My wife is also from the former Soviet Union, and yes, I have seen that among immigrants from Eastern Europe as well. My kid had a classmate in high school, whose mother immigrated from the former USSR (single mom, I think). That mother was a sabretooth mom. Her poor girl was not allowed to have a social life outside of school. She was not allowed to go out in the evenings or even hang out with friends after school.
She had to go straight home to do homework, and was only allowed to engage in extracurricular activities which were either academic or “high level” cultural (music, classic or ballroom dance, etc).
I also think that her phone was shut down pretty early in the evening.
Well, all the pictures of the lovely but LARGE dining and family rooms do give me the sense that the standard of living has gone up for many people who see themselves as middle class.
This is not a criticism of large houses so much as a recognition that the expectation for a family sized house or apartment has changed over the decades, but it is possible to live comfortably in much smaller spaces with much less stuff. There is nothing wrong with kids sharing a room or having an eat-in kitchen but no dining room --those aren’t markers of poverty.
As for Tiger parenting, sometimes I wonder if I am one. Though it seems to manifest itself in my household in different ways than most posters reveal. My tiger moments don’t come from economic anxiety or mobility concerns for me as much as a value system. I’ve always wanted my kids to love learning and books (as well as the visual and performing arts) as much as I do so I think I have been pretty pushy about that sort of stuff over some other areas where “tigering” comes out in other families. In retrospect, I wish that I had been more easygoing about some things. I’d rather have a happy kids who are good, kind, thoughtful humans than kids focused on being superstars in school, sports, or the arts.
It’s absolutely an immigrant culture thing. My husband is the grandchild of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who arrived in this country with nothing but the shirts on their backs. His grandfather never had the opportunity to go to college and worked in the garment industry in NYC. My father in law went to medical school and became a very successful psychiatrist. From birth, it was ingrained in my husband not only that he should become a doctor, but that he should become a surgeon as my mother in law viewed that as much more prestigious and lucrative than psychiatry. My husband jokes that in his family the only acceptable career paths were doctor or lawyer. (His sister is a law school professor). That being said, my in laws were loving and supportive parents. They just steered their children in a certain direction. They did not view their kids as failures because they didn’t attend Ivy League schools, shame them if they received a a B on their report card or curate their kids extracurricular activities based on what might look good on a college application.
Getting back to the topic of this thread, the question is whether the mindset and parenting style of the more recent Asian immigrants has become the norm for the upper middle class as a whole. I really don’t see that where I live. My kids attended a small private school in the Atlanta area. A large percentage of the student body is Southeast Asian. The majority of those parents are physicians who were educated in India. I’ve seen a lot of those parents fixated on getting their kids into Ivy League schools - putting their first graders in fencing, switching their middle schooler from tennis to squash, pushing the school to allow their 10th grader to take BC calculus even though the kid isn’t exactly a math prodigy. …And then there was the deluge of emails when the pandemic hit asking me to donate to the non profits that their kids had just set up (even though we all know the kid had nothing to do with it). The rest of the parents(predominantly upper middle and upper class) aren’t buying into that ethos and are perfectly happy to send their kids to our very good public universities or other less prestigious schools.(Wake Forest happens to be a very popular choice lol).
Well… they also said being Jewish had an even bigger impact on limiting your educational and career options over there. That’s why the family struggled for 13 years to leave. I do respect their opinions and perspective, although we don’t have the same parenting style.
I don’t see that as tiger parenting, though. I did read Amy Chua’s book and I saw nothing about LOVE of learning, only achievement in learning. Like the music lessons - she didn’t seem to care if her daughters loved music, but she expected them to practice, practice, practice to become accomplished in music. No enjoyment necessary.
Sure, there were also quotas at universities, which led to both strategic decisions in terms of education and careers, as well as competition as only the very top Jewish students would be able to get a place at a university (of there were quotas in the US as well, but probably they lasted longer in the Soviet Union). And there was general discrimination/antisemitism, of course. And the dynamics of Party membership, which also influenced some potential career paths (and Jews were often seen as unreliable or, euphemistically, too “cosmopolitan,” as their loyalty was under suspicion - again, I realize this too happens in the US, but probably more open, pervasive, and legitimized in the USSR). This too had to be taken into account.
And, while things are far from perfect here, you are also not battling the same systemic challenges and limitations, fortunately, so different attitudes and strategies can be employed.
U.S. immigration policy has an influence here. There are countries that contribute a lot of H-1B talent. I suspect H-1B-carrying parents are carrying forward the stress and process expectations from the higher ed systems of their countries of origin.
I also absorbed the individualist American cultural belief that each person has their own path, their own talents and interests, that are somehow innate in them. This is different from my H’s parents’ cultural belief that a person starts out life without any particular inclinations, and can therefore be “molded” from birth.
A person can be a loving and supportive, or pushy anxious parent with either view. My H’s parents are very loving and supportive (similar to @Greatpyrmom’s inlaws). And on the other hand I’ve known plenty of pushy anxious non-immigrant American parents who hover over their kids at an early age to try to figure out what their kid’s special talent or special interest is going to be, and then push their kid like crazy, starting in preschool or toddlerhood, to be the most successful version of whatever the parents think the kid is innately destined to be. This can be just as pushy and stressful as a parent that believes in “molding” their kid. The question is, is it just as “tigerish”? Does “tigerish” mean pushing the kid into a predetermined mold, or does it just mean pushing the kid with a high level of intensity?
I like the concept of a tailwind parent because I think it helps clarify these things.
Like, I value reading a lot, but have never forced my kids to read outside of school assignments. But, did I read to them? Will I immediately get them books if they ask, in a way I wouldn’t with many other things? Will I actually read the books they are reading so we can talk about them? Yes, and more.
So that’s a lot of tailwinding. But I wouldn’t make them read, indeed that would be entirely counterproductive to my goal of them hopefully actually liking to read and seeing it as a thing they can do for fun and not because it is an assignment.
Interesting because that is part of the reason why I might consider myself a tiger parent. I didn’t make my kids read when you put it that way. There were no enforced reading hours and I thought the reading logs that some of their k-6 schools forced them to keep to be horrifying. But I did pretty consciously remove some other forms of entertainment (mostly screen based) from our house. Boredom seemed to be a wonderful incentive to find pleasure in books. Of course they played with toys, games, friends, and outside, but I think it was pretty clear that I valued books a lot and approved of their variously nerdy reading habits --perhaps some of them found my not so subtle signaling to be a form of pressure when they would have naturally gravitated towards other activities. I don’t know. It is too late now. We are drowning under a mountain of books in my house and it isn’t pretty.
I’m with the Supreme Court and pornography on this one- I know it when I see it.
When a parent is scheduling multiple meetings at school to complain that his kid isn’t being tracked into the highest math track-- AND complaining at back to school night that there isn’t enough homework-- AND forcing the kid who loves to dance (but is a bit of a klutz) to drop dance because “Ivies love fencing”… And a few years later, that same parent is complaining that the kid misses a few minutes of Trig because the line at the nurse’s office to get her anxiety medication is way too long, why don’t they get the Superintendent to hire another nurse…
I don’t know, whatever we call it, at least some of that seems virtually unavoidable to me if you are actually an engaged parent at all. I mean, we are going to be role models (until we aren’t, sniffle), and we like and value certain things more than others, and there is only so much of that you can plausibly hide from your kids.
We all try to mold our kids according to our value system via tailwinds and headwinds. On-screen entertainment was strictly regimented in our house: half hour computer time during weekdays and one hour during weekends enforced with electronic “parental control”, no cable tv and only blockbuster tapes on Friday night, no gaming systems from any kind from Santa and only flip phones until high school. The results are mixed - one kid is a voracious reader and the other one is not but neither kid plays video games or spends much time on social media.
As long as there are clearly established rules, kids are fine and don’t consider this cruel and unusual
I find mountains of books comforting. They feel very homey. Whenever I’m in a certain part of town I always go by this one used bookstore because it just feels the way a bookstore should, kind of like the bookstore in Funny Face.
That’s how we roll. We have thousands of books in our home. DS has a substantial library of books that he “enjoyed” reading but still hates reading. DH started reading to him every night from two weeks old until the time he went to boarding school. He reads what he is required to and nothing more. We hold out hope that some day he will enjoy it. One can dream.
Well, maybe that explains this other phenomenon I have noticed with my friend, the investment banker. You and he seem to be children of the seventies. And here’s the thing: When I once asked him how he would raise his own children, his answer astonished me. He said it would be virtually the same as his own Joy Luck Club upbringing. He noted the look on my face after I gathered up the jaw that had dropped to the floor and went on to explain how this has been paralyzing his decision whether to have children, especially now that time is beginning to tick by faster with each passing year. He’s had years of therapy and is pretty self-aware. He is a gentle, caring person who loves to debate economics and social justice policy. He’s probably the wealthiest person I know. And yet he still worries that his progeny would be eaten alive by the American “eat-or-be-eaten” system of rewards and punishments without virtually the same type of programming that he went through (and nearly cost him his life.) He sees the irony of his situation but seems helpless in the wake of a cultural vacuum that admits little in the way of alternate systems. He readily admits that he is marrying someone who closely resembles his mother.
Have you tried varying the genres? A lot of boys that don’t enjoy reading like Sci Fi, Fantasy… boys that say they “hate books” can do a deep dive on a topic they’re interested in (I usually recommend books about the Navajo Code Talkers during WW2 for reluctant readers), history of baseball card collecting, biographies of people they admire or are interested in… etc. Many kids love Bringing Down the House and Moneyball and other books about people who have beat the system at casinos or became champion poker players.
I helped a HS kid who insisted that he absolutely hated to read with a stack of books about Interpol, Mossad, CIA-- some written anonymously as “exposes”, some legit histories of how contemporary spycraft came to be. He devoured them. Parents were a little miffed that he didn’t jump from "Here’s how to infiltrate a group of terrorists without getting killed " to Hemingway but hey- they wanted him to read, he’s reading. Win win in my book!
I think boys who don’t like to read assume that reading equals fiction. And the trends in YA literature only exacerbate that.
While I don’t consider myself a Tiger Mom (in part because I am focused on process rather than achievement, I actually care little about “achievement”), here’s where I might be a little tiger-ish. When possible (I realize it is not possible for every family and that these possibilities are often a mark of privilege), I do believe all children should have extracurricular exposure to three things, and I did insist upon these three things with my daughter.
A sport. Any sport. No pressure to be a star player or to win every game. But play a sport of your choice. A big part of this is to encourage regular exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Part is to develop the soft skills of sports, whether teamwork, leadership, resilience, setting goals, winning and losing with grace, humility, practice to develop skills, etc. I think every kid should participate in some sport, at least in elementary school, preferably also in middle school, in high school if they feel it is still worth their time.
A foreign language. At least one. It is good brain exercise. It also opens your mind to the world beyond your door and teaches you about new cultures and people. I very much dislike American monolingualism. Just because you can get by with English in many places doesn’t mean you should. I believe strongly in all children learning at least one language in addition to their native language.
A musical instrument. Any instrument. Again, no need to be a star or first chair or win awards or anything like that. Just learn how music works and to appreciate music. Music is the intersection of STEM and art - music theory is just math, sound production is physics, but real music is produced through some kind of intangible, creative inspiration. Each kid should learn about those multiple layers. Also fosters goal setting, practice, focus, and hopefully creativity. If you get to high school and want to do other things, fine. You can quit. But in elementary/middle school, at least a couple years of learning an instrument.
And how did that play out with D? Pretty well. She started her sport in 1st grade and still plays the same sport now in college. She speaks 4 languages proficiently (and studied a fifth, but doesn’t speak it well). She played an instrument through I think 10th grade, then quit. No longer plays an instrument, but appreciates knowing how to read music and having some basic understanding of music from that experience.
As I write all of this out, it sounds very Tiger Mom to me. But I did not pressure D in any of these areas, never focused on achievements/awards/wins, and always let her make choices. And these areas were always part of a “classical education,” though, no?
