The writer of this page suggests that tiger parenting is the norm among upper middle class parents now.
Some of the threads posted around here, such as being concerned about the student’s inner drive due to a few B+ grades in 10th grade, suggests that there may be some truth to this claim. Threads involving extracurricular planning, math acceleration, extra AP course versus interesting elective, etc. also hint at that.
And we wonder why anxiety levels among children are skyrocketing. 
In addition to 529’s, these parents need to set aside $$ for their kids’ psychiatric funds.
I don’t think tiger parenting is the norm where I live. Helicopter parenting, definitely, but overly permissive child-led parenting seems to be more of an issue here than Amy Chua type highly disciplined parenting.
Of course I live in Portland 
We are seeing the same in my area in the Midwest.
Of course if you are a tiger-mom-type parent, you may be more likely to seek out forums like this. So we are a somewhat self-selected bunch.
But I don’t know. The examined hypothesis of that article (which it does not just accept uncritically) seems to be if you value certain things like a nice house in a good school district (not exactly a new concept), and so do “tiger moms”, that makes you susceptible to becoming a tiger parent yourself. And sure, I think there is a very real peer pressure effect among parents of college-bound-kids than can impact some parents.
But I have found it is not generally hard to find upper middle class parents with a likeminded approach to college issues, if you want to. Indeed, despite my comment above, there is actually quite a sizeable support group of somewhat anti-tigerish parents right here.
And then you don’t have to spend a lot of time talking college with every other parent using your HS, you don’t have to seek out more such people on social media, and so on.
So less than a universal norm, I would say this is one of those things where there are battling norms. And you can choose your side in those battles, or just opt out. But yes, you may want to watch exactly how you spend your social time, in real life and online, if you don’t want to spend a lot of time hearing from people with certain views on college admission.
As a final thought, some of what that article seems to be describing as an evolution or diversification of tiger parenting more strikes me as just not what I think of as tiger parenting at all. Like, maybe I have just internalized the tiger myself, but I don’t personally think wanting your kids to be active and enthusiastic participants in activities outside your house is tiger parenting per se. Maybe if you want them to do specific things they don’t actually like because it will be good for college, aka resume building stuff. But if you just think it is good for kids to do SOMETHING besides sit around a lot, I guess I just think that is good parenting.
And again, it doesn’t feel that new to me. It is true when I was growing up, there was not as much focus on structured programs. But the idea of being an active kid was still very much around.
OK, so how to actually draw this line? Well, consider this statement from the author of the piece:
Kids should understand that mastering anything worthwhile requires years of unpleasant training and endless practice.
Yeah, no. Mastering many things does require a lot of training and practice. But it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Like, every single moment may not be your favorite, but fundamentally it is not actually wrong to enjoy what you are doing, including the social aspects in many cases.
So to circle back around, yes, among upper middle class parents you will tend to find almost all of them believe in kids being active. But no, they will not all think that means every kids needs to be spending long hours doing things they don’t like doing. And if you don’t want to be that sort of parent, you don’t have to be, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time hanging around with parents who think that way.
I doubt that a tiger parent thinks of themselves as a tiger parent.
Probably pretty much all of us want our children to do well, and are proud of our children’s accomplishments. Among the parents on this web site, quite a few of us have either degrees from relatively highly ranked schools or graduate degrees or both, and quite a few of us (probably most) have had successful careers. We have already set an example and set expectations (whether explicitly stated or not) that our kids will in most cases try to meet.
I think that my wife and I at least try to not be tiger parents. However, it is hard to know how successful we are. At this point both of our daughters have taken on graduate programs that are quite demanding. We think that they are doing it for themselves (or for the patients who will benefit from their work, whether human or otherwise).
I suppose it is very hard for us to fully understand ourselves or our influences on our children.
I have heard multiple stories from both daughters of fellow students who freaked out over a B, or even over an A that did not come with a + sign. Our kids are certainly subject to influence from other students, and some of this already puts quite a bit of pressure on the kids to succeed.
Tiger parenting, and the stress that we put on our kids, certainly are things to be careful about.
I always wonder how many people in these conversations have actually read Chua’s book. As someone says in the article it’s way funnier and self-aware than you would think from the mountains of ink spilled disparaging it (and her). I thoroughly enjoyed the book back when it first came out.
Yes, it was mostly about forcing her kids to work hard at something (especially since for bright kids like hers, schoolwork is not challenging). I loved how in an interview done after her oldest had left for college, she said that she had no idea what her daughter was doing, when, how, that it was all up to her daughter by that time.
As our twins applied to college this cycle, it kept striking me that my wife and I were more like their support staff.
They were plenty motivated, did well in school and extracurriculars, had a great social life. They didn’t need to be pushed or “tigered” in any of these areas.
What they did need, or come to take for granted, was that we their parents would take care of all the troubling little ancillary details of life, academics included: transporting them, attending to mindless bureaucratic details, keeping abreast of deadlines (not schoolwork deadlines, but stuff like when must this thing be ordered by? when does this medical record need to be completed, and sent where? Stuff like that.)
I guess that’s just parenting.
But again, it was like their academic achievements and general outstandingness etc. were this beautiful flower garden, just basking in the sun.
We were down there in the shadows at ground-level with the manure.
Definitely see A LOT of this right here in the Bay Area…This is tiger parent central. And now that my daughter’s peers are graduating high school and moving on to college, we are starting to see the fallout: deterioration of relationship with parents and in some cases alienation from family, kids going “wild” and acting out now that they are out from underneath their parents’ thumbs and have their first taste of freedom but without the internal controls to self-regulate, poor internally-regulated discipline resulting in lower grades and weak academic performance for the first time in their lives, self-worth decreasing as grades decline, anxiety, depression, poor resilience and coping and feeling lost because they no longer know what they even want or are supposed to want…
Also in the Bay Area and I agree with this. What I’ve also seen quite a bit is a very permissive style of parenting right up until the college process starts, and then around sophomore year a switch goes off and it’s Tiger Parent time. Parents who had always come across as “free range” all of a sudden shifted gear and got super involved in the whole application process. We saw some examples of that, particularly with parents who actually wrote or rewrote their kids’ applications, and it didn’t turn out well in most cases for their relationships. They may have gotten the acceptances they wanted but we’ve definitely seen some alienation and rebellion, some kids dropping out or returning home before their first year of college is over.
Some of it feels almost more like a college acceptance “optimization” strategy rather than a true parenting strategy. I mean, most of us know instinctively that by commandeering our kids’ application process, we are in fact interfering with the natural development process. But many do it anyway because they think they have a proven roadmap of how to achieve acceptances at XYZ school.
I believe most parents know that they are sabotaging their kids to some degree when they do this. Adults don’t always do what’s best unfortunately.
ETA- haven’t read the book but I think many people use Tiger parent and helicopter parent interchangeably. Sounds like chua’s book has more to it than just helicoptering though!
I find it ironic that Amy Chua, who 15 years ago popularized the Tiger parenting style, is now saying, “Something needs to be radically changed, because all this pressure is on a road to nowhere."
“To nowhere” could mean that all the investments at the cost of angst, stress and mental health in seeking entry into the hallowed halls of the Ivy League may all come to naught. Or, even if the investments yield successful fruit, a diploma from the Ivy League isn’t a sure path to somewhere.
Heck, S24 saw a lot of that in a six-week pre-college program.
Our D24 told us that one of her classmates didn’t make highest honors (only high honors) and his parents made him read off every kid who was on the highest honors list and explain why he wasn’t on that list.
I personally consider that emotional abuse…
I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother at the time it came out and thought it was a hoot. She is funnier than people gave her credit for, and I don’t think her purported style of parenting is abusive (I see actual abusive parenting on occasion, and am a mandated reporter, so I don’t apply that term to just anything.) If parents want to parent intensely, the more power to them. That said, it’s not what I chose for my own kids, mainly because it doesn’t suit me.
I do remember reading an interview with Amy Chua done after her followup book, The Triple Package. The interviewer asked her about a hypothetical future outcome for her children that involved being a 2nd grade teacher in Vermont with a happy house full of kids and dogs. She indicated it was not a future she would consider an acceptable outcome for her kids.
But it struck me that this outcome was not so very different from her own. She lives in a different New England state (Conneticut) and teaches at a different level (Yale Law school), and her dogs are fluffy white pure bred dogs. But the difference is prestige, power and money. But not happiness. There is a lot of happiness to be found a tier down.
I enjoy watching Leave it to Beaver. There are many things that have changed for the better since that show was filmed, but one thing in particular has changed for (IMO) the worse. In the show, kids play unfettered by adults organizing their time and their games. They can “mess around” for hours. They don’t have parents running interference in their arguments. They make mistakes and learn lessons. If parents could loosen their grip a bit and provide unstructured time for their kids to fill (sans technology, please), perhaps the kids might benefit.
I can’t read the article, although I get the idea. Is the article confusing tiger parenting with having enough disposable income to afford lots of enrichment?
I live in a an affluent suburb with a good public school and a lot of super educated parents (near a major university). I haven’t seen any real change over the last 10 years. There was always a healthy minority of tiger parents and there still are. What is in the majority are parents who prioritize education, feeding their kids a million context socialization clues to its importance and treating college as if its as expected as 1st grade (or breathing), who are willing to make tons of sacrifices and spend money to allow their kids to get help, pursue their sports or artistic passions, etc. But none of that is true Tiger Parenting where the parent truly imposes forced disciple on the kids MUST do x, y, z and who make the kids feel that a B+ is a major failure and argue with the teachers, etc. – that’s still the (meaningful) minority.