My parenting views are very privileged, upper middle class views. I am okay criticizing Chau, because she is privileged and upper middle class. I would not feel it my place to criticize working class parents, perhaps without much understanding of the system, doing their absolute best to get their kids into college so they can have a better life. That is a completely different story than what Chau gives us. Chau was raising her kids in an incredibly enriched environment. They were never going to be disadvantaged educationally.
alh, from my vantage point in the upper middle class, and from the photos of the Chua home that were available on the internet when the first book came out, I am pretty sure that their household is actually upper class. Probably Amy Chua is insulted by your comment! 
In my bubble, the upper class won’t admit to being upper class. Bad taste. I don’t know about her bubble. I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.
to be honest it was difficult for me to admit “upper middle class” but it really seemed necessary for the point. Upper middle class is probably a stretch upwards in our case.
eta: I never doubted my kids would go to college, because everyone in my family has always gone to college. That is pretty darn privileged.
The obvious answer is that “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” was written by Amy Chua and she is Asian. I don’t think the term was really used before that book came out.
Re: #22 and “upper [middle] class”
Yes, “middle class” seems to have a very elastic definition in the US. E.g. “we are middle class, but will not get college financial aid anywhere”, or “middle class is $250,000 and below”.
I am from Eastern Europe and have many friends who are same. Having gone to high school, college, and medical school with many people of Asian descent, I also have some familiarity with that culture. In some Asian-American families, there is an unprecedented level of emotional manipulation going on. One of my parents is quite competitive and doesn’t forget to lift the bar higher and higher, but I have only felt unconditional love. I am sure there is a range of attitudes across all cultures, but again and again my Asian-American friends confide in me how they grew up feeling like they have to prove themselves for their parents to love them.
I don’t know whether I can weigh in as we have very, very few Asians families in my area about point two percent, but it seems to me that the Asianss get picked on because of the stereotyping of the studious, good at math kid who plays piano or violin or both and tennis and the parents ride hard on their kids to keep their noses to the grindstone which it appears Amy Chau ran the household and simply kept that Asian stereotype alive in the public mind. Now mind you, true story, the only Asian mom family I know,she did run their kids hard and she did swing by the house and pick them up to go home and “study” sometimes minutes after they arrived and their oldest did go to Harvard and the second played tennis so perhaps the stereotypes hit pretty close to home?
I am not Asian. I know a whole lot of Asian young people, though my kids, These friends of my kids are all super-achievers. I don’t believe any of them had parents like Chau, and I have heard a lot of stories about their childhoods and met a lot of their parents. Mainly I hear these Asian parents tell their kids to “slow down” and enjoy life. And start having babies.
eta; these “kids” are hitting 30
Because… before they had to compete for spots against super hard working asian kids, the white kids didn’t have to do anything to be a shoo in.
The critics are not picking on the studious and hard working Asian students, but are reacting to the attempts to glorify the misguided parenting that afflicts the children. Are the results worth the price?
In terms of academic achievement, some in my extended family don’t always fit the stereotype of the studious overly academic nerdy kid.
One branch of my extended family assimilated so rapidly and seamlessly into their upper-middle class suburbs on the West Coast that the parents actually felt it was more important to get their kids to prioritize sports and social events like their weekend dinner parties with neighbors over their academic studies. We’re talking as opposite of “tiger parenting” as you can get.
They did this to the point two of my cousins ended up being invited to leave their graduate programs by their advisers for not prioritizing their academic research/course work enough and continuing to forgive one who prioritized partying/beer over academics at a Big 10 to the point he came perilously close to being academically expelled.
They also had the same mentality as some multi-generationed American undergrad classmates and younger friends who felt “An A or B is nice, but if I have to put in any effort to get them, a C is fine.”
Most of them were also big on the pan-hellenic Greek scene partially due to the drinking/partying cultures on those particular campuses.
To answer the original question: because it gets clicks. It gets people talking.
It’s not dissimilar to the media obsession with protesting students and whiny millenials. It’s irrelevant whether it’s common or not- the reading majority wants it to be “the story” and so it is. Because that’s what they click on and thus that’s how the company gets money.
It’s pretty simple really.
I don’t think Amy Chua coined the phrase tiger parent, it was around for at least a few years before that. It may have hit popular culture via her book, though.
Racism? It’s the model minority stereotype gone terribly wrong. It also fits people’s narrow stereotypes of different racial/ethnic groups. People’s mental model of Asians are hard-working, intelligent, rigid, structured, harsh, noble, etc. People’s mental model of Caribbean and West African families usually falls more squarely into their stereotypes for blacks in general (lazy, stupid, athletic, funny, entertaining), even though the parenting culture in those families is probably way closer to many Asian families’ than many African American families.* I have lots of friends who are second-generation Caribbean or West African and their childhoods in some ways resemble that described by the so-called “Tiger Mom.” And white families generally don’t get any stereotypes from the mainstream media because they’re considered the default; they’re allowed to vary freely.
*Although, to be frank, I am often amused and occasionally offended by the media’s depiction of parenting and childhood in African American families. It doesn’t resemble reality even for most of the kids of single low-income families. I think the media in general is just not to be trusted for realistic, nuanced depictions of…life in general, but especially not for members of ethnic minorities.
Media picks on educated alpha families (e.g. tiger parents) because educated people read and follow the news, generating sales and/or website clicks and/or higher ratings. It’s crap. Everyone knows absentee and neglectful parents are a GENUINE problem in this nation—but they don’t read the news and it would be politically incorrect to “pick on” millions of people who demonstrate they’re not fit to have children in the first place.
The mental issues of tiger cubs is absurdly overblown. Real issues are violence and psychological problems when a child is raised by parent(s) who don’t care, in terrible schools, with no real direction.
Absolutely agree with that and “that” crosses all skin colors. If Asian families want to raise their kids by a certain set of “rule” then so be it. They may look all the same on paper, but they will be all individuals when they hit the campuses and workforce.
Around us, people do not “pick on ‘Tiger Parenting’ in Asian families.” The Asian-American students tend to be strong students and hard-working (on the whole). However, they do not seem to me to be any harder working than the other students who are taking the same kinds of courses. They are probably somewhat over-represented in the Suzuki program. I do not see evidence of mental issues.
My reaction to Amy Chua’s book is limited to her personal child-rearing pattern, and does not generalize to other Asian-American families. I would never have imagined the events that she included in the book, outside of fiction. It bothers me that Chua did not anticipate the extent of the negative reaction to her book on tiger parenting; and it is difficult for me to understand why she did not anticipate it.
In my experience, the Asian-American students in our neighborhood were all quite individual. They had some features in common–rigorous course loads and (usually) the ability to play an instrument at a high level. Aside from that, if they looked the same on paper to anyone, the person wasn’t looking very hard.
To answer the original question on why Tiger parenting is picked on, I believe it is because of the high rates of suicide and depression by Asian high achieving students. I am not sure if there are any significant studies on this but I think everyone in high pressure, high performing communities with large Asian communities are painfully aware of the stories and feel terrible for the kids who suffer.
Anecdotal examples like 19 of the last student deaths by suicide on the MIT campus occurred in the last 15 years. 8 of them — or 42% — involved Asian American students. Cornell’s suicide demographic skews towards Asian.
I don’t think its a leap to connect these mental health issues with the high expectations that are difficult to meet.
Interesting article on this topic.
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/why-the-suicide-rate-is-high-for-asian-college-students
explains why so many Asians suffer from depression and that there is a sigma. “Asian cultures don’t privilege emotional sharing. Plus, counseling is seen as only for crazy people … and it’s a cultural imperative not to air dirty laundry.” This is very different from a typical Americans view mental health. The article states that that there is no word for depression in the Korean language(?!). Maybe another poster can comment on this.
I would appreciate the perspective from someone within the community.
High expectations are good - except when they aren’t.
" Plus, counseling is seen as only for crazy people … and it’s a cultural imperative not to air dirty laundry." This is very different from a typical Americans view mental health."
I don’t think that sounds that different from the white America I grew up in.
Heck, that’s the common mentality among many older generation multi-generationed Americans in my old working-class NYC neighborhood in the '80/early '90s era and among several multi-generational mostly White American neighbors in the upper/upper-middle class NE and West Coast suburbs.
Especially common among some military veteran fathers who felt anyone…especially boys/men who need counseling were in the words of Animal House’s Neidermayer “Worthless and weak”.
Especially that 20+ year Marine veteran/ and former drill instructor father/Tiger dad who was obsessed about getting his son into Annapolis and his son graduating as a commissioned officer in the Marines.