see the freedoms that those kids have. This tends to happen when cultures meet other cultures.</p>
<p>When we were at the admitted students programs, one of the parents asked if he could have a copy of the fall class schedule so that he could ‘help’ his daughter pick her fall classes to make sure she picked the right classes. I must admit that I was a little taken aback by the question. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t want to control my children that way. However, I think that we need to recognize that some of this is a cultural issue. We, as parents, choose to raise our children based on our own biases that are partially influenced by the culture in which we were raised. I don’t believe I forcing my children to do things. However, when my daughter wanted to quit violin after eight months, I wouldn’t let her. I told her that I wanted a little return on my investment. We made the deal that she could quit (if she still wanted to) when she reached the point of being able to play a violin concerto by memory. Six months after that conversation, she said, “Mom, I actually don’t mind practicing the violin now.” Most days she practices with no “gentle encouragement” from me! :)</p>
<p>I see this kind of thread popping every so often, which really just give a lot of CC parents to pat themselves on their back. I would imagine most of us could afford to re-fine some of our own parenting style. I personally do not know that many Asians kids (or adults) who are estranged from their parents or family, but I do know a lot of other Americans who won’t speak to their parents or haven’t talked to their siblings in years. Not sure if my parenting style was tigerish or not, but both my kids are very close to us and they are close to each other too.</p>
<p>:D That was my first thought! My strategy when he was in a negative phase was to tell S that he was free to quit: he could tell his teacher at his next lesson. Never happened, naturally.</p>
<p>momofmusician17, your daughter was playing a concerto fourteen months after starting the violin? Is that common? I think that after fourteen months of cello, QMP was in Suzuki Book 2 (possibly Book 3, but still no concertos in sight).</p>
<p>What struck me in the Tiger Mom book was when she described how the whole family (I think including grandparents) was on a trip somewhere – perhaps Greece? – and they actually missed the sites that they flew all that distance to see because it was critical that the girls practice their piano pieces for a few hours – and by the time they were done the exhibits were closed. That one day, or two days, couldn’t have been skipped. For what? That’s so utterly pointless in the scheme of things. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.</p>
<p>There are plenty of things I’ve done wrong in my parenting, as we all have.</p>
<p>My aunt and uncle were classic Chinese Tiger parents. Their kids were very intelligent and very successful in hs and college (Stanford, Harvard, Cal, UC-Davis (the “dumb” one: their term)). However, now that they’ve escaped the control of their parents, they’ve all moved so far away from their native northern California that we all (including them) joke that they’re as far away from the parents without falling into the ocean-- NYC, Boston, DC, the western side of Oahu. They’re not estranged from their parents, and their current locations actually may reflect the success they gained because of their Tiger parents, but they want nothing to do with them except for couple of visits a year.</p>
<p>I really think they DID sacrifice closeness for success. It’s not that there’s no love there, but the kids do feel like survivors.</p>