Question about Tiger mom (or dad) parenting?

cobrat
Fri, 05 Jul 2013 13:11:03 +0000

The idea that boys are ridden more than girls is certainly not true in my extended family…whether it’s families who are more “old world” or Americanized. If anything, the female cousins tended to be driven harder, on average, from what I’ve seen…and their college admissions, academic records, and subsequent careers bore this out.

Vast majority of the female cousins ended up at elite universities or highly respected state honors college and excelled consistently in HS and undergrad. In contrast, fellow males like myself ran the gamut from HYPSMCC to lower-tiered state universities. Our HS/college academic performances also ran the gamut from excelling consistently to floundering badly*. I was a mixed case as I floundered badly in HS while excelling in college.

Also, while my parents were more strict on academic expectations than most of my aunts/uncles…especially on the professional/engineering side of the family, no one went to the absurd lengths of Amy Chua.

After chatting a bit about the buzz of her book, one Asian-American academic** I have known for a while said Chua’s book is really American style helicopter parenting taken to absurd extremes with some Asian exotification thrown in for marketing purposes.

Also, FYI, this type of parenting is not strictly “Asian”. I knew of many families of different ethnicities who practiced similar parenting ranging from Jewish-Americans to African-American/Latino parents.

One Latino father of a childhood friend/elementary school classmate was insanely strict by treating his son similar to many Marine boot camp recruits he used to train as a Marine Drill Sergeant at Parris Island before he retired after 20+ years in the Corps.

Once, he even punished his then 8 year old son for causing a commotion in our 4th grade class by having him do push ups and runs while he’s yelling about his transgression of the day in a public park. Even my strict-leaning father felt that was too much and over-the-top…and he himself had to undergo military training during college and serve his mandatory 2 years in the ROC(Taiwan) Army in the 1950’s when they had concerns of an imminent Communist invasion.

He also wasn’t too thrilled when his son failed to make it to any Service Academies or elite universities and ended up going to a lower-tiered private college on an Army ROTC scholarship.


Anything borderline 3.0 or lower.


** Wasn’t raised in the “Tiger mode” at all…and was HYPSMCC for all undergrad and grad degrees. Very mellow and down-to-earth though there’s no hiding the extreme intellectual brilliance.