Is tiger parenting the norm among upper middle class parents?

Parents Forum
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So are you saying that the person who is #4 in a competition should consider themselves “a failure”?

There is a middle ground, but Tiger parenting is not the Middle Ground. A parent doesn’t need to imprison their kid in the basement to cause them damage. The threat of withholding approval or affection is plenty damaging. Moreover, “as successful as possible” is exactly what the parents should be thinking of, not “more successful than our neighbor’s/cousins/fellow employees kids” or “attending a Very Prestigious College, Having a Job That WE Believe is Prestigious, and Being Surrounded by What WE Believe are the Trappings Of Success”.

Kids should be encouraged to do their personal best. The person that they should be out to surpass is themself. They are not there to do better than the kids of family and friends.

Kids are very often motivated to do better, and many are competitive. However, kids also have little self control, and that also includes kids with intense drive. We should not be encouraging them to give up their lives so they can “Attend an Ivy”, nor should they be encouraged to destroy their bodies for a chance to be a pro athlete. It is our job as parents to help them find healthy balances. Encouraging a kid to engage in behaviors that result in unhealthy outcomes (mental and physical) is bad parenting, even if those behaviors increase the kid’s chances at being accepted to an “elite” College or being a top dancer or athlete. How is that different than the parents who encourage their daughter to starve herself so she is more likely to be hired as a model? After all, “She wants to be a model”, “She’s driving herself”.

Maybe. There are hundreds of people, making moderate salaries, that you have never heard of, who are changing your life for the better far more than entertainers like LeBron James or Steph Curry. They may provide you with a few hours of entertainment, but if they didn’t exist, you would find something else to entertain you during that period.

Do you realy believe that Lebron James is more important to the world than Alexander Fleming? Alexander Fleming was never the Best Athlete in his class, he was never the Best Student in his class, he didn’t attend Oxbridge either. However, he changed the world.

In fact, if you look at the background of the people who have changed the world, an inordinate number of them were never “The Best” at anything. They also rarely had “Tiger Parents”.

So no, a kid doesn’t need to believe that they are “the best” or even need to “be the best” in order for them to have a drive to succeed. That is a very American fallacy, which is tied to the toxic beliefs that A, there is a qualitative difference between #1 and #2 (and between #2 and #3) no matter by how small the margin is between the two, and B, that “Drive” only means “wanting to Be The Best”.

A kid also doesn’t need to have parents who wake them up at 5 in the morning for weight training in order for that kid to have an important impact on the world. A kid doesn’t need their parents to demand that the kid never have any grade lower than an A in order for the kid to succeed. Heck, my kid had a good number of Bs, had a social life, focussed on social activism instead of math olympiads and music competitions, and is doing just as well as any of the kids her age who had Tiger Parents driving them.

My wife, who is unbelievably successful, did well in school, and attended a very selective high school, but was never “the best”, nor did her parents ever tell her that she was “the best” or “had to be the best”. They told her what we told our kid - that she’s very smart and very talented and should work so that she can use these to her best advantage. Where she exactly “placed” relative to other students in her class wasn’t important in and of itself.

Kids have exactly one childhood, and they should spend a substantial proportion of it being children. That means social activity and play. That is what is healthy, and no number of claims of “But Harvard!!”, “But Money!!”, “But Being #1!!” will convince me that Tiger parenting is healthy for the kid being parented that way.

Teaching a kid to work hard, focus, fully utilize the talents they have and the skills that they were born with is great. Teaching a kid that their worth is determined by how they compare to everybody else is the very soul of Tiger Parenting and is toxic.

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Failing to win a competition doesn’t mean you are “a failure” in life. But if you don’t believe you are the best, you are unlikely to have the psychological make-up to win (or in some cases even to try and win). And that means you will be disappointed if you finish fourth. Coming to terms with that is a sign of maturity.

Why do we say “if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…you’ll be a man”? Not because they are the same, but because maturity means not letting a disappointment break you.

There are a whole bunch of people who in your terms just provide “a few hours of entertainment, but if they didn’t exist, you would find someone else to entertain you.” Mozart for example. And what’s the point of climbing Everest? Or breaking a world record? Along the same lines, why bother becoming an explorer in past centuries or competing to be first to fly a plane or land on the moon? It’s just not true that all those people will be forgotten in 50 years.

Competitiveness and risk taking are part of human nature. Some people want to opt out and that’s fine. But for others, that’s what they live for. Of course there are “unhealthy outcomes” (life always ends with an “unhealthy outcome”!). Many basketball players (or dancers for that matter) will end up needing a knee replacement or similar. People doing more dangerous activities (say climbing) assume a risk of death. But I absolutely wouldn’t forbid or even discourage my kid from climbing. On the contrary I’m thrilled by their excitement.

Your “worth” as a human being is not determined by how you compare to everybody else. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be competitive and want to win. And ultimately, however successful anyone is, they have to learn that they can’t win every time at everything.

We are all on our own “hero’s journey” in life. Parents shouldn’t dictate that journey for their kids. But they should be their kids’ biggest cheerleaders. My kid wants to be a professional dancer or climber or run for election? Then I’ll do what I can to help them, while also giving them realistic advice about what it takes to win and whether that’s feasible.

You can tell a four year old “you’re the best” at something (and not really mean it). At fourteen that statement ought to be based on a lot more than wishful thinking. At twenty-four they should know for themselves if it’s true (or still has the potential to be true).

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Our middle ground is to communicate to our kids that in things that are important to them, they should try to do their reasonable best. Their reasonable best is the best they can do while balancing other important priorities, including school, sleep, healthy physical development, healthy social and emotional development, and so on–all the things that are necessary for a healthy and happy childhood. But as long as they are maintaining that sort of overall balance, they are free to do competitive activities, and to try to be the best they can at those activities–within reason. And we will do our part to support that with our own time, money, and so on.

As I understand the issue, our approach to this sort of stuff likely isn’t going to produce any Olympic medalists. Nor NBA stars. A “reasonable best” approach isn’t entirely inconsistent with producing recruited athletes or conservatory-level musicians, but at the margins it may be fewer. As a result the chances “reasonable best” kids will get into Harvard may also be lower, although I am not at all sure it leads to a lower chance of going to SOME very selective college. Like I think the boom-or-bust nature of tiger parenting can lead to maybe a marginal increase in Harvard admits and a much larger reduction in what could have been admits to other very selective colleges.

But in any event, I am in the camp that I would rather see every kid have a healthy and happy childhood than many thousands have unhealthy and unhappy childhoods so that a tiny percentage of those kids could end up Olympic medalists, NBA stars, or Harvard admits.

And actually, that of course is a false dichotomy. If the whole world worked on the “reasonable best” model there would still be the Olympics, NBA, and Harvard, and no one would ever know there was an alternative world in which there were many more thousands of unhealthy and unhappy kids plus a few different kids who ended up doing those things.

And no, behind every great creator or inventor or writer or explorer or so on there has not been a tiger parent. Actually, in many cases the individual model of greatness is just sort of wrong, meaning when you dig in much more has been done by groups where maybe historical narratives have singled out an individual for credit but really it was a group effort.

So I am not in fact worried that if the whole world adopted a “reasonable best” approach to raising healthy and happy children that human progress would cease. Indeed, I instead think that more children would become the sorts of healthy and happy adults that sustainably contribute to improvement.

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You might have been using this as a rhetorical device, but I’m here to confirm this is a real thing. The majority of parents who have kids who fall ill with anorexia would do anything to free their child from the grip of this terrible illness…but not all. There is a not insubstantial minority who are invested in their child’s eating disorder. Some of such parents have a history of anorexia themselves, some don’t, but all of them have Tiger Parent personalities.

A mother who continued to insist her daughter was “beautiful and slender” and refused treatment as her daughter approached some of the most severe levels of malnutrition I had seen.

Multiple dads (to the point this was “a thing”) who got obsessively invested in tracking the performance and vitals of their teen athletes. Brought in reams of data, all graphed out. Super proud that their athlete had “the resting heart rate of an Olympian now that we have gotten him in shape.” Didn’t take it well when I explained that their kid’s heart rate was 36 due to starvational bradycardia, not due to fitness. “I’ll be getting a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic!”

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ETA: I want to be clear that I don’t think parent cause their kids’ eating disorders, or any other mental illness. These parents still very much loved their kids, and did not mean to harm them. Anorexia is caused by a combination of underlying genetics combined with an initial weight loss trigger. This weight loss trigger is most commonly due to going on a diet due to body dissatisfaction, but I have seen the trigger be sports related (relative energy deficiency in sport/red-s), medical (e.g. trouble eating after wisdom teeth removal) and even religious (e.g. fasting for Ramadan.) The underlying genetics that make a person vulnerable to anorexia if they do have the weight loss “trigger” are thought to have a big overlap with the genetics that predispose people to have a driven and perfectionistic personality type. This can result in the situation where a perfectionistic/driven parent doesn’t have the skills/ability to easily help their kid. No different than a situation where, for example, a parent with the genetics for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) has difficulty creating the sort of even-keel home environment that would be theraputic for a child with the genetics for BPD. It’s a challenge.

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I think this is a good reminder that parents are humans too, and we are all fallible, and not everything we do wrong as parents was something we could have simply chosen to do differently.

And indeed, in my experience it is almost never actually helpful to simply tell another parent you think they are parenting wrong, that their values are wrong, or so on. You can do your best to provide a good role model yourself, and you can share information about resources, help, options, and so on. But this is all in the showing and not telling category.

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Our school periodically sends kids to Harvard. These kids are only exceptional in their last names (as in who their parents are). I call these celebrity schools. Sure a genius squeezes in as well, but when I hear somebody is at Harvard, I don’t think smart, I think connected. Not so at MIT.
I pity the parent who is going to make a child miserable for the Harvard brand. Even if I had a genius, I wouldn’t let them apply there.

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Read “the Anxious Generation.” The stats support her observation. Kids in these high achieving bubbles are at risk of depression, anxiety, suicide at levels before seen only from kids in dangerous, poverty stricken areas.

Great, your kid lands a spot at an Ivy - at what cost?

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One of the kids who was with my child in her various gifted programs would easily fit the definition of “genius” and then some. His parents actually did discourage him from applying to Harvard and any other Ivy (I spoke with his father about it). He ended up attending U Michigan, where he flourished.

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MIT says that it does not consider legacy in admission. Quote from that page: “So to be clear: if you got into MIT, it’s because you got into MIT. Simple as that.”

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I would not have forbidden S24 from applying to them, but there were definitely quite a few colleges where I was very quick to support him not applying there if he suggested that was what he was thinking. And Harvard was one of those. I do think some kids actually have sound academic reasons for liking Harvard, but they sure do get a lot of interest from kids who want the name.

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That’s what I said. Was I not clear?

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As a parent of a child who attended Harvard, I can tell you with certainty that there are plenty of students there who are neither connected nor victims of tiger parents.

Why? It can actually be a pretty good environment for them.

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NM. Too much info

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Not that I don’t enjoy some Harvard bashing, but some of this general bashing of Ivy+/T20 that is so popular among some on CC is both misinformed and misplaced. I certainly don’t and didn’t take an “Ivy or bust” position with my kids, but these are world class institutions with unmatched resources and pretty much uniformly highly accomplished students. Are they all geniuses, no, but there are some. By the same token, the days of “Winthorpe and Buffy” legacies are ancient history. Legacy admit rates are higher, but the pool is generally stronger. Can kids graduating from “Univ of Mich” or even Podunk U have a great college experience and wonderful life outcomes, of course. But the fact is that access to resources and opportunities are different.

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There’s a huge difference between making a kid do something and not letting them do it. Either seems ill-advised.

What about the kid who really wants to go to Harvard? Would you really forbid them from applying (if it’s affordable)? Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all…

I told my parents at age 8 of my similar goal for college (which never changed, and I did actually attend). They never wavered in supporting me (including by struggling to pay for a private school involving a three hour round trip daily commute that gave me the best chance of realizing my goal) and I’m very grateful for that.

I am very happy for my kids to try for almost impossible goals if they want to do that. I’ll give them as much support as they need in that effort (and console them afterwards). Failing is how you know what the limits of your abilities are.

And yes it’s awful when you fail at getting into a college you set your heart on, or fail to win the prestigious graduate scholarship, or get cut when auditioning for a job as a professional performer. That’s life…and the resiliency you gain is hugely important to future success. And it doesn’t make you a failure in life. The race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself…

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I think any school can be great for the right kid and Harvard and the like can offer tremendous opportunities. At the same time, the lengths to which some parents will go in hopes of obtaining a Harvard (or like) admission can be toxic.

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For most careers, once you control for the resources available to the kids who attend these colleges because of family wealth and connections, there is very little difference in outcomes over a very wide swathe of colleges. A kid who is extremely talented in, say, math, who attends Harvard, will not have a better outcome than they would have had if they had attended Berkeley, Michigan, etc.

Of course your claim really fails when looking at the majority of occupations that college gradates follow. I have no idea why people in CC believe that 70% of colleges graduates are going into finance and business, aside from those going into politics and corporate law.

They aren’t and, for the vast majority of occupations and careers that require a bachelors degree, a Harvard degree will not provide the slightest advantage. A hospital will not prefer a nurse with an undergrad from Harvard college, nor will most high schools prefer teachers with a Harvard undergraduate, nor will most accounting firms, nor will labs which are hiring technicians. Companies hiring engineers will definitely not prefer Harvard graduates over graduates of a few dozen public universities, and neither will most government offices hiring people for clerical positions.

So no, attending Harvard will not help the vast majority of kids reach their career goals any faster than attending another college.

The Harvard “resources and opportunities” are still geared to the career goals of their historic clientele - the wealthy and powerful. Those however, are not the career goals of the vast majority of college-bound kids, and these “resources and opportunities” are not at all useful for these kids.

You keep on writing as though “attending Harvard” is some lofty goal, in and of itself, to which students should strive. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. It is a miserable and meager goal, and not worthy of a student’s time and energy.

Harvard is a great school for many fields, and has great financial aid for some kids, but it isn’t some Pinnacle Of Academic Quality. It isn’t some Celestial Prize For The Few Chosen, and it very definitely isn’t The most Lofty and Worthy Goal for the Aspiring Academic Elite.

If a kid wants to apply to Harvard because they want to study Classics, History, or want to go into politics, for example, they should. However, if they want to apply to Harvard because they believe that Attending Harvard Will Make All Of Their Dream Come True, you better believe me that I would stop that if I could.

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You seem to believe that attending top colleges is a “miserable and meager goal” and that world-beating athletes are just “a bunch of entertainers” that will be forgotten in 50 years.

I have no problem if your (or your kids’) ambition is to be one of “hundreds of people, making moderate salaries, that you have never heard of, who are changing your life for the better.”

But some other people do want to push the boundaries and be the best in the world at something or become a billionaire or president or a Fields Medal winner. Whether attending Harvard is the best way to do that is impossible to know in advance. As investors are always warned, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Admiration for society’s winners (and aspiration to be one of them) is one of the factors that makes the US economically successful and means that so many people in the rest of the world want to move here from countries where envy and resentment at success is all too common. That’s the American Dream. It may not be achievable for many (and the US has got a lot worse at enabling social mobility and giving unearned advantages to those from the highest social classes), but that’s no reason to stop people from trying.

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This is true for academic opportunities, but not true for career opportunities.

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