Wander over to Bridgeport CT or Brighton MA or Mt. Vernon, NY or Camden NJ (cities within a stones throw of places like New Canaan, Belmont, Scarsdale, Cherry Hill) if you want to see the correlation between high income/Tiger parenting vs. not.
I still contend that once you get outside the confines of the high SES communities, Tigering of any ethnicity becomes MUCH less of a problem! Truancy and getting kids to graduate from HS is what folks worry about.
GFG- I’m not claiming that you are a racist. But surely you realize that your community is not representative? How do you explain the dismal educational results in places like Trenton (you live in New Jersey, correct?) or Patterson if every town in NJ had this phenomenon???
Stereotype or not, this whole Tiger Parent meme has affected both my kids to some degree. I immigrated to the US with my parents over 40 years ago, and since the Indian community was small at that time, most immigrants at that time just went with flow of the mainstream US culture with regards to education. There were expectations, no doubt, but not this Ivy craze and Intel science contest winning, spelling bees, math contests etc. etc. A lot of this seems more common with recent immigrants. And, due to the critical mass, they now cluster in majority immigrant communities, and do not have the opportunity to see other viewpoints.
However, it is unfair to characterize all these families as abusive tiger parents. Obsessive, maybe, or ambitious in an unrealistic way, maybe. Most came here for grad school in STEM disciplines, so obviously there is a leaning towards that. Some of the posters here keep saying that they just need to open up their minds just like Americans do when they go to other countries (I think I got a response to that effect from PG a while back). Well, if they did that, we wouldn’t be having any of these issues in the first place. At any rate, Americans who go to other countries and live there for a while are usually ones with a global worldview any way. They are not of the same mindset as Asian immigrants who have come here for jobs etc.
No reasonable parent, including myself, would condone any of the tiger parenting practices that have been discussed here. My HS kid does report to me some of these things - one of his acquaintances is denied dinner if he gets a “B” in anything . But the majority are basically Honors/AP kids who have a laser focus on studying and getting A’s (and this is a HS with only 7% Asian kids). My older kid is one of the few kids of Asian descent with a mostly college prep schedule. Thankfully, the teachers and GC at his HS are wonderful and do not stereotype (or at least they are smart enough to keep it to themselves).
The media loves to sensationalize things and reduce everything to a sound bite or click bait. Reality is ,as always, more nuanced. Since it is not PC to criticize blacks or Hispanics or Native Americans, the Asian Americans seem to be fair game. My kids hate the nerdy portrayal of Asian Americans in the media at large.
I don’t think @TheGFG or anyone else has been saying that all Asian parents are TIger parents, just those in her highly competitive affluent community. As already noted on other threads, TheGFG’s community is hardly representative of this country. I believe @TheGFG, though I’ve also said that with one exception I don’t see what I would consider abusive levels of parenting among most of the Asians in our community, just the usual focus on STEM and strings, and high academic expectations. And I seem to recall being called racist myself for simply reporting that our local Asian students participate at about 10x the rate in math team as they do in writing activities. It’s distressing to see how freely accusations of lying, racism, and stereotyping are flung at people who are simply reporting their own individual or local experience.
@mcat2
“Is there any potential “difference” between Korean Americans and other Asians that you could share with us?”
I obviously know very little about how other Asian parents (Chinese, Indian/Pakistan, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.) raise their kids. But from my casual interactions with dozens of parents (not many) over the years, I don’t sense anything dramatically different about how they raise their kids. I have agreed before and will say it again here that Asian parents (I can only speak for Korean here) are more “strict” than some of the other non-Asian parents. But being strict is not a form of Tiger parenting as epiphany has also said in the above thread.
I do not think TheGFG is a racist. But his/her statement above about ALL Chinese immigrant parents being a Tiger Parent did have a racial tone. What I think he/she originally meant, now that I had time to sleep it off, is that many (but not all) Asian parents he/she met are strict or very strict (there is a distinction here vs. Tiger parents), and I would not have any problem with that statement.
The article link provided by @TheGFG about students from China using the college prep services to gain acceptance to US universities do not represent the rest of the population, neither do some Youtube videos and internet memes that are designed to attract as many clicks as possible. The services provided by these companies described in the article as well as college prep services in the US are very expensive and only accessible to very few wealthy families. (I certainly can’t afford it.) To extrapolate their parenting ways to the rest of the Asian parents is simply invalid.
So, are we just discussing how “widespread” this is? I guess the study posted above suggested that it’s not all that widespread, and certainly some folks are arguing that “tiger parenting” is not prevalent in some communities. If so, that’s great! But I don’t see how it’s racist for me to report seeing a pattern of restrictive parenting among a lot (not all) Asian families in my immediate environment. And I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but by “Asian” I mean: mostly Chinese, but to a lesser extent Korean and Indian. (There were very few Asians from other groups in our community.)
By the way, I think it’s a bit ironic that the only person who actually said that all Asian parents are tiger parents was an Asian kid.
I posted the Beijing to Harvard article as it describes a (small) imported world in USA. The argument of “not all Asians are like that” is intellectually weak despite its repetition in this thread. Tiger parenting among families seeking admissions at the tippy top schools is tangible everywhere. You’d have to be pretty blind to remain oblivious to the cottage industry of test prep centers, tutors, and thousands of self made experts. If you believe that TheTGF is unique, think again and look at California. How many cram and test schools are there that target Asians and are almost 100 percent attended by people who scrape pennies together to pay for the fees?
For many, it is a game that has nothing to do with learning and education. It is all about getting it in a certain school. The only difference between Asia and the USA is that the process is holistic in the latter. A fact that has been decried by recent immigrants as unfair and discriminatory.
Someone here advocated others to admit to their racism. I think that some might need to drop their blinders and scratch the surface of what really happens in the pre-college years in competitive schools.
@mcat2 To further add to your inquiry about Korean students (ES/MS/HS), they work a lot harder than many US students (mine included). It is very common in Korea for students to go to school, and continue their studies in specialized after-school programs (similar to Kumon) and/or EC (tae-kwon-do, swimming, etc.) until very late in the evening (7-10 pm). So, yes by this standard, a Korean parent/student might see the US students as “lazy”. I would also say that despite putting their kids through these long hours of studying, the parents rarely engage or practice abusive Tiger parenting. As I said before, many Korean parents are mindful of protecting their kids’ pride and the self-confidence to the point of generating entitled and spoiled kids (though I would say they are relatively minor).
However, I completely disagree with this extreme method of studying, nor do I think many US students are lazy. Many US kids are involved in other non-academic activities (sports, volunteering, jobs, etc.) which are as valuable (if not more) than studying from textbooks. In general, Korean students are high performers because many of them put in extremely long hours of studying, but when these kids enter college, many (this is my own conjecture) are burnt out. This type of education, in my view, can be counterproductive in generating creative and innovative young minds. In addition, one can easily see how affluent Korean families can continue to be the parents of top-performing students in this type of education system. Perhaps, this type of mentality continues in the US when Korean families come to US (or other Asians). When I was growing up in Korea (until I was 13), the government banned these after-school programs to level the playing field (so to speak), so I did not do much studying in those programs (may be a year). So, I really had a very different childhood experience than most Koreans kids of today. I played with my friends everyday and did nothing over the long winter and summer breaks. I don’t know exactly when but the ban on after-school programs was lifted not long after I immigrated to US.
Likewise, can I say the following (which is true): my father dropped out of high school and wandered aimlessly until he joined the service and got a GED while serving. That’s a very atypical pattern for a Jewish family.
Is that “racist” or “stereotyping” to acknowledge that the typical pattern for Jewish families is to put a good deal of emphasis on education?
@Hunt@Zeldie
I nor other posters have no issue with stating your own anecdotes as you please. I and others only raised the issue when it was implied that the majority of Asian parents are or practice Tiger parenting, which is not true. Yes, I do agree that there are Asian TPs (as there are white or black TPs) and most likely, these TPs tend to be the most ambitious and/or wealthy families (like Amy Chua) who can afford to send their kids to college prep classes, fly them overseas for volunteering and performances, etc. I also took issues with @TheGFG when he/she said that “I have never met a Chinese immigrant parent who is not a tiger parent”. Do you also agree with this kind of blanket statement and think that it’s true? Again, I have no qualms about sharing your experiences with several Asian or Korean TPs, but please understand that when it is implied to include the majority of Asians, I take issues.
Are you asking me if I think TheGFG is a liar? If so, the answer is no. Are you suggesting that I ever implied that the majority of Asian parents practice tiger parenting? I hope you don’t mean that. As I pointed out above, the only person in this thread who said that all Asian parents are tiger parents is a kid from a family that is (according to him or her).
What I have said is that I have observed, both directly in my community, and indirectly from reading College Confidential for years, is a specific pattern–which I think is based on cultural norms–that seems common among Asian (especially Chinese, and especially recent immigrant) families that are shooting for highly selective colleges, and that is characterized by some common traits, including focus on specific musical instruments, test prep, certain specific sports, and restrictions, imposed by parents, on other extracurricular activities. It happens to be almost exactly what Amy Chua describes (in a very extreme form). My main point about it, over years of posting here, is that it is not actually a good strategy for gaining admission to the most selective colleges in the United States. That’s why it’s often relevant to discussions here. As to whether it’s a good parenting style overall–well, it’s far from the worst.
And one more thing: if you hate the stereotype, aim your disapproval at Amy Chua. She has done a thousand times more to perpetuate it than any discussion here ever could.
I know plenty of Asian parents who are not “tiger parents”. So that disproves the claim that “all” Asian parents are like that. (You only need one counterexample to disprove a claim of “all”.)
Also, for those who see “tiger parenting” and resulting academic pressure and achievement based on race or ethnicity, rather than other characteristics, how do you explain Hawaii? It has a very high Asian population, but the educational attainment there is not unusually high compared to other states, and the University of Hawaii is not generally thought of as an elite university.
@Hunt I never suggested that you implied that the majority of Asian parents are TPs. I only took issues when it WAS implied by some posters somewhere in the earlier pages. As for the blanket statement by TheGFG, I firmly believe that IS untrue. If you choose to believe that kind of blanket statement, it’s up to you.
The point is not that a counterexample means that the assertion that “Asian tiger parenting exists and is a trend” is wrong. The fact that there are counterexamples does not contradict the trend nor does it make it racist to consider the possibility that there exists a cultural trend that encourages Asian parents to be tiger parents. Whether or not you agree that there is a trend is a fair topic of debate, but this entire “racist vs not racist” discussion is just pointless. Culture, which is closely related to ancestry and race, exists and is important, and it’s not racist to acknowledge that.
“The fact that there are counterexamples does not contradict the trend”
Thank you; that’s exactly what I was trying to say in my Jewish-dropout example. There can still be a trend or pattern even if not every single member fits it.
I think it’s fair to say that the really specific pattern I’ve described is something that I’ve seen most in Chinese families. Kids in Korean and Indian families had a wider range of activities–although still quite a bit of parental pressure to excel. As some others have pointed out, strictness is not the same as restriction. I also observed that a lot of Korean kids had another activity pushed by parents, which was church–something a lot less prevalent among the Chinese kids. With Indian families, the kids did lots of activities–but went into engineering in large numbers. Not all, but a lot, even kids who seemed more humanities-focused in high school. I think all of these things are cultural, not racial.
Note: would it be racist to observe that racial differences explain, at least in part, why there are more black as opposed to Asian professional basketball players in the United States? I don’t think so, although there are cultural factors as well.
I would not write anything about Amish families, particularly anything not highly qualified, unless I had done something like “research,” whether from deep indwelling or books. Anything else would be rude, ignorant, and/or misinformation.
Furthermore it isn’t a good counter-example because it might be possible to generalize about the Amish. There are 250,000 Amish in the world, all in the US (I believe), but Asians are 60% of the world’s population (something like 4 billion), representing 100’s of cultures. With 1.35 billion, China alone has 90 some ethnic minorities.
“What is the take home message for the average parent?
Regardless of how we analyze the data, we find that supportive parenting always comes out on top: parents who scored high on the positive parenting dimensions and low on the negative parenting dimensions had the most well-adjusted, successful children. Thus, we encourage parents to consider using supportive parenting techniques.
Being warm, using reasoning and explanation when disciplining children, allowing children to be independent when appropriate, and monitoring children’s whereabouts and activities are all good parenting strategies. Parents should also ensure that they minimize shouting or yelling at their children, shaming their children by comparing them to other children, expecting unquestioned obedience from their children, and blaming their children or bringing up past mistakes.”
As far as I am concerned, this seems to support my notion that Tiger Parenting is a misguided process, regardless of the race of the parents. If some of you find solace in the belief that it is hardly confined to American Asians, that is fine by me. It does not change much about what I think about the author of the Battle Hymn and whoever found vindication in that real or sarcastic garbage book.
In the end, the indictment goes to Tiger Parenting in general, and this regardless of the Tigers’ racial stripes.
