A REALLY interesting Op Ed in today’s NY Times.
Perhaps this indicates the beginning of the end of “Tiger Parent” syndrome here in the US?
Where I live, there are still many first-generation immigrants who are being brought up in strict academic-driven households. Some are from Asian countries, but they’re mostly Middle Eastern now. It may still be awhile before the tiger is tamed.
I see a lot of double PhD families in the Boulder area, where the kids themselves feel they must keep up with Mom and Dad, and parents have very high expectations as well. Its not limited to Asian American families, families of all different races, still want their students going to top colleges, and the trend seems to overload students with IB, AP and concurrent enrollment classes, much more so than during my childhood in New Jersey. Thus the Ivy League portion of CC is alive and well, with Tiger like parents who want their children to attend the “top” colleges. . Another thing that drives this over-achieving, is the high amount of financial aid offered at the top 20 schools and others.
DS became friends with several kids of Asian immigrants in middle school. At this point we mostly relaxed and let the peer pressure do the job. Best of both worlds 
“Perhaps this indicates the beginning of the end of “Tiger Parent” syndrome here in the US?”
Not so fast. What Mr. Park was describing – the “third generation decline” – takes a long period of time and is a continuous phenomenon. The phenomenon isn’t anything new, the best example of what he’s describing among Asian-Americans being the Japanese Americans. Among Asian-Americans no other group has assimilated into the mainstream as the Japanese-Americans.
As long as there’s a steady stream of first-generation Asians, the “Tiger Mom” syndrome will persist with no end in sight. It’s more complicated now, however. What was once a cultural phenomenon with what the first-generation Asians have brought, it’s now evolved into an intra-cultural phenomenon where non-Asians have adopted the challenge for competitive reasons: the lure of top elite colleges – which has always been around – and generous financial aids – relatively new – at these richly endowed institutions. The child rearing methods might somewhat differ, but we have a whole generation of young kids now growing up in a highly stressful and pressure packed environment of competition and the survival of the fittest mentality. What I see all around in the United States now is something that used to be once an exclusive phenomenon of “Hagwon” (after school schools pervasive in South Korea).
My boys are second-generation Korean-Americans, and I thought I was reading my own statements as I was reading the article, which was written by a fellow Korean-American, Mr. Park. I too was faced with the same dilemma of raising my boys between two cultural divide. Like Mr. Park, I also found that I can raise my boys in the best of both worlds. My CC username, “TiggerDad” was an intentional philosophical statement of the compromise between the cultural divide. From my personal take, no, the “Tiger Parent” syndrome will continue on with no end in sight. It’s really up to each individual family to educate themselves about what are the best courses for raising their loved ones.
@TiggerDad taking the opportunity here to tell you I love your username!
Thank you. It’s a constant reminder of how my then toddler boys would jump up and down screaming with joy whenever I pressed the Tigger (a stuffed toy I bought them) down and it’d bounce up and down for several times.
My parents raised me to always get the best grades or go home. I also vowed never to be like my parents. I wanted to raise my kids “the same grit and reverence for learning that our upbringings gave us, but in a happy and supportive home environment.” We can talk about free range, be happy, and do what you want. At the same time, my kids know if they didn’t have the discipline and worked as hard as they did (and yes, with me as their tiger mom) they wouldn’t be where they are today.
It is not by accident that so many Asian kids with parents working at dry cleaners, restaurants, bodegas, who are able to go to top tier American colleges. Most of those first generation kids did their homework in the backroom while their parents were waiting on customers in the front.
D1 just got married and is planning on having children in the near future. I am sure she will be a nurturing and supportive mom, at the same time I don’t think she will less of a tiger mom than me. She knows without the education she has had she wouldn’t be doing what she is doing today.
Other cultures that are not mentioned are Jewish American families that really focus on education and expect their students to attend top colleges, but may not really have the same strict focus on daily study that some Asian American families have that we know. All Asian families asked/forced children to study for the ACT and SAT and many families seemed to stress music practice, which we agreed with too. (We are third generation white European American parents )
My son was in an Asian American clique in robotics with Indian Asian American, Chinese American and one boy who’s mom was born in Korea. The kids themselves feel the need to keep up without me having to do anything, so I LOVED the other “Tiger Parents” influence on my two sons, as it takes a village to raise a teenager. In some ways I came out looking like an easy going parent, which was sort of funny.
One Chinese American family we know required all three children in the family to find full ride merit based scholarships. !!!
This was like a challenge to all of us, can our kids beat this family in scholarship dollar amounts? !!! Kid number one went to Emory/Oxford on a full tuition, Kid number 2 went to Babson College on a full ride and Kid number 3 went to the US Air Force Academy, which is a full ride.
Go Tiger Parents! You lead the way to high achievement. But I might not understand the full impact of the parenting style.
My parents had to worry about FA for my siblings to attend colleges, but his hope was his grandchildren could go to their school of choice without those considerations.
Just as a counterpoint – I was raised with no academic oversight, no rules or oversight, no one even reviewed my report cards, completely free range (3rd gen from immigration,grandfather did not complete middle school as he had to earn a living) and bounced back to more hands-on with my own sons. Definitely I tried to be nurturing and supportive, but I also stepped in when grades faltered, offered music lessons starting at age 5, offered summer academics (language immersion program, etc.) , encouraged more academic ECs, and did loads of enrichment projects at home. I also taught my kids math at home k-5 since I wasn’t happy with the school curriculum. I’ll be really curious to see what they do with their own children.
Editing to mention – I am not Asian but rather Ashkenazi Jewish – a group with perhaps a similar trajectory…
@Coloradomama Especially immigrant Jewish families. Generally immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, many of whom are highly educated, many are Jewish but not all, often seem to reach this happy place where kids are both high-achieving and happy. This was brought home to me when we met several old friends during this summers’s college tour, with kids studying in Columbia, UChicago, MIT and Harvard. I think DS was somewhat intimidated
As an Asian-American I had an extremely visceral, negative reaction when I read Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In fact, I was horrified and at the same time experienced a great sense of shame. To me, what was described in the book was bordering on insanity born of extreme greed and radical parenting style that went beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced and witnessed in all my life as an Asian-American. The book, as far as I know, wasn’t a sketch work of that entire brush called Asian-Americans. In my personal experience, I’ve come across some Asian-Americans’ parenting style that resembled Amy Chua’s but those are rare exceptions. But the most Asian-Americans aren’t that extreme. They do demand hard work and sacrifice BY their personal example with a strong focus on success, and that’s hardly different from the white Americans, particularly in their early founding years when they were the “first-generation,” too, and some generations down. But Amy Chua went way beyond that. That’s what I resented upon reading her book and watching her defending herself on various TV shows. I was extremely ashamed that the likes of her with lunatic parenting imagination is REPRESENTING the rest of Asian-Americans. And this brings my point back to that NYT opinion article that the OP linked: it’s preferable to accept the decline if a child, like Chua’s second daughter, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and, heaven forbid, contemplating harming him or herself. A happy and fulfilling life is more important than any degree of lofty success, no?
I think there is definitely evidence of a shift in mindset and second-generation kids of those immigrant parents often raise their kids differently. “We’re largely abandoning traditional Asian parenting styles in favor of a modern, Western approach focused on developing open and warm relationships with our children.” I think this quote is really important. Many of those parents grow up and decide that they want to have a different relationship with their kids than they had with their parents. Although I think something that remains to be seen is whether other incoming first-generation families will adapt and change as well. There is such a different cultural and academic expectations because of the backgrounds those parents came from.
I’m sure no offense was intended, but I’m Jewish and cringe when I see the term “Jewish American.” I’ve never known anyone who’s Jewish that would describe themselves as Jewish American, anymore than someone would call themselves Catholic American or Methodist American or Buddhist American.
My kid was shocked during 10th and 11th grades when he observed so many kids feeling the parental pressure for high GPA and test scores because we never told him “you need to get As.” We just told him “It’s good to try your best in things you decide to do.” I grew up in a poor first generation Asian parents family with no college degrees who did not once talk about grades and didn’t even know what Ivy League was. Honestly, they were too busy making a living to think about my academic success. Looking back, I was lucky I hung around with decent kids who cared about academics or who didn’t care about academics but did not get into drugs or alcohol. I just played sports, and I can honestly say I never studied more than 1 hour for one day during high school for anything and graduated with 3.0 GPA. When I realized during HS Junior year that I could not get into any decent college with 3.0 GPA, I studied for SAT on my own and got 99.99% which was the highest SAT score in my high school. Imagine a kid with 3.0 GPA getting the highest SAT score in one’s high school!
Anyway, because my wife knew how I grew up and turned out reasonably well, she and I never forced our kid to pursue anything he did not want to do or stressed to our kid that grades were important. In fact, I told my kid that it was fine with me if he did not go to college but he had to develop a skill to make a living. I also was taught by my mom that “never do anything unless I really wanted to do it for myself”. In other words, don’t get good grades just for your parents etc. Ultimately, you gotta want to do it for yourself.
I always tell my kid that his health is the most important thing, try to find in college what he likes doing and is reasonably good at doing for a living and enjoy his 4 years in college and don’t get too hung up on grades and that there always will be someone smarter than him. Our kid rather get average grades but be surrounded by kids who are smarter than himself in some areas (he’s pretty good in one area and he realizes there are kids who are way better than him in other areas), so hopefully, he will eat ducks but not experience a Duck Syndrome at Stanford. Applying and going to Stanford was his idea, not ours. I have no fricking idea what profession he will go into, and that’s good. All I told him is don’t go into certain profession for money.
I think this is key. As long as there are such a limited number of options for affordable college, low income families who value education will push their kids to to get one of those coveted spots. Its all well and good to talk about all the fine colleges that are less selective, but if those colleges are beyond reach, they might as well not exist.
I’ve been fairly relaxed with my kids’ education. Not hands off, but not hyper vigilent either. However, I have always known that we could comfortably afford at least our in state tuition. If I didn’t have that ability, I think I might have been much more hands on.
^ however there’s excellent financial aid at Carleton or Middlebury, those are highly prestigious for many career paths, and tiger parents never focused on those.
There’s also a difference between wanting As and demeaning a kid who’s been placed in two years advanced classes because they’re getting a B.
We did not deliberately raise TigerCubs. (We are not Asian or foreign born.) Our approach was rather to expose the children to a wide range of methods of contending with intellectual challenges. We wanted the kids to discover their own talents through exposure to science, math, music, art, and “life.”
It happened that the older one fell in love with numbers at an early age (thank you Sesame Street), and on the way to preschool one day (at age 3) declared “Today I’m a numbers machine.” By the time I picked him up a couple of hours later he was counting into the thousands. We supported this interest – not just in numbers but in math more broadly – and he was always well above grade in math in school – but our schools had no gifted & talented program. They had rather more of a “leveling” attitude, focusing on the less-advanced students. On his own, he took his numbers into fantasy baseball and games. In 6th grade, he finished #2 in the state in the Council of Teachers of Math competition – something that we only learned he was prepping for when we were asked to drive him to the competition. By the time he applied to college, he got 800’s in every math test without any exam preparation.
In sum, this came from him. We certainly encouraged and enabled him but we didn’t monitor his day-to-day activities, homework, tests, etc. He didn’t need this. If we had tried to push him hard he would not have taken it well. He went K-12 in regular public schools. He had a strong independent spirit (tantrums at an early age). Tiger parenting would have been potentially counter-productive.
Some of the negatives of tiger parenting are frequently seen on these forums from posts by students complaining about parental pressure (like parents wanting the student to apply only to reach-for-everyone colleges, as if all others are unworthy, or parents choosing the student’s major that s/he has no interest in).